The Return ...........................................................................................................................................................1

THE churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering that mild and golden September

afternoon was old, green, and refreshingly still. The silence in which it lay seemed as keen and mellow as the

lightthe pale, almost heatless, sunlight that filled the air. Here and there robins sang across the stones,

elvishly shrill in the peace of harvest. The only other living creature there seemed to Lawford to be his own

rather fair, not unsubstantial, rather languid self, who at the noise of the birds had raised his head and glanced

as if between content and incredulity across his still and solitary surroundings. An increasing inclination for

such lonely ramblings, together with the feeling that his continued illhealth had grown a little irksome to his

wife, and that now that he was really better she would be relieved at his absence, had induced him to wander

on from home without much considering where the quiet lanes were leading him. And in spite of a peculiar

melancholy that had welled up into his mind during these last few days, he had certainly smiled with a faint

sense of the irony of things on lifting his eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find himself looking

down on the shadows and peace of Widderstone. With that anxious irresolution which illness so often brings

in its grain he had hesitated for what must have been some few minutes before actually entering the

graveyard. But once safely within he had begun to feel extremely loth to think of turning back again, and this

not the less at remembering with a real foreboding that it was now drawing towards evening, that another day

was nearly done. He trailed his umbrella behind him over the grassgrown paths; staying here and there to

read some timeworn inscription; stooping a little broodingly over the dark green graves. Not for the first

time during the long, laborious convalescence that had followed apparently so slight an indisposition, a

fleeting sense almost as if of an unintelligible remorse had overtaken him, a vague thought that behind all

these past years, hidden as it were from his success, lay something not yet quite reckoned with. How often as

a boy had he been rapped into a galvanic activity out of those deep reveries he used to fall intothose fits of

a kind of fishlike daydream. How often, and even far beyond boyhood, had he found himself bent on some

distant thought or fleeting vision that the sudden clash of selfpossession had made to seem quite illusory,

and yet had left so strangely haunting. And now the old habit had stirred out of its long sleep, and, through

"But I suppose we are all pretty much the same, if we only knew it," he had consoled himself. "We keep our

crazy side to ourselves; that's all. We just go on for years and years doing and saying whatever happens to

come upand really keen about it too"he had glanced up with a kind of challenge in his face at the squat

little belfry"and then, without the slightest reason or warning, down you go, and it all begins to wear thin,

and you get wondering what on earth it all means." Memory slipped back for an instant to the life that in so

unusual a fashion seemed to have floated a little aloof. Fortunately he had not discussed these inward

symptoms with his wife. How surprised Sheila would be to see him loafing in this old, crooked churchyard!

How she would lift her dark eyebrows, with that handsome, indifferent tolerance! He smiled, but a little

confusedly; yet the thought gave even a spice of adventure to the evening's ramble.

He loitered on, scarcely thinking at all now, stooping here and there. These faint, listless ideas made no more

stir than the sunlight gilding the fading leaves, the crisp turf underfoot. With a slight effort he stooped even

"But then, how do you know lie you at peace?" Lawford audibly questioned, gazing at the doggerel. And yet,

as his eye wandered over the blunt green stone and the rambling, crimsonberried brier that had almost

encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that whisper rather jarred. He was, he supposed, rather a dull

creatureat least people seemed to think soand he seldom felt at ease even with his own small facetiousness.

Besides, just that kind of question was getting very common. Now that cleverness was the fashion most

people were clevereven perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body.

He muttered the words over with a kind of mournful bitterness. "That's just itjust it; that's just how it

goes!" . . . He yawned softly; the pathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker grass, one and another

obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat, shadowed by a few everlastingly green cypresses and coralfruited

yewtrees. And above and beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky with a few voyaging clouds like silvered

wood, and the calm, wide curves of stubble field and pasture land. He stood with vacant eyes, not in the least

aware how queer a figure he made with his gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the stained and

tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour, and half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to

One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual ovalheaded stone, carved at each corner

into what might be the heads of angels, or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other with wornout, sightless

faces. A low, curved stone canopy arched over the grave with a crevice so wide between its stones that

Lawford actually bent down and slid in his gloved fingers between them. He straightened himself with a sigh,

Of the date he was a little uncertain. The "hand" had lost its "n" and "d"; and all the "Angels" rain had erased.

He was not quite sure even of the "Stranger." There was a great rich "S," and the twisted tail of a "g"; and,

whether or no, Lawford smilingly thought, he is no Stranger now. But how rare and how memorable a name!

French evidently; probably Huguenot. And the Huguenots, he remembered vaguely, were a rather remarkable

"crowd." He had, he thought, even played at "Huguenots" once, with blood immeasurable spilt at twilight.

What was the man's name? Coligny; yes, of course, Coligny. "And I suppose," Lawford continued, muttering

to himself, "I suppose this poor beggar was put here out of the way. They might, you now," he added

confidentially, raising the ferrule of his umbrella, "they might have stuck a stake through you, and buried you

at the crossroads!" And again a feeling of ennui, a faint disgust at his poor little witticism, clouded over his

mind. It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old ditches.

"'Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,'" he began murmuring again"merely bones, mind you;

brains and heart are quite another story. And it's pretty certain the fellow had some kind of brains. Besides,

poor devil! he killed himself. That seems to hint at brains . . . Oh, for goodness' sake!" he cried out; so loud

that the sound of his voice alarmed even a robin that had perched on a twig almost within touch, with

glittering eye intent above its dim red breast on this other and even rarer stranger.

"I wonder if it is XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX." Lawford cast a cautious glance over his round, grey

shoulder, then laboriously knelt down beside the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny. There he

encountered merely the tiny, palegreen, faintly conspicuous eyes of a large spider, confronting his own. It

was for the moment an alarming, and yet a faintly fascinating experience. The little, almost colourless, fires

remained so changeless. But still, even when at last they had actually vanished into the recesses of that quiet

habitation, Lawford did not rise from his knees. An utterly unreasonable feeling of dismay, a sudden

"What is the good of it all?" he asked himself inconsequentlythis monotonous, restless, stupid life to which

he was soon to be returning, and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a spectacle he must be, kneeling

here amid the weeds and grass beneath the solemn cypresses. "Well, you can't have everything," seemed

He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly aware that his heart was beating with an unusual

effort. He felt ill and weak. He leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself on to the low wooden seat near

by. He drew off his glove and thrust his bare hand under his waistcoat, with his mouth a little ajar, and his

eyes fixed on the dark, square turret, its bell sharply defined against the evening sky.

"Dead!" a bitter inward voice seemed to break into speech; "Dead!" The viewless air seemed to be flocking

with hidden listeners. The very clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone seemed to be

the target of gold and hostile scrutiny. There seemed to be not a breath to breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine.

It was all to rare, too thin. The shadows lay like wings everlastingly folded. The robin that had been his only

living witness lifted its throat, and broke, as if from the uttermost outskirts of reality, into its shrill,

passionless song. Lawford moved heavy eyes from one object to anotherbirdsungilded stonethose

two small earthworn faceshis handsa stirring in the grass as of some creature labouring to climb up. It

was useless to sit here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be

only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and closed

his eyes. The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily revealing astonished, aggrieved pupils, and softly,

The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the zenith, dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild

and vivid green, and the stooping stones above it a pure faint purple, waned softly back like a falling fountain

into its basin. In a few minutes only a faint orange burned in the west, dimly illuminating with its band of

light the huddled figure on his low wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly bearing heart. Dusk

gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the

silence of the falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the inkblack cypresses, the blades of the

grass were stooping with cold drops; and darkness lay like the hem of an enormous cloak, whose jewels

above the breast of its wearer might be in the unfathomable clearness the glittering constellations. . . .

In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a furtive head. He stood up and peered eagerly

and strangely from side to side. He stayed quite still, listening as raptly as some wandering nightbeast to the

indiscriminate stir and echoings of the darkness. He cocked his head above his shoulder and listened again,

then turned upon the soundless grass towards the hill. He felt not the faintest astonishment or strangeness in

his solitude here; only a little chilled, and physically uneasy; and yet in this vast darkness a faint spiritual

exaltation seemed to hover. He hastened up the narrow path, walking with knees a little bent, like an old

labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came out into the dry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct

hesitated as to which turn to takeonly a moment; he was soon walking swiftly, almost trotting, downhill

with this vivid exultation in the huge dark night in his heart, and Sheila merely a little, angry, Titianesque

cloud on a scarcely perceptible horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands of his watch were

indiscernible in the gloom. And presently, as he passed by, he pressed his face close to the cold glass of a

little shopwindow, and saw the time there by an old Swiss cuckooclock. He would if he hurried just be

He broke into a low, steady trot, gaining speed as he ran on, vaguely elated to find how well his breath was

serving him. An odd smile darkened his face at remembrance of the thoughts he had been thinking. There

could be little amiss with the heart of a man who could shamble along like this, taking even a pleasure, an

increasing pleasure, in this long, wolflike stride. He turned round occasionally to look into the face of some

fellowwayfarer whom he had overtaken, for he felt not only this unusual animation, this peculiar zest, but

that, like a boy on some secret errand, he had slightly disguised his very presence, was going masked, as it

were. Even his clothes seemed to have connived at this queer illusion. No tailor had for these ten years

allowed him so much latitude. He cautiously at last opened his garden gate and with soundless agility

mounted the six stone steps, his latchkey ready in his gloveless hand, and softly let himself into the house.

Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light the lamp. Without pausing to take off his

greatcoat, he hung up his hat, ran nimbly upstairs, and knocked with a light knuckle on his bedroom door. It

was closed, but no answer came. He opened it, shut it, locked it, and sat down on the bedside for a moment,

in the darkness, breathless and elated. There was little the matter with his heart now. It beat hard, but

vigorously and equably, so that he could scarcely hear any other sound, as he sat erect and still, like some

night animal, wary of danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from the bed, threw off his coat, which was

Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly. He glanced around him, unusually

contentedat the ruddiness of the low fire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft silveriness

here and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull dream had withdrawn out of his mind. He would go again

some day, and sit on the little hard seat beside the crooked tombstone of the friendless old Huguenot. He

opened a drawer, took out his razors, and, faintly whistling, returned to the table and lit a second candle. And

still with this strange heightened sense of life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently over his chin and

For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the least feeling, or thought, or stirstaring into the

lookingglass. Then an inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A warm surge, like the onset of a wave,

broke upward, flooding neck, face, forehead, even his hands with colour. He caught himself up and wheeled

deliberately, completely round, his eyes darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves in a prolonged stare,

while he took a deep breath, caught back his selfpossession and paused. Then he turned and once more

Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was, frigid and appalled, at the foot of the bed.

To sit like this, with a kind of incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing thoughts like straws and

bubbles on its surface, could not be called thinking. Some stealthy key had simply opened the sluice of

memory. And words, voices, faces of mockery streamed through, without connection, tendency, or senses.

His hands hung between his knees, a deep and settled frown darkened his face, stooping out of the direct rays

of the light, and his eyes wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over the floor.

If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly recurred at all, it was the memory of Sheila. He

saw her face, lit, transfigured, distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His lids narrowed; a vague terror and

horror mastered him. He hid his eyes in his hands and cried without sound, without tears, without hope, like a

desolate child. He ceased crying; and sat without stirring. And it seemed after an age of vacancy and

meaninglessness he heard a door shut downstairs, a distant voice, and then the rustle of some one slowly

ascending the stairs. Some one turned the handle; in vain; tapped. "Is that you, Arthur?"

For an instant Lawford paused, then like a child listening for an echo, answered, "Yes, Sheila." And a sigh

broke from him; his voice, except for a little huskiness, was slightly unchanged.

"May I come in?" Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more into the glass. His lips set tight, and a

He stood erect and raised his voice, gazing the while impassively into the glass.

"It's no use," he began, as if repeating a lesson, "it's no use your asking me, Sheila. Please give me a moment,

"Why, standing like this outside my own bedroom door. Are you ill? I will send for Dr. Simon."

"Please, Sheila, do nothing of the kind. I am not ill. I merely want a little time to think." There was again a

"Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what's wrong; this does not sound a bit like yourself. It is not even quite

"It is myself," he replied stubbornly, staring fixedly into the glass. "You must give me a few moments,

"Don't be absurd; it's simply wicked to talk like that. How do I know what you are doing? As if I can leave

you for an hour in uncertainty! Your face! If you don'' open at once I shall believe there's something seriously

"If you do that Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer for the con . . . Go quietly downstairs. Say I am

The answer broke out angrily. "You must be mad, beside yourself, to ask such a thing. I shall wait in the next

"Then if I tell them to wait until halfpast eight, you will come down? You say you are not ill; the dinner will

Lawford made no answer. He listened awhile, then he deliberately sat down once more to try to think. Like a

squirrel in a cage his mind seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. "What is it really? What is it

really?really?" He sat there and it seemed to him his body was transparent as glass. It seemed he had no

body at allonly the memory of an hallucinatory reflectin in the glass, and this inward voice crying, arguing,

questioning, threatening out of the silence"What is ir reallyreally\\\really?///" And at last, cold,

wearied out, he rose once more and leaned between the two long candleflames, and stared ononon,

into the glass. He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks to dolift an eyebrow, frown.

There was scarcely any perceptible pause between the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture

that the face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to his fainter secondary thoughts; as if

these unfamiliar features were not entirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass before him,

tell precisely what that face was expressing. He was still, it seemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for

certain when Sheila returned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, or was in pain; he would

have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in some unheardof snarecaught, how? when? where? by whom?

BUT the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain extent calmed Lawford's mind and given

him confidence. Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life only to vanquish them with ease and

applause. Now he was standing face to face with the unknown. He burst out laughing, into a long, low,

helpless laughter. Then he arose and began to walk softly, swiftly, to and fro across the roomfrom wall to

wall seven paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightlylit profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil

surface of the lookingglass. The power of concentration was gone again. He simply paced on mechanically,

listening to a Babel of questions, a conflicting medley of answers. But above all the confusion and turmoil of

his brain, as the boatswain's whistle rises above a storm, so sounded that same infinitesimal voice, incessantly

repeating another question now, "What are you going to do? What are you going to do?"

And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it were, came another sharp tap at the door, and all

Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and confronted the closed door. "Very well, Sheila,

you shall not wait any longer." He crossed over to the door, and suddenly a vehement idea flashed into his

He tapped on the panel. "Sheila," he said softly, "I want you first, before you come in, to get me something

out of my old writingdesk in the smokingroom. Here is the key." He pushed a tiny key from off the ring he

carried beneath the door. "In the third little drawer from the top, on the left side, is a letter; please don't say

anything now. It is the letter you wrote me, you will remember, after I had asked you to marry me. You

scribbled in the corner under your signature the initials 'Y.S.O.A.'do you remember? They meant, You

"Arthur," answered the voice from without, empty of all expression, "what does all this mean, this mystery,

this hopeless nonsense about a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a miserable form of persecution? Are

Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. "I am not mad. Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest,

Sheila. You must get the letter, if only for your own peace of mind." He heard his wife hesitate as she turned.

There was a rustle of paper. "Are the letters thereunderlined three times'Y.S.O.A?'"

"And the date of the month is underneath, 'April 3rd.' No one else in the whole world, living or dead, could

"Then come in." He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark, rather handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a

silk dress of a dark rich colour entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in shadow. He had still a

"I need not ask you to be patient," he began quickly; "if I could possibly have spared youif there had been

anybody in the world to go to . . . I am in a horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is inconceivable. I said I was

sane: so I am, but the fact is, I went out for a walk; it was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and I think I was

taken ill, or somethingmy heart. A kind of fit, a nervous fit. Possibly I am a little unstrung, and it's all, it's

mainly fancy: but I think, I can't help thinking itg has a little distortedchanged my face; everything, Sheila;

except, of course, myself. Would you mind looking?" He walked slowly and with face averted towards the

Without a word he took up the two old china candlesticks, and held them, one in each lankfingered hand,

Lawford could see his wifeevery tint and curve and line as distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks

never had much colour; now her whole face visible darkened, from pallor to a dusky leaden grey, as she

gazed. It was not an illusion, then; not a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable, had

"Well," he said, "what is it really; what is it really, Sheila? What on earth are we to do?"

"Is the door locked?" she whispered. He nodded. With eyes fixed stirlessly on his face, Sheila unsteadily

seated herself, a little out of the candlelight, in the shadow. Lawford rose and put the key of the door on his

wife's little rosewood prayerdesk at her elbow, and deliberately sat down again.

"I supposeisis it very differenthopeless? You will understand my being . . . O Sheila, what am I to

Lawford took a deep breath, and quietly faced her again. "In the old churchyard, Widderstone; I was looking

"A fit; in the old churchyard, Widderstoneyou were 'looking at the gravestones'?"

Lawford shut his mouth. "I suppose soa fit," he said presently. "My heart went a little queer, and I sat

down and fell into a kind of dozea stupor, I suppose. I don't remember anything more. And then I woke;

She gazed at him steadily; and a hard, incredulous, almost cunning glint came into her wide blue eyes. She

took up the key carelessly, glanced at it; glanced at him. "It has made meI mean the first shock, you

knowit has made me a little faint." She walked slowly, deliberately to the door, and unlocked it. "I'll get a

little sal volatile." She softly drew out the key, and without once removing her eyes from his face, opened the

door and pushed the key noiselessly in on the other side. "Please stay there; I won't be a minute."

Lawford's face smileda rather desperate, yet for all that a patient, resolute smile. "Oh yes, of course," he

said, almost to himself, "I had not foreseen, at leastyou must do precisely what you please, Sheila. You

were going to lock me in. You will, however, before taking any final step, please think over what it will

entail. I did not think you would, after such proof, in this awful troubleI did not think you would simply

disbelieve me, Sheila. Who else is there to help me? You have the letter in your hand. Isn't that sufficient

proof? It was overwhelming proof to me. And even I doubted too; doubted myself. But never mind; why I

should have dreamed you would believe me; or taken this awful thing differently, I don't know. It's rather

awful to have to go on alone. But there, think it over. I shall not stir until I hear the voices. And then:

honestly, Sheila, I couldn't face quite that. I'd sooner give up altgogether. Any proof you can think ofI

willO God, I cannot bear it!" He covered his face with his hands; but in a moment looked up, unmoved

once more. "Why, for that matter," he added slowly, and, as it were, with infinite pains, a faint thin smile

again stealing into his face, "I think," he turned wearily to the glass, "I think it's almost an improvement!"

Something deep in those dark, clear eyes, out of that lean adventurous face, gleamed back at him, as it were,

the distant flash of a heliograph, height to height, flashing "Courage!" He shuddered, and shut his eyes. "But I

would really rather," he added in a quiet, childlike way, "I would really rather, Sheila, you left me alone

His wife stood irresolute. "I understand you to explain," she said, "that you went out of this house, just your

usual self, this afternoon, for a walk; that for some reason you went to Widderstoneto read the tombstones,'

that you had a heart attack, or, as you said at first, a fit, that you fell into a stupor, and came home likelike

this. Am I likely to believe all that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that? Whoever you are, whoever

you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I

thought that at first." She paused, but no answer came. "Well, I suppose in a civilised country there is a

Lawford listened patiently. "She is pretending; she is trying me; she is feeling her way," he kept repeating to

"I shall leave the door open," Sheila continued. "I am not, as you no doubt very naturally assumedI am not

going to do anything either senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask your brother Cecil to come it, if

he is at home, and if not, no doubt our old friend Mr. Montgomery wouldwould help us." Her scrutiny was

Lawford sat crouched together in the candlelight. "By all means, Sheila," he said, slowly choosing his

words, "if you think poor old Cecil, who next January will have been dead three years, will be of any use in

our difficulty. Who Mr. Montgomery is . . ." His voice dropped in utter weariness. "You did it very well, my

Sheila gently closed the door and sat down on the bed. He heard her softly crying, he heard the bed shaken

with her sobs. But a slow glance towards the steady candleflames restrained him. He let her cry on alone.

When she had become a little more composed he stood up. "You have had no dinner," he managed to blurt

out at last, "you will be faint. It's useless to talk, even to think, any more tonight. Leave me to myself for a

while. Don't look at me any more. Perhaps I can sleep: perhaps if I sleep it will come right again. When the

servants are gone up I will come down. Just let me have somesome medical book, or other; and some more

Sheila paid him no attention for awhile. "You tell me not to think," she began, in a low, almost listless voice;

"whyI wonder I am in my right mind. And 'eat'! How can you have the heartlessness to suggest it? You

don't seem in the least to realise what you say. You seem to have lost allall consciousness. I quite agree, it

is useless for me tgo burden you with my company while you are in your present condition of mind. But you

will at least promise me that you won't take any further steps in this awful business." She could not, try as she

would, bring herself again to look at him. She rose softly, paused a moment with sidelong eyes, then turned

And again that voice, so extraordinarily like, and yet in some vague fashion more arresting, more resonant

than her husband's broke incredibly out once more. "You will please leave the key, Sheila. I am ill, but I am

not yet in the padded room. And please understand, I take no further steps in 'this awful business' until I hear

a strange voice in this house." Sheila paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear, desperately yet convincingly.

She took the key out of the lock, placed it on the bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of

She speedily returned. "I have brought the book," she said hastily. "I could only find the one volume. I have

With fumbling fingers Lawford, when completely deserted, opened Quain's "Dictionary of Medicine." He

had never had much curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard

occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of

cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of memory, dual personality. Cranks . . . Oh yes, he

thought now, with a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been such cases as his before. They were no

doubt curable. They must be comparatively common in Americathat land of jangled nerves. Possibly

bromide, rest, a battery. . . . But Quain, it seemed, shared his prejudices, at least in this edition, or had hidden

away all such apocryphal matter beneath technical terms, where no sensible man could find it. "Besides," he

muttered angrily, "what's the good of your one volume?" He flung it down and strode to the bed, and rang for

the bell. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he paused and listened. There came a tap on the door. "Is that

"Oh, that's all right; never mind; I didn't ring." He stood with face uplifted, thinking.

"One moment, Ada," he called in a loud voice. He took out his pocketbook, sat down, and scribbled a little

note. He hardly noticed how changed his handwriting wasall the clear round letters crabbed and irregular.

"Are you there, Ada?" he called. "I am slipping the note beneath the door; just draw back the mat; that's it.

Take it at once, please, to Mr. Critchett's, and be sure to wait for an answer. Then come back direct to me, up

here. I don't think, Ada, your mistress believes much in Critchett; but I have fully explained what I want. He

has made me up many prescriptions. Explain that to his assistant if he is not there. Go at once, and you will

be back before she is. I should be so very much obliged, tell him. 'Mr. Arthur Lawford.'"

The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still, in the clear, untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the

empty house. And for the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible horror of his ordeal. Who

would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself?

What test; what heapedup evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome ignominy. It

Suddenly, with a kind of apelike cunning, he deliberately raised a long lean forefinger and pointed it at the

shadowy crystal of the lookingglass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed changed in body, was

fated really and indeed to change in soul, into That. "It's that beastly voice again," Lawford cried out loud,

looking vacantly at his upstretched finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as it were, obeyed;

relaxed and fell to his side. "You must keep a tight hold, old man," he muttered to himself. "Once, once you

lose yourself the least symptom of thatthe least symptom, and it's all up!" And the fools, the heartless,

When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose. She was in the conspiracy too. Oh, it

should be a lesson to Sheila! Oh, if only daylight would come! "What are you going to doto doto DO?"

He rose once more and paced his silent cage. To and fro, thinking no more; just using his eyes, compelling

them to wander from picture to picture, bedpost to bedpost; now counting aloud his footsteps; now humming;

only, only to keep himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer and actually began arranging its

medley of contents: ties, letters, studs, concert and theatre programmesall higgledypiggledy. And in the

midst of this childlike stratagem he heard a faintg sound, as of heavy water trickling from a height. He turned.

A thief was in one of the candles. It was guttering out. He would be left in darkness. He turned hastily

without a moment's heed, to call for light, flung the door open, and full in the flare of a lamp, illuminating her

pale forehead and astonished face beneath her black straw hat, stood face to face with Ada.

With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him, looking straight into her almost colourless

steady eyes. "Ah," he said instantly, in a high, faint voice, "the powder, thank you; yes, Mr. Lawford's

powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept absolutely quietabsolutely. Mrs. Lawford is following.

Please tell her that I am here, when she returns. Mr. Critchett was in, then? Thank you. Extreme, extreme

silence, please." Again that knotted, melodramatic finger raised itself on high; and within that lean,

cadaverous body the soul of its lodger quailed at this spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The maid at

once left him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in muffled consultation. And in a moment Sheila's

silks rustled once more on the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her deliberately close the

"What does this mean?" she began swiftly, "I understand thatAda tells me a stranger is here; giving orders,

directions. Who is he? where is he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to stir till I returned.

You . . . How can I, how can we get decently through this horrible business if you are so wretchedly

Lawford watched his wife with an almost extraneous interest. She was certainly extremely interesting from

that point of view, that very novel point of view. "It's quite useless," he said, "to get in the least nervous or

hysterical. I don't care for the darkness just now. That was all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctorDr.

Simon's new partneryou are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said out patient must be kept

quietI really think he must; that is all, so far as Ada is concerned. . . . What on earth else are we to say?" he

broke out. "That, for the present to everybody, is our only possible story. It will give us what we must

havetime. And nextwhere is the second volume of Quain? I want that. And nextwhy have you broken

faith with me?" Mrs. Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had stupefied her.

"I can't, I can't make head or tail of what you say. And as for having broken faith, as you call it, would any

wife, would any sane woman, face what you have brought on us, a situation like this, without seeking advice

and help? Mr. Bethany will be perfectly discreetif he thinks discretion desirable. He is the only available

friend we have close enough to ask at once. And things of this kind are, I suppose, if anybody's concern, his.

It's certain to leak out. Everybody will hear of it. Don't flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like

this for long. You can't keep living skeletons in a cupboard. You think only of yourself, only of your own

misfortune. But who's to know, pray, that you really are my husbandif you are? The sooner I get the vicar

on my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the parishI ask youand you must have the sense

left to see thatwho will believe that a respectable man, a gentleman, a Churchman, would deliberately go

out to seek an afternoon's amusement in a poky little country churchyard? Why, apart from everything else,

that was absolutely mad to start with. Can you really wonder at the result?" Probably because she still

steadfastly refused to look at him, her memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact of his change. She

only realised fully that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually

lifted her eyes for a moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up with a sudden and

horrible nausea. "One moment," she said, "I will see if the servants have gone to bed."

That long, saturnine face, behind which Mr. Lawford lay in a dull and desperate ambush, smiled. Something

partaking of its clay, some reflex ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even a little amused at Sheila.

She returned in a moment, and stood in profile in the doorway. "Will you come down?" she remarked,

"One moment, Sheila," Mr. Lawford began miserably. "Before we take this irrevocable step, a step I implore

you to postpone awhilefor what comes, I suppose, may gowhat precisely have you told the vicar? I must

"In fairness," she began ironically, and suddenly broke off. Her husband had turned the flame of the lamp low

down in the vacant room behind them; the corridor was lit but obscurely by the chandelier far down in the

hall below. A faint, inexplicable dread fell softly and coldly on her heart. "Have you no trust in me?" she

They softly descended the stairs; she first, the dark figure following close behind her.

Mr. Bethany sat awaiting them in the diningroom, a large, heavilyfurnished room with a great benign

lookingglass on the mantelpiece, a marble clock, and rich old damask curtains. Fleecy silver hair was all

that was visible of their visitor when they entered. But Mr. Bethany rose out of his chair when he heard them,

and with a little jerk, turned sharply round. Thus it was that the goldspectacled vicar and Lawford first

confronted each other, the one brightly illuminated, the other framed in the gloom of the doorway. Mr.

Bethany's first scrutiny was timid and courteous, but beneath it he tried to be keen, and himself hastened

round the table almost at a trot, to obtain, as delicately as possible, a closer view. But Lawford, having shut

the door behind him, had gone straight to the fire and seated himself, leaning his face in his hands. Mr.

Bethany smiled faintly, waved his hand almost as if in blessing, but certainly in peace, and tapped Mrs.

"Mrs. Lawford has, I declare, been telling family secrets," he began, and paused, peering. "But there, you will

forgive an old friend's intrusionthis little confidence about a change, my dear fellowabout a ramble and

a change?" He sat down, put up his kind little puckered face and peered again at Lawford, and then very

hastily at his wife. But all her attention was centred on the bowed figure opposite to her. Lawford responded

"Dear me, no," said Mr. Bethany cheerfully, "I wish nothing, nothing, old friend. You must not burden

yourself with me. If I may be of any help, here I am. . . . Oh, no, no, . . ." he paused, with blinking eyes, but

wits still shrewd and alert. Why doesn't the man raise his head? he thought. A mere domestic dipute!

"I thought," he went on ruminatingly, "I thought on Tuesday, yes, on Tuesday, that you weren't looking quite

the thing. Indeed, I remarked on it. But now, I understand from Mrs. Lawford that the malady has taken a

graver turneh, Lawford, an heretical turn? I hear you have been wandering from the true fold." Mr.

Bethany leaned forward with what might be described as a very large smile, in a very small compass. "And

that, of course, entailed instant retribution." He broke off solemnly. "I know Widderstone churchyard well; a

most verdant and beautiful spot. The late rector, a Mr. Strickland, was a very old friend of mine. And his

wife, dear good Alicia, used to set out her babies, in the morning, to sleep and to play there, twenty, dear me,

perhaps twentyfive years ago. But I did not know, my dear Lawford, that you" and suddenly, without

an instant's warning, something seemed to shout at him, "Look, look! He is looking at you!" He stopped,

faltered, and a slight warmth came into his face. "Andand you were taken ill there?" His voice had fallen

"Yes," said Mr. Bethany, brightly, "so your wife was saying. 'Fell asleep,' so have I tooscores of times;" he

beamed, with beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. "And thenI'm not, I'm not persisting?"

"Then I woke; refreshed, I think, as it seemedI felt much better and came home."

"Ah, yes," said his visitor. And after that there was a long, brightly lit, intense pause; at the end of which

Mr. Bethany was a very shrunken old man; he sat perfectly still, his head craned a little forward, and his

There wasn't the least sign of devilry, or outfacingness, or insolence in that lean, shadowy, steady head; and

yet the vicar was compelled to sidle his glance away, so much the face shook him. He closed his eyes, too, as

a cat does after exchanging too direct a scrutiny with human eyes. He put out towards, and withdrew, a

"Is it," came a voice from somewhere, "is it a great change, sir? I thought perhaps I may have

Mr. Bethany remained still and silent, striving to entertain one thought at a time. His lips moved as if he were

talking to himself. And again it was Lawford's faltering voice that broke the silence. "You see," he said, "I

have never . . . no fit, or anything of that kind before. I remember on Tuesday . . . oh yes, quite well. I did feel

seedy, very. And we talked, didn't we?Harvest Festival. Mrs. Winn's flowers, the new offertorybags, and

Mr. Bethany woke with a start. He leaned forward, and stretched out a long, black wrinkled sleeve, just

managing to reach far enough to tap Lawford's knee. "Don't worry, don't worry," he said soothingly. "We

It was, none the less, a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles and took out his handkerchief. "What we

must do, eh, my dear," he half turned to Mrs. Lawford, "what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together.

And laterwe must have advicemedical advice; unless, as I very much suspectg, it is merely a little quite

temporary physical aberration. Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things

which no sane man has ever dreamed of beforewithout being burned alive for it. What's in a name?

Mrs. Lawford sat perfectly still, absorbedly listening, turning her face first this way, then that, to each speaker

in turn. "That is what I thought," she said, and cast one fleeting glance across at the fireplace, "but"

The little old gentleman turned sharply with halfblind eyes, and lips tight shut. "I think," he said, with a kind

of austere humour, "I think, do you know, I see no 'but.'" He paused as if to catch the echo, and added, "It's

our only course." He continued to polish round and round his glasses. Mrs. Lawford rather magnificently

"Perhaps if I were to leave you together awhile: I shall not be far off. It is," she explained, as it were into a

huge vacuum, "it is a terrible visitation." She moved gravely round the table and very softly and firmly closed

Lawford took a deep breath. "Of course," he said, "you realise my wife does not believe me. She thinks," he

explained naively, as if to himself, "she thinks I am an impostor. Goodness knows what she does think. I can't

The vicar rubbed busily on. "I have found, Lawford," he said smoothly, "that in all real difficulties the only

feasible plan isis to face the main issue. The others right themselves. Now, to take a plunge into your

generosity, Lawford. May I hear, for you've let me in far enough to make it impossible for me to get

outexactly the whole story? All that I know now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is, of

course, inconceivable; that you went out one man and came home another. You will understand, my dear

man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first

the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume'on miracles'positively amazing! So

that too, please, you will be quite clear about; Credonotquia impossibile est, but because you, Lawford,

have told me. Now then, if it won't be too wearisome to you, the whole story." He sat, lean and erect in his

big chair, a hand resting loosely on each knee, in one spectacles, in the other a dangling pocket handkerchief.

And the dark, sallow, aquiline, formidable figure, with its oddly changing voice, retold the whole story from

"You were aware, then, of nothing different, I understand, until you actually looked into the glass?"

"Only vaguely. I mean that after waking I felt much better, more alert. And my thoughts"

"I hardly knowoh, clear, as if I had had a real long rest. It was just like being a boy again. Influenza

Mr. Bethany gazed without stirring. "And yet, you know," he said, "I can hardly believe, I mean conceive,

"God bless me, that's Lawford to the echo," thought his visitor. "And before" he went on gently; "you

see, I really cannot conceive how a mere fit could . . . Before you sat down you were quite alone?" He stuck

"What had you been thinking of? In these days of faithcures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and

subliminalitieswhy, the simple old world grows very confusing; but rarely, very rarely novel. You were

"Well," began Lawford ruminatingly, "there was something curious even then, perhaps. I remember, for

instance I knelt down to read an old tombstone. There was a little seatno back. And an epitaph. The sun

was just setting; some French name. And there was a long jagged crack in the stone, like the black line you

know one sees after lightning. I mean it's as clear as that even now, in memory. Oh yes, I remember. And

"You are absolutely certain, then," persisted Mr. Bethany almost querulously, "there was no living creature

near you. Bless me, Lawford, I see no unkindness in believing what the Bible itself relates. There are powers

"I remember distinctly," replied Lawford, in a calm, stubborn voice, "I looked up all around me, while I was

kneeling there, and there wasn't a soul to be seen. Because, you see, it even then occurred to me that it would

have looked rather queermy wandering about like that, I mean. Facing me there were some cypresstrees,

and beyond, a low sunken fence, and then, just open country. Up above there were the gravestones toppling

down hill, where I had just strolled down, and sunshine!" He suddenly threw up his hand. "Oh, marvellous!

There was a pregnant pause. Mr. Bethany shrunk back a little into his chair. His lips moved; he folded his

"Yes, yes," he said. And then very quietly he stole one molelike look into his sidesman's face.

"What is Dr. Simon's number?" he said. Lawford was gazing gloomily into the fire. "Oh, Annandale," he

"Oh, he's new," said Lawford; "old James was our doctor. Hehe killed my father." He laughed out

"A sound, lovable man," said Mr. Betnahy, "one of the kindest men I ever knew; and a very old friend of

And suddenly the dark face turned with a shudder from the fire, and spoke in a low trembling voice. "Only

one thingonly one thingmy sanity, my sanity. If once I forget, who will believe me?" He thrust his long,

Mr. Bethany deliberately adjusted his spectacles. "May I, may I experiment?" he said boldly. There came a

"Bless me," said the vicar, taking out his watch, "it is a quarter to twelve. "Yes, yes, Mrs. Lawford," he

"But II can see in the dark," whispered Lawford, as if at a cue, turning with an inscrutable smile to the fire.

The vicar came in again, wrapped up in a little tight grey greatcoat, and a white silk muffler. He looked up

unflinching into Lawford's face, and tears stood in his eyes. "Patience, patience, my dear fellow," he repeated

gravely, squeezing his hand. "And rest, complete rest, is imperative. Just till the first thing tomorrow. And

till then," he turned to Mrs. Lawford, where she stood looking in at the doorway, "oh yes, complete quiet; and

Mrs. Lawford let him out. He shook his head once or twice, holding her fingers. "Oh yes," he whispered, "it

is your husband, not the smallest doubt. I tried; for myself. But somethingsomething has happened. Don't

fret him now. Have patience. Oh yes, it is incredible . . . the change! But there, the very first thing

tomorrow." She closed the door gently after him, and stepping softly back to the diningroom, peered in.

Her husband's back was turned, but he could see her in the lookingglass, stooping a little, with set face

"Well," he said, "is the old" he doggedly met the fixed eyes facing him there, "is our old friend gone?"

"Yes," said Sheila, "he's gone." Lawford sighed and turned around. "It's useless talking now, Sheila. No more

The haggard face turned gravely and patiently. "Only one of my old headaches," he smiled, "my old bilious

headachesthe hereditary Lawford variety." But his voice fell low again. "We must get to bed."

With a rather pretty and childish movement, Sheila gently drew her hands across her silk skirts. "Yes, dear,"

she said, "I have made up a bed for you in the large spare room. It is thoroughly aired." She came softly in,

and hastened over to a closed worktab that stood under the curtains and opened it.

Lawford watched her, utterly expressionless, utterly motionless. He opened his mouth and shut it again, still

watching his wife stooping with ridiculously too busy fingers, searching through her coloured silks.

Again he opened his mouth. "Yes," he said, and stalked slowly towards the door. But there he paused. "God

knows," he said, strangely and meekly, "I am sorry, sorry for all this. You will forgive me, Sheila?"

She looked up swiftly. "It's very tiresome, I can't find anywhere," she murmured, "I can't find anywhere

Lawford's cheek turned more sallow than ever. "You are only pretending to look for it," he said, "to try me.

Sheila let fall the lid. "I am so very glad the vicar was at home," she said brightly. "And mind, mind you rest,

Arthur. There's nothing so bad but it might be worse. Oh, I can't, I can't bear it!" She sat down in a chair and

Lawford listened and stared solemnly on. "Whatever it may be, Sheila, I will be loyal," he said.

Her sobs hushed, and again the cold horror crept over her. Nobody in the whole world could have said that "I

will be loyal" quite like thatnobody but Arthur. She stood up, patting her hair. "I don't think my brain

would bear much more. It's useless to talk, Arthur. If you will go up; I will put out the lamp."

ONE solitary and tall candle burned on the great dressingtable. Faint, solitary pictures broke the blankness

of each wall. The carpet was rich, the bed impressive, and the basins on the washstand as uninviting as the

bed. Lawford sat down on the edge of the bed in complete isolation. He sat without stirring, listening to his

watch ticking in his pocket. The china clock on the chimneypiece pointed cheerfully to the hour of dawn. It

was exactly, he computed carefully, five hours and seven minutes fast. Not the slightest sound broke the

stillness, until he heard, very, very softly and gradually, the key of his door turn in the oiled wards, and

realised that he was a prisoner. Women were strange creatures. How often he had heard it said! he thought

lamely. He felt no anger, no surprised nor resentment, at the trick. It was only to be expected. He could sit on

till morning; easily till morning. He had never noticed before how empty a wellfurnished room could seem.

It was his own room too; his best visitor's room. His fatherinlaw had slept here, with his whiskers on that

pillow. His wife's most formidable aunt had been all night here, alone with these pictures. She certainly was .

He started up and stretched himself, and taking out the neat little packet that the maid had brought from the

chemist's, he drew up a chair, and sat down once more in front of the glass. He sighed vacantly, rose and took

down from the wall above the fireplace a tinted photograph of himself that Sheila had had enlarged about

twelve years ago. It was a brighter, younger, hairier, but unmistakably the same dull, indolent Lawford who

had ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. The cheek was a little plumper, the eyes not quite

so fulllidded, the hair a little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small blond moustache. He

tilted the portrait into the candlelight, and compared it with this reflection in the glass of what had come out

of Widderstone, feature with feature, with perfect composure and extreme care. Then he laid the ugly frame

down on the table, and gazed quietly at the tiny packet. It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never

realised before with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged. Here in this small punctilious packet

lay a Sesame, a transformation, beside which the transformation of that rather flaccid face of the noonday into

this tense, sinister face of midnight was but as a moving from house to housea change just as irrevocable

and complete, and yet so very normal. Which should it be, thathis face lifted itself once more to the icelike

It simply gazed back with a kind of quizzical pity on its lean features under the scrutiny of eyes so deep, so

meaningful, so desolate, and yet so indomitably courageous. In the brain behind them a slow and stolid

argument was in progress; the one baffling reply on the one side to every appeal on the other being simply,

Those eyes surely knew something of dreams, else, why this violent and stubborn endeavour to keep awake?

Lawford did indeed once actually frame the question, "But who the devil are you?" And it really seemed the

eyes perceptibly widened or brightened. The mere vexation of this unparalleled position, Sheila's pathetic

incredulity, his old vicar's laborious kindness, the tiresome network of experience into which he would be

dragged struggling on the morrow, and on the morrow after that, and after thatthe thought of all these

things faded for the moment from his mind, lost if not their significance, at least their instancy. He simply sat

face to face with the sheer difficulty of living on at all. He even concluded in a kind of lethargy that had

nothing occurred, no "change," he might still be sitting here, Arthur Bennet Lawford, in his best visitor's

room, deciding between inscrutable life and justdeath. He supposed he was tired out. His thoughts hadn't

even the energy to complete themselves. None cared but himself and thisthis Silence.

"But what does it all mean?" the insistent voice he was getting to know so ell began tediously inquiring again.

And every time he raised his eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his eyes raised themselves, they saw

this haunting face therea face he no longer bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but a face that

was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of

a rather flashy book; such as is revered on the stage. "A rotten bad face," he whispered at it in his own

familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring, fascinating face, with

evenwhat?a spice of genius in it. Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter? . . .

"Brazen it out," a jubilant thought cried suddenly; "follow it up; play the mate! give me just one opening.

And all these voices, thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant only one thinginsanity. A blazing,

impotent indignation seized him. He leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched up

the china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, as if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite

pains, he drew back from the glass and replaced the candlestick on the table; stuffed his paper packet into his

pocket, took off his boots and threw himself on to the bed. In a little while, in the faint, still light, he opened

IT WAS a little after daybreak when Mrs. Lawford, after listening at his door awhile, turned the key and

looked in on her husband. Bluegrey light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the room. She stood

in a bluish dressinggown, her hand on her bosom, looking down on the lean, impassive face. For the briefest

instant her heart had leapt with an indescribable surmise; to fall dull as lead once more. Breathing equably

and quietly, the strange figure lay stretched upon the bed. "How can he sleep? How can he sleep?" she

whispered with a black and hopeless indignation. What a night she had had! And he!

She turned noiselessly away. The candle had guttered to extinction. The big glass reflected her, voluminous

and wan, her darkringed eyes, full lips, rich, glossy hair, and rounded chin. "Yes, yes," it seemed to murmur

mournfully. She turned away, and drawing stealthily near stooped once more quite low, and examined the

face on the pillow with lynxlike concentration. And though every nerve revolted at the thought, she was

finally convinced, unwillingly even, but assuredly, that her husband was here. He seemed to haunt, like a

ghostly emanation, this strange, detestable faceas memory supplies the features concealed beneath a mask.

The face was still and stony, like one dead or imagined in wax, yet beneath it dreams were passingsilly,

ordinary Lawford dreams. She was almost alarmed at the terribly rancorous hatred she felt for the face. . . . "It

Then she too remembered Quain, and remembered also in the slowly paling dusk that the house would soon

be stirring. She went out and noiselessly locked the door again. But it was useless to begin looking for Quain

nowher husband had a good many dull book, most of them his "eccentric" father's. What must the servants

be thinking? And what was all that talk about a mysterious visitor? She would have to question

Adadiplomatically. She returned to her room and sat down in an armchair, and waited. In sheer weariness

she fell into a doze, and woke at the sound of dustpan and broom. She rang the bell, and asked for hot water,

"And please, Ada, be as quiet as possible over your work; your master is in a nice sleep, and must not be

disturbed on any account. In the front bedroom." She looked up suddenly. "By the way, who let Dr. Ferguson

Sheila smiled resignedly. "Was in? What do you mean, 'was in'? And where were you, then?"

"Of course, of course. So cook let Dr. Ferguson in, then? Why didn't you say so before, Ada? And did you

"It was in an envelope m'm. But cook is sure she heard no knocknot while I was out. So Dr. Ferguson must

"Well, really," said Sheila, "it seems very difficult to get at the truth sometimes. And when illness is in the

house I cannot understand why there should be no one available to answer the door. You must have left it

ajar, unsecured, when you went out. And pray, what if Dr. Ferguson had been some common tramp? That

"I am quite certain, m'm, that I did shut the door. And cook says she never so much as stirred from the

kitchen till I came down the area steps with the packet. And that's all I know about it, m'm; except that he was

here when I came back. I did not know even there was a Dr. Ferguson; and my mother's lived here nineteen

"We must be thankful your mother enjoys such good health," replied Mrs. Lawford suavely. "Please tell cook

to be very careful with the cornflourto be sure it's well mixed and thoroughly done."

Mrs. Lawford's eyes followed with a certain discomfort those narrow print shoulders descending the stairs.

And this abominable ruse wasArthur's! She ran up lightly and listened with her ear to the panel of his door.

And just as she was about to turn away again, there came a little light knock at the front door.

Mrs. Lawford paused at the loop of the staircase; and not altogether with gratitude or relief she heard the

voice of Mr. Bethany, inquiring in cautious but quite audible tones after her husband.

She dressed quickly and went down. The little white old man looked very solitary in the long, fireless,

"I could not sleep," he said; "I don't think I grasped in the least, I don't indeed, until nearly home, the

complexity of our problem. I came, in fact, to a lamppostcasting a peculiar shadow, and thenyou know

how such thoughts seize us, my dearlike a sudden inspiration, I realised how tenuous, how appallingly

tenuous a hold we havewe all have on personality. But that," he continued rapidly, "that's only for

But Mr. Bethany was too quick. "We must be most circumspect. My dear friend, we must be most

circumspect, for all aour sakes. And this, you'll say," he added, smiling, stretching out his arms, his soft hat in

one hand, his umbrella in the other"this is being circumspecta seven o'clock in the morning call! But

you see, my dear, I have come, as I took the precaution of explaining to the maid, because it's now or never

today. It does so happen that I have to take a wedding for an old friend's niece at Witchett; so when in need,

you see, Providence enables us to tell even the conventional truth. Now really, how is he? has he slept? has he

Mrs. Lawford sighed. "A broken night is really very little to a mother," she said. "He is still asleep. He hasn't,

"Oh, no," was the cheerful answer; "I felt that quiet, solitude, space, was everything; he preferred it so.

Hehe changed alone, I suppose. Don't you think it almost stands to reason that he will be alone. . . when he

comes back? Wasn't I right? But there, it's useless, it's worse than useless, to talk like this. My husband is

gone. Some terrible thing has happened. Whatever the mystery may be, he will never come back alive. My

only fear is that I am dragging you into a matter that should from the beginning have been entrusted to

Oh, it's monstrous!" It seemed for a moment as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny

Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He

stood small and black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked laurels.

"Last night," he said slowly, "when I said goodbye to your husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I

have used, in season and out of season, for nearly fortyfive years''od knows best.'' Well, my dear lady, a

sense of humour, a sense of reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticismcall it what you willjust

interrupted them. Oh no, not any of these, my child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know best; but in

a matter like this it is not even my place to say so; it would be good for none of us to endanger our souls even

with verbal cant. Now, if, do you think, I had just five minutes' talkfive minutes; would it disquiet him?"

Only by an almost undignified haste, for the vicar was remarkably agile, Sheila managed to unlock the

bedroom door without apparently his perceiving it, and with a warning finger she preceded him into the great

"Oh, yes, yes," he was whispering to himself; "alonewell, well!" He hung his hat on his umbrella and

"I don't think, you know, an old friend does him any wrong; but last night I had no real oppor" He

firmly adjusted his spectacles, and looked long into the dark, dispassioned face.

But at the same moment he too broke silence, suddenly stepping back with the innocent remark, "Has

"Oh, yes; bless me; of course. . . . A calm, complete sleep of utter prostrationutter nervous prostration. And

can one wonder? Poor fellow, poor fellow!" He walked to the window and peered between the blinds.

"Sparrows, sunshineyes, and here's the postman," he said, as if to himself. Then he turned sharply round,

"Now, do you leave me here," he said. "Take half an hour's quiet rest. He will be glad of a dull old fellow like

me when he wakes. And as for my pretty bride, if I missed the train, she must wait till the nextgood

discipline, my dear. Oh, dear me! I don't change. What a precious experience, now, this would have been for

a tottery, talkative, owlish old parochial creature like me! But there, there! Light words make heavy hearts, I

see. I shall be quite comfortable. No, no, I breakfasted at home. There's hat and umbrella; at 9.30 I can fly."

Mrs. Lawford thanked him mutely. He smilingly but firmly bowed her out and closed the door.

But eyes and brain had been very busy. He had looked at the gutted candle; at the tinted bland portrait on the

dressingtable; at the chair drawnup; at the boots; and now again he turned almost with a groan to the

sleeper. Then he took out an envelope, on which he had jotted various memoranda, and waited awhile.

Lawford sighed. "I was only dreaming, Sheila," he said, and softly, peacefully opened his eyes, "I dreamed I

was in the" His lids narrowed, his dark eyes fixed themselves on the anxious spectacled face bending

His friend put out his hand. "There, there," he said soothingly, "do not be disturbed; do not disquiet yourself!"

Lawford struggled up. Slowly, painfully consciousness returned to him. He glanced furtively round the room,

at his clothes, slinkingly at the vicar; licked his lips; flushed with extraordinary rapidity; and suddenly burst

Mr. Bethany sat without movement, waiting till he should have spent himself. "Now, Lawford," he said

gently, "compose yourself, old friend; we must face the musiclike men." He went to the window, drew up

"The first thing to be done," he said, returning briskly to his chair, "is to send for Simon. Now, does Simon

know you well?" Lawford shook his head. "Would he recognise you? . . . I mean . . ."

"Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just the facts. If I am not mistaken, he will poohpooh the

whole thing; tell you to keep quiet, not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if we realised, say, typhoid,

who'd dare to face it? That will give us time; to wait awhile, to recover our breath, to see what happens next.

And ifas I don't believe for a moment.Why, in that case I heard the other day of a most excellent

manGrosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed. He'd bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We'll

have him down quietly. You see? But there won't be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will have come. We

shall remember. What I mean is this." He crossed his legs and pushed out his lips. "We are on quaky ground;

and it's absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soulyou know that. I own

frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to

bolster it up. The faith was absolute"he placed one firm hand on Lawford's knee"why, I cannot explain;

but it was; the evidence is convincing. But there are others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the

consequences; we must not scan too closely. Think with; never against! and bang go all the arguments! Your

wife, poor dear, believes; but, of course, she is horribly" he broke off; "of course she is shaken, you old

simpleton! Time will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire out this detestable physical

witchcraft. The mind, the self's the thing. That mustold fogey that I am for saying itthat must be kept

unsmirched. We won't go wearily over the painful subject again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that

you were absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible effects,

and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of

Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerlessin the long run. Theywhat shall we

say?have surrendered their intrinsicality. And you and I with God's help will just tire them out. And that

Through all this long and somewhat arduous harangue, consciousness, like the gradual light of dawn, had

been flooding that other brain. And the face that now confronted Mr. Bethany, though with his feeble,

unaided sight he could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every sharpcut hungry

A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The black eyes nearly closed, the face turned

"Good," said Mr. Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated "good." "Now there's only one thing left," he went

on cheerfully. "I have jotted down a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth could

answer but you, Lawford; justjust for external proofs. You won't, you can't, mistake my motive. We cannot

foretell or foresee what need may arise for just such jogtrot primitive evidence. I propose that you now

Mr. Lawford stood up and walked to the lookingglass, and paused. He put his hand to his head. "Yes," he

said, "of course; it's a rattling good move. I'm not quite awake; myself, I mean. I'll do it, now." He took out a

Mr. Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the threshold and looked across through a

shaft of autumnal sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet, strange smile looked across through

"I am just going to put the archimpostor through his credentials," he said tartly. "Now then, Lawford!" He

read out the questions, one by one, from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and one by one

Lawford, seated at the dressingtable, fluently scribbled his answers. Then question and answer were

rigorously compared by Mr. Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon the

Mrs. Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete silence. She looked up. "Many of these

Mrs. Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out between finger and thumb.

"Wonderful, isn't it?" said Mr. Bethany warmly; "all the general look and run of the thing different, but every

real essential feature unchanged. Now into the envelopes. And now a little wax?"

Mrs. Lawford stood waiting. "There's a green piece of sealingwax," almost drawled the quiet voice, "in the

top right drawer of the nest in the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last." He glanced

When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He

rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs. Lawford, with

"There!" he said triumphantly, "how many more such brilliant lawyers, I wonder, lie dormant in the Church?

And who shall keep this? . . . Why, all three, of course." He went on without pausing, "Some little drawer

now, secret and undetectable, with a lock." Just such a little drawer that locked itself with a spring lay by

chance in the lookingglass. There the letter was hidden. And Mr. Bethany looked at his watch. "Nineteen

minutes," he said. "The next thing, my dear childwe're getting on swimmingly; and it's astonishing how

Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. "I am entirely in your hands," she replied.

"So be it," said he crisply. "Get to bed, Lawford; it's better so. And I'll look in on my way back from

Witchett. I came, my dear fellow, in such gloomy circumstances of mind; it was getting up too early; it fogs

He squeezed his hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm, his hat on his head, the spectacles readjusted, he

hurried out of the room. Mrs. Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat motionless, with head

bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning the floor. Then he rose abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was in

bed, alone with his slow thoughts; while a basin of cornflour stood untasted on a little table at his bedside,

At halfpast eleven Dr. Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He sat down beside Lawford, and took

temperature and pulse. Then he half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark,

unEnglish face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story

very much modified and rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr. Simon's attention to the portrait, now

"It was rather bleakthe wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had a touch of influenza. It was a silly thing to do.

But still, Dr. Simon, one doesn't expectwell, there, I don't feel the same manphysically. I really cannot

explain how great a change has taken place. And yet I feel perfectly fit in myself. And if it were not forfor

being laughed at, I'd go back to town, today. Why my wife scarcely recognised me."

Dr. Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could not raise his downcast eyes to meet direct

"And what," said Dr. Simon, "what precisely is the nature of the change? Have you any pain?"

"No, not the least pain," said Mr. Lawford; "I think, perhaps, or rather my face is a little

shrunkenandyetlengthened;at least it feels so; and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my hairwell, I

don't know; it's difficult to say one's self." He could get on so very much better, he thought, if only his mind

Dr. Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his head. "We never can be too cautious at a

certain age, and especially after influenza," he said. "It undermines the whole system, and in particular the

nervous system; leaving the mind the prey of the most melancholyfancies. I should astound you, Mr.

Lawford, with the devil influenza plays. . . . A slight nervous shock and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A few

days' rest and plenty of nourishment. There's nothing; temperature inconsiderable. All perfectly intelligible.

Most certainly reassure yourself! And as for the change you speak of"he looked steadily at the dark face

on the pillow and smiled amiably"I don't think we need worry about that. It certainly was a bleak wind

yesterdayand at a cemetery; my dear sir! It was indiscreetyes, very." He held out his hand. "You must

not be alarmed," he said, very distinctly with the merest trace of an accent; "air, sunshine, quiet, nourishment,

sleepthat is all. The little window might be a few inches open, andand any light reading."

He opened the door and joined Mrs. Lawford on the staircase. He talked to her quietly over his shoulder all

the way downstairs. "It was, it was sporting with Providencea wind, believe me, nearly due east, in spite of

"But the changethe change!" Mrs. Lawford managed to murmur tragically, as he strode to the door. Dr.

"Humour him, humour him," he repeated indulgently. "Rest and quiet will soon put that littletrouble out of

his head. Oh yes, I did notice itthe set drawn look, and the droop; quite so. Good morning."

Mrs. Lawford gently closed the door after him. A glimpse of Ada, crossing from room to room, suggested a

precaution. She called out in her clearest notes. "If Dr. Ferguson should call while I am out, Ada, will you

please tell him that Dr. Simon regretted that he was unable to wait? Thank you." She paused with hand on the

balusters, then slowly ascended the stairs. Her husband's face was turned to the ceiling, his hands clasped

above his forehead. She took up her stand by the fireplace, resting one silkslippered foot on the fender. "Dr.

Simon is reassuring," she said, "but I do hope, Arthur, you will follow out his advice. . . . He looks a fairly

clever man. . . . But with a big practice. . . . Do you think, dear, he quite realised the extent of thethe

"Yes, yes, I know," said Sheila soothingly; "but we must remember he is comparatively a stranger. He would

Mrs. Lawford deliberately considered. If only he would always thus keep his face concealed, how much

easier it would be to discuss matters rationally! "You see, dear," she said softly, "I know, of course, nothing

about the nerves, but personally, I think his suggestion absurd. No mere fancy, surely, can make a lasting

alteration in one's face. And your hairI don't want to say anything that may seem unkindbut isn't it really

"Any great strain will change the colour of a man's hair," said Lawford stolidly; "at any rate, to white. Why I

"But have you had any intense strain, or anxiety?" broke in Sheila. "You might, at least, have confided in me;

that is, useless But there, don't you think really, Arthur, it would be much more satisfactory in every

way if we had further advice at once? Alice will be home next week. Tomorrow is the Harvest Festival, and

next week, of course, the Dedication; and, in any case, the Bazaar is out of the question. They will have to

find another stallholder. We must do our utmost to avoid comment or scandal. Every minute must help

toto fix a thing like that. I own even now I cannot realise what this awful calamity means. It's useless to

brood on it. We must, as the poor dear old vicar said only last night, keep our heads clear. But I am sure Dr.

Simon was under a misapprehension. If, now, it was explained to him, a little more fully, Arthura

photograph. Oh, anything on earth but this dreadful wearing uncertainty and suspense! Besides . . . is Simon

Lawford drew further into his pillow. "Do as you think best, Sheila," he said. "For my own part, I believe it

maybe as he suggestspartly an illusion, a touch of nervous breakdown. It simply can't be as bad as I think

it is. If it were, you would not be here talking like this; and Bethany wouldn't have believed a word I said.

Whatever it is, it's no good crying it on the housetops. Give me time, just time. Besides, how do we know

what he really thought? Doctors don't tell their patients everything. Give the poor chap a chance, and more so

if he is a foreigner. He's"his voice sank almost to a whisper"he's no darker than this. And do, please,

Sheila, take this infernal stuff away, and let me have something solid. I'm not illin that way. All I want is

peace and quiet, time to think. Let me fight it out alone. It's been sprung on me. The worst's not over. But I'll

win through; wait! And if notwell, you shall not suffer, Sheila. Don't be afraid! There are other ways out."

Sheila broke down. "Any one would think to hear you talk, that I was perfectly heartless. I told Ada to be

most careful about the cornflour. And as for other ways out, it's a positively wicked thing to say to me when

I'm nearly distracted with trouble and anxiety. What motive could you have had for loitering in an old

cemetery? And in an east wind! It's useless for me to remain here, Arthur, to be accused of every horrible

thing that comes into a morbid imagination. I will leave you, as you suggest, in peace."

"One moment, Sheila," answered the muffled voice. "I have accused you of nothing. If you knew all; if you

could read my thoughts, you would be surprised, perhaps, at my On the other hand, I really do think,

Sheila, it would be better for the present to discuss the thing no more. Today is Friday. Give this miserable

face a week. Talk it over with Bethany if you like. But I forbid"he struggled up in bed, sallow and

sinister"I flatly forbid, please understand, any other interference till then. Afterwards you must do exactly

Sheila with raised head confronted him. "This, then, is your gratitude! So be it! Silence, no doubt! Until it's

too late to take action. Until you have wormed your way in, and think you are safe. To have believed! Where

is my husband? that is what I am asking you now. When and how you have learned his secrets God only

knows, and your conscience! But he always was a simpleton at heart. I warn you, then. Until next Thursday I

consent to say nothing provided you remain quiet; make no disturbance, no scandal here. The servants and all

who inquire shall simply be told that my husband is confined to his room withwith a nervous breakdown,

as you have yourself so glibly suggested. I am at your mercy, I own it. The vicar believes your preposterous

storywith his spectacles off. You would convince anybody with the wicked cunning with which you have

cajoled and wheedled him, with which you have deceived and fooled a foreign doctor. But you will not

convince me. You will not convince Alice. I have friends in the world, though you may not be aware of it,

who will not be quite so apt to believe any cockandbull story you may see fit to invent. That is all I have to

say. Tonight I tell the vicar all that I have just told you. And from this moment, please, we are strangers. I

shall come into the room no more than necessity dictates. On Friday we resume our real parts. My husband . .

Rage had transfigured her. She scarcely heard her own words. They poured out senselessly, monotonously,

one calling up another, as if from the lips of a Cassandra. Lawford sank back into bed, clutching the sheets

"It reminds me, Sheila," he began arduously, "of our first quarrel before we were married, the evening after

your aunt Rose died at Llandudnodo you remember? You threw open the window, and I thinkI saved

your life." A pause followed. Then a queer, almost inarticulate voice added, "At least, I am afraid so!"

A cold and awful quietness fell on Sheila's heart. She stared fixedly at the tuft of dark hair, the only visible

sign of her husband on the pillow. Then, taking up the basin of cold cornflour, she left the room. In a quarter

of an hour she reappeared carrying a tray, with ham and eggs and coffee and honey inviting displayed. She

"There is only one other question," she said, with perfect composure"that of money. Your signature as it

appears on thethe document drawn up this morning, would, of course, be quite useless on a cheque. I have,

of course, taken all the money I could find of my husband's; it is in safety. You may, however, conceivably

be in need of money; here is five pounds. I have my own chequebook, and shall therefore have no need to

consider the question again forfor the present. So far as you are concerned, I shall be guided solely by Mr.

"And may the Lord have mercy on my soul!" uttered a stifled, unfamiliar voice from the bed. Mrs. Lawford

Lawford raised himself on his elbow with a sigh that was very near to being a sob. "Oh, Sheila, if you'd only

be your real self! What is the use of all this pretence? Just consider my position a little. The fear and horror

are not all on your side, dear. You called me Arthur even then. I'd willingly do anything you wish to save you

pain; you know that. Can't we be friends even in thisthis ghastly Won't you, Sheila?"

THERE were three books in the roomJeremy Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," a volume of the Quiver,

and a little gilded book on wildflowers. He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar of his thoughts on

which an occasional soundthe droning of a fly, the cry of a milkman, the noise of a passing vanobtruded

from the workaday world. The pale gold sunlight edged softly over the bed. He ate up everything on his tray.

He even, on the shoals of nightmare, dreamed awhile. But by and by as the hours wheeled slowly on he grew

less calm, less strenuously resolved on lying there inactive. Every sparrow that twittered cried reveille

through his brain. He longed with an ardour strange to his temperament to be up and doing. What if it was, as

he had in the excitement of the moment, suggested to Sheila, only a morbid delusion of mind; shared too in

part by sheer force of his absurd confession? Even if he was going mad, who knows how peaceful a release

that might not be? Could his shrewd old vicar have implicitly believed in him if the change were as complete

as he supposed it? He flung off the bedclothes and locked the door. He dressed himself, noticing, he fancied,

with a deadly revulsion of feeling, that his coat was a little too short in the sleeves, his waistcoat too loose. In

the midst of his dressing came Sheila bringing his luncheon. "I'm sorry," he called out, stooping quickly

About half an hour afterwards he heard the door close, and peeping from behind the curtains saw his wife go

out. All was drowsily quiet in the house. He devoured his lunch like a schoolboy. That finished to the last

crumb, without a moment's delay he covered his face with a towel, locked the door behind him, put the key in

his pocket, and ran lightly downstairs. He stuffed the towel into an ulster pocket, pot on a soft,

widebrimmed hat, and let himself noiselessly out. Then he turned with an almost hysterical delight and

ranran like the wind, without pausing, without thinking, straight on, up one turning, down another, until he

reached a broad open common, thickly wooded, sprinkled with gorse and hazel and may, and faintly purple

with fading heather. There he flung himself down in the beautiful sunlight, among the yellowing bracken to

He lay there for many minutes, thinking almost with composure. Flight, it seemed, had for the moment

quietened the demands of that other feebly struggling personality which was beginning to insinuate itself into

his consciousness, which had so miraculously broken in and taken possession of his body. He would not

think now. All he needed was a little quiet and patience before he threw off for good and all his right to be

He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun. What was there in the stillness of its

beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and

devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown

bird was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind

horse, stolidly plodded round and round in a dull selfset routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for

rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat there

with the dusty silhouette of the face that was now drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again

up the stony incline. Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would come; he could sleep

at ease in some pleasant wayside inn, without once meeting the eyes that stood as it were like a window

between himself and a shrewd, incredulous scoffing world that would turn him into a monstrosity and his

story into a fable. And in a little while, perhaps in three days, he would awaken out of this engrossing

nightmare, and know he was free, this black dog gone from his back, and (as the old saying expressed it

without any one dreaming what it really meant) his own man again. How astonished Sheila would be; how

warmly she would welcome him! . . . Oh yes, of course she would. He came again to a standstill. But no

voice answered him out of that illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. And as he stood

there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he caught the sound of a footfall on the lonely and

The ground sloped steeply away to the left, and slowly mounting the hillside came mildly on an old lady he

knew, a Miss Sinnet, an old friend of his mother's. There was just such a little seat as that other he knew so

well, on the brow of the hill. He made his way to it, intending to sit quietly there until the little old lady had

passed by. Up and up she came. Her large bonnet appeared, and then her mild white face, inclined a little

towards him as she ascended. Evidently this very seat was her goal; and evasion was impossible. "Evasion!" .

. . Memory rushed back and set his pulses beating. He turned boldly to the sun, and the old lady, with a brief

glance into his face, composed herself at the other end of the little seat. She gazed out of a gentle reverie into

the golden valley. And so they sat awhile. And almost as if she had felt the bond of acquaintance between

them, she presently sighed, and addressed him: "A very, very, beautiful view, sir."

Lawford paused, then turned a gloomy, earnest face, gilded with sunshine. "Beautiful, indeed," he said, "but

The old lady gravely turned and examined the aquiline profile. "Well, I confess, sir," she remarked urbanely,

"My sight," said Miss Sinnet precisely, "is not so good as I might wish; though better perhaps than I might

have hoped; I fear I am not much wiser, sir; your face is still unfamiliar to me."

"It is not less unfamiliar to me," said Lawford. Whose trickery was this? He thought, putting such affected

A faint lightening of pity came into the silvery and scrupulous countenance. "Ah, dear me, yes," she said

Lawford rested a lean hand on the seat. "And have you," he asked, "not the least recollection in the world of

"Now really, sir," she said, smiling blandly, "is that quite fair? Think of all the scores and scores of faces in

seventy long years; and how very treacherous memory is! You shall do me the service of reminding me of

"I am the son of a very old friend of yours, Miss Sinnet," said Lawford quietly"a friend that was once your

"Well, now," said the old lady, grasping her umbrella, "that is undoubtedly a clue; but then, you see, all but

one of the friends of my girlhood are dead; and if I have never had the pleasure of meeting her son, unless

She nodded her great bonnet at him with gentle amusement. "You are insistent in your fancy. Well, let me

think again. The last to leave me was Fanny Urquhart, that waslet me seelast October. Now you are

certainly not Fanny Urquhart's son," she stooped austerely, "for she never had one. Last year, I heard that my

dear, dear Mrs. Jameson was dead. Her I hadn't met for many, many years. But, if I may venture to say so,

yours is not a Scottish face; and she not only married a Scottish husband, but was herself a Dunbar. No, I am

A miserable strife was in her chance companion's mind, a strife of anger and recrimination. He turned his

eyes wearily to the fast declining sun. "You will forgive my persistency, but I assure you it is a matter of life

Miss Sinnet drew her long lips together, her eyebrows lifted with the fainted perturbation. "But he certainly

knows my name," she said to herself. She turned once more, and in this still autumnal beauty, beneath this

pale blue arch of evening, these two human beings confronted one another again. She eyed him blandly, yet

"I don't really think," she said, "you can be Mary Lawford's son. I could scarcely have mistaken him."

Lawford gulped and turned away. He hardly knew what this surge of feeling meant. Was it hope, despair,

resentment; had he caught even the echo of an unholy joy? His mind for a moment became confused as if in

the tumult of a struggle. He heard himself expostulate, "Ah, Miss Bennett, I fear I set you too difficult a task."

The old lady drew abruptly in, like a trustful and gentle snail into its shocked house. "Bennett, sir; by my

And again Lawford accepted the miserable prompting. "Not Bennett! . . . How can I ever then apologise for

The little old lady took form hold of her umbrella. She did not answer him. "The likeness, the likeness!" he

began unctuously, and stopped, for the glance that dwelt fleeingly on him was cold with the formidable

dignity and displeasure of age. He raised his hat and turned miserably home. He strode on out of the last gold

into the blue twilight. What fantastic foolery of mind was mastering him? He cast a hurried look over his

shoulder at the kindly and offended old figure sitting there, solitary, on the little seat, in her great bonnet,

with back turned resolutely upon himthe friend of his dead mother who might have proved in his need a

friend indeed to him. And he had by this insane caprice hopelessly estranged her. She would remember this

face well enough now, he thought bitterly, and would take her place among his quiet enemies, if ever the day

of reckoning should come. It was scandalous, it was banal to have abused her trust and courtesy. Oh, it was

hopeless to struggle any more! The fates were against him. They had played him a trick. He was to be their

transitory sport, as many a better man he could himself recollect had been before him. He would go home and

give in; let Sheila do with him what she pleased. No one but a lunatic could have acted as he had, with just

He left the common. A lamplighter was lighting the lamps. A thin evening haze was on the air. If only he had

stayed at home that fateful afternoon! Who, what had induced him, enticed him to venture out? And even

with the thought welled up into his mind an intense desire to go to the old green timeworn churchyard

again; to sit there contentedly alone, where none heeded the completest metamorphosis, down beside the

yewtrees. What a fool he had been! There alone, of course, lay his only possible chance of recovery. He

would go tomorrow. Perhaps Sheila had not yet discovered his absence; and there would be no difficulty in

repeating so successful a stratagem. Remembrance of his miserable mistake, of Miss Sinnet, faintly returned

to him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch. Poor old lady! He would make amends for his

discourtesy when he was quite himself again. She should some day hear, perhaps, his infinitely tragic,

infinitely comic experience from his own lips. He would take her some flowers, some old keepsake of his

mother's. What would he not do when the old moods and brains of the stupid Arthur Lawford, whom he had

He ran up the steps and stopped dead, his hand in his pocket, chilled and aghast. Sheila had taken his keys.

He stood there, dazed and still, beneath the dim yellow of his own fanlight; and once again that inward spring

flew back. "Brazen it out; brazen it out! Knock and ring!" He knocked flamboyantly, and rang.

There came a quiet step and the door opened. "Dr. Simon, of course, has called?" he inquired suavely.

Lawford put out a detaining hand. "We will not disturb her; we will not disturb her. I can find my way up; oh

But Ada still palely barred the way. "I think, sir," she said, "Mrs. Lawford would prefer to see you herself;

she told me most particularly 'all callers.' And Mr. Lawford was not to be disturbed on any account."

"Disturbed! God forbid!" said Lawford, but dark eyes failed to move these palest hazel. "Well," he continued

nonchalantly, "perhapsperhaps it would be as well if Mrs. Lawford should know that I am here. No, thank

you, I won't come in. Please go and tell" But even as the maid turned to obey, Sheila herself appeared at

Lawford hesitated an immeasurable moment. In one swift glance he perceived the lamplit mystery of

evening, beckoning, calling, pleadingFly, fly! Home's here for you! Begin again, begin again! And there

before him in quiet and hostile decorum stood maid and mistress. He took off his hat and stepped quickly in.

"So late, so very late, I fear," he began glibly. "A sudden call, a perfectly impossible distance. Shall we

"Wouldn't it," began Sheila softly, "be rather a pity perhaps? Dr. Simon seemed to think . . . But, of course,

And a hard, slow smile passed over Sheila's face. "Excuse me one moment," she said; "I will see if he is

awake." She swept swiftly forward, superb and triumphant, beneath the gaze of those dark, restless eyes. But

so still was home and street that quite distinctly a clear and youthful laughter was heard, and light footsteps

approaching. Sheila paused. Ada, in the act of closing the door, peered out. "Miss Alice, ma'am," she said.

And in this infinitesimal advantage of time Dr. Ferguson had seized his vanishing opportunity, and was

already swiftly mounting the stairs. Mrs. Lawford stood with veil half raised and coldly smiling lips and, as if

it were by prearrangement, her daughter's laughing greeting from the garden, and, from the landing above

her, a faint"Ah, and how are we now?" broke out simultaneously. And Ada, silent and discreet, had thrown

open the door again to the twilight and to the young people ascending the steps.

Lawford was still sitting on his bed before a cold and ashy hearth when Sheila knocked at the door.

"Yes?" he said; "who's there?" No answer followed. He rose with a shuddering sigh and turned the key. His

wife entered. "That little exhibition of finesse was part of our agreement, I suppose?"

"To creep out in my absence like a thief, and to return like a mountebank; that was part of our compact."

"Will you please answer my question? Am I to be a mere catspaw in your intrigues, in this miserable

masquerade before the servants? To set the whole place ringing with the name of a doctor that doesn't exist,

and a bedridden patient that slips out of the house with his bedroom key in his pocket! Are you aware that the

made has been hammering at your door every halfhour of your absence? Are you aware of that? How

much," she continued in a low, bitter voice, "how much should I offer for her discretion?"

"I refuse to be ignored. I refuse to be made a child of. Will you please answer me?"

Lawford turned. "Look here, Sheila," he began heavily, "what about Alice? If you wired; well, it's useless to

say anything more. But if you didn't, I ask you just this one thing. Don't tell her!"

Her husband drew up his shoulders as if to receive a blow. "Yes, yes," he said, "but you won't?"

The sound of a young laughing voice came faintly from below. "How did Jimmie Fortescue know she was

"Oh, what is the use of sneering?" began the dull voice again. "I am horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you

will, you can't convince me that you believe for a moment I am notmyself, that you are as hard as you

pretend. An acquaintance, even a friend might be deceived; but husband and wifeoh no! It5 isn't only a

man's face that's himselfor even his hands." He looked at them, straightened them slowly out, and buried

them in his pockets. "All I care about now is Alice. Is she, or is she not going to be told? I am simply asking

"'Simply asking me to give Alice a chance'; now isn't that really just a little . . . ?"

Lawford slowly shook his head. "You know in your heart it isn't, Sheila; you understand me quite well,

although you persistently pretend not to. I can't argue now. I can't speak up for myself. I am just about as far

"Yes, yes, if you like," said her husband patiently, "'a lucid interval.' Don't please look at my face like that,

Not much light was in the large room, and there was something so extraordinarily characteristic of her

husband in those stooping shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the preternaturally solemn

voice, that Sheila had to bend a little over the bed to catch a glimpse of the sallow and keener face again. She

sighed; and even on her own strained ear her sigh sounded almost like one of relief.

"It's useless, I know, to ask you anything while you are in this mood," continued Lawford dully; "I know that

"I didn't mean anything. Don't listen to what I say. It's onlyit's just Alice knowing, that was all; I meanat

"Don't for a moment suppose I am not perfectly aware that it is only Alice you think of. You were

particularly anxious about my feelings, weren't you? You broke the news to me with the tenderest solicitude.

"Look here," said Lawford densely, "you know that I love you as much as ever; but with thisas I am; what

And a voice called softly at the door, "Mother, are you there? Is father awake? May I come in?"

In a flash the memory returned to her; twentyfour hours ago she was asking that very question of this

"For mercy's sake, Sheila," he said, "don't torture me; tell the poor child to go away."

She paused. "Are you there, Alice? Would you mind, father says, waiting a little? He is so very tired."

"I couldn't get a carriage at the station. He carried my dressingbag; I begged him not to. The other's coming

on. You know what Jimmie is. How ver, very luck I did come home. I don't know what made me; just an

"Ssh, dear!" whispered Sheila, "I think he has fallen asleep. I will be down in a minute." Mrs. Lawford was

"If you please ma'am," she said, "I have been waiting, as you told me, to let Dr. Ferguson out, but it's nearly

Sheila turned and looked over her shoulder into the room. "Do you think you will need anything more, Dr.

"One moment, Ada," she said closing the door. "Some more medicinewhat medicine? Quick! She mustn't

"Oh, vexing, vexing; don't you see we must send her out? Don't you see? What was it you sent to Critchett's

Sheila, with a shrug of extreme distaste and vexation, hastily opened the door. "Dr. Ferguson wants a further

supply of the drug which Mr. Critchett made up for Mr. Lawford yesterday evening. You had better go at

"How I detest this wretched falsehood and subterfuge! What could have induced you . . . "

"Yes," said her husband, "what! I think I'll be getting to bed again, Sheila; I forgot I had been ill. And now I

do really feel very tired. But I should like to feelin spite of this hideousI should like to feel we are

Sheila almost imperceptibly shuddered, crossed the room, and faced the still, almost lifeless mask. "I spoke,"

she said, "in a temper this morning. You must try to understand what a shock it has been to me. Now, I own it

frankly, I know you areArthur. But God only knows how it frightens me, andandhorrifies me." She

"Poor boy!" she said at last, lightly touching the loose sleeve; "be brave; it will all come right, soon.

Meanwhile, for Alice's sake, if not for mine, don't give way toto caprices, and all that. Keep quietly here,

He put out his hand as if to touch her. "Forgive you!" he said humbly, pushing it stubbornly back into his

pocket again. "Oh, Sheila, the forgiveness is all on your side. You know I have nothing to forgive." Again

"Then, tonight," said Sheila wearily, drawing back, "we say nothing to Alice, except that you are too

tiredjust nervous prostrationto see her. What we should do without this influenza, I cannot conceive.

Mr. Bethany will probably look in on his way home; and then we can talk it overwe can talk it over again.

So long as you are like this, yourself, in mind, why! . . . What is it now?" she broke off querulously.

"If you please, ma'am, Mr. Critchett says he doesn't know Dr. Ferguson, his name's not in the Directory, and

there must be something wrong with the message, and he's sorry, but he must have it in writing because there

was more even in the first packet than he ought by rights to send. What shall I do, ma'am?"

Still looking at her husband, Sheila listened quietly to the end, and then, as if in disdain, she deliberately

HER husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in front of the cold grate. He

realised that Sheila thought him as much of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him an impostor,

or something worse, the night before. That was at least something gained. He realised, too, in a vague way

that the exuberance of mind that had practically invented Dr. Ferguson, and outraged Miss Sinnet, had quite

suddenly flickered out. It was astonishing, he thought, with gaze fixed innocently on the black coals, that he

should ever have done such things. He detested that kind of "rot"; that showy, theatrical, Jewish pose so many

And he sat quite still, like a cat at a cranny, listening, as it were, for the faintest, remotest stir that might hint

at any return of thisactivity. It was the first really sane moment he had had since the "change." Whatever it

was that had happened at Widderstone was now distinctly weakening in effect. Why, now, perhaps! He stole

a thievish look over his shoulder at the glass, and cautiously drew finger and thumb down that beaked nose.

Then he really quietly smiled, a smile he felt this abominable facial caricature was quite unused to, the

superior Lawford smile of guileless contempt for the fanatical, the fantastic, and the bizarre. He wouldn't

have sat with his fee ton the fender before a burntout fire. And the animosity of that "he," uttered only just

under his breath, surprised even himself. It actually did seem as if there were a chance; if only he kept cool

and collected. If the whole mind of a man was bent on being one thing, surely no power on earth, certainly

not on earth, could for long compel him to look another, any more (followed the resplendent thought) than

That, in fact, was the trick that had been in fitful fashion played him since yesterday. Obviously, and apart

altogether from his promise to Sheila, the best possible thing he could do would be to walk quietly over to

Widderstone tomorrow and, simply covering precisely the same ground, like a child that has lost a penny,

reverse the process; look at the graves, read the inscriptions on the weatherbeaten stones, compose himself

to sleep on the little seat. Magic, witchcraft, possession, and all thatwell, Mr. Bethany might prefer to take

it on the authority of the Bible if it was his duty. But it was at least mainly Old Testament stuff, like

polygamy, Joshua, and the "unclean beasts." The "unclean beasts." It was simply, as Simon had said, mainly

an affair of the nerves, like Indian jugglery. He had heard of dozens of such cases, or similar cases. And it

was hardly likely that cases exactly like his own would be much bragged about, or advertised. All those

mysterious "disappearances," too, which one reads about so repeatedly? What of them? Even now, he felt

(and glanced swiftly behind him a the fancy), it would be better to think as softly as possible, not to hope too

openly, certainly not to triumph in the least degree, just in case ofwelllisteners. He would wrap up too.

And he wouldn't tell Sheila of the project till he had come safely back. What splendid fun it would be to

confess meekly to his escapade, and to be scolded, and then suddenly to reveal himself! He sat back and

gazed with an almost malignant animosity at the face in the portrait, comely and plump.

An inarticulate, unfathomable depression rolled back on him, like a mist out of the sea. He hastily undressed,

put watch and doorkey and Critchett's powder under his pillow, paused, vacantly ruminated, and then

replaced the powder in his waistcoat pocket, said his prayers, and got shivering to bed. He did not feel hurt at

Sheila's leaving him like this. So long as she really believed in him! And nowAlice was home! He listened,

trying not to shiver, for her voice; and sometimes heard, he fancied, the clear note. It was this beastly

influenza that made him feel so cold and lifeless. But all would soon come rightthat is, if only that face,

luminous against the floating darkness within, would not appear the instant he closed his eyes.

But legions of dreams are Influenza's allies. He fell into a chill doze, heard voices innumerable, and one

above the rest, shouting them down, until there fell a lull, and one, as it were, from far away said quite clearly

and distinctly, "Why, my dear friend, surely you have heard the story of the poor old charwoman who talked

Greek in her delirium! A little school French need not alarm us." And Lawford opened his eyes again on Mr.

"Tt, tt! There, I've been and waked him. And yet they say men make such excellent nurses in time of war. But

there, Lawford, what did I tell you? Wasn't I now an infallible prophet? Your wife has been giving me a most

glowing accountquite your old self, she tells me, except for just thisthis touch of facial paralysis. And I

think, do you know" (the kind old creature stooped over the bed, but still, Lawford noticed bitterly, still

without his spectacles)"yes, I really think there is a decided improvement; not quite sodrawn. We must

make haste slowly. Wedderburn, you know, believes profoundly in Simon; pulled his wife through a most

dangerous confinement. Don't tell a doctor too much! Too many symptoms rouse his wrath. And here's pills

and tonics and linimentsa whole chemist's shop. Oh, we are getting on swimmingly."

Flamelight was flickering in the candled dusk. Lawford turned his head and saw Sheila's coiled, beautiful hair

"My dear good man," said Mr. Bethany, "of course we haven't. You shall tell her yourself on Monday. What

an incredible tradition it will be! But you mustn't worry; you mustn't even think. And no more of these jaunts,

eh? That Ferguson businessthat was too bad. What are we going to do with the fellow now we have

created him? He will come home to roostmark my words; and as likely as not down the Vicarage chimney.

I wouldn't have believed it of you, my dear fellow!" He beamed, but looked, none the less, very lean, and

"Oh, A1," said Mr. Bethany. "I've just been describing it to Alicethe bride, her bridegroom, mother, aunts,

cake, presents, finery, blushes, tears, and everything that was hers. We've been in fits, haven't we, Mrs.

Lawford? And Alice says I'm a Worth in a clerical collardidn't she? And that it's only Art that has kept me

out of an apron. Now look here; quiet, quiet, quiet; no excitement, no pranks. What is there to worry about,

pray? And now Little Dorrit's down with influenza too. And Craik and I will have double work to do. Well,

well; goodbye, my dear. God bless you, Lawford. I can't tell you how relieved, how unspeakably relieved I

am to find you so muchso much better. Feed him up, my dear, a la Esquimaux; blubber and weevils! And

there goes the bell! I must have a biscuit. I've swallowed nothing but a Cupid in plaister of Paris since

But when Sheila returned her husband was sunk again into a quiet sleep, from which not even the many

questions she desired to put to him seemed weighty enough to warrant his disturbance.

So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying awake, clear and refreshed, and very eager to

get up. But upon the air lay the still hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch back sleep again. A

distant shred of dream still floated in his mind, like a cloud at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly

something immensely interesting had but a moment ago eluded him. He sat up and looked at the clear red

cinders and their maze of grottoes. He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite

to him gardens and an appleorchard ly, and there in strange beauty hung the morning star, and rose, rilling

into the dusk of night the first grey of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed,

deserted. Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his winter breakfasttable. Very

much like a child now he stood gazing out of his bowwindowthe child whom Time's busy robins had

long ago covered over with the leaves of numberless hours. A vague exultation fumed up into his brain. Still

on the borders of sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe and took out an old faded purple and crimson

dressinggown that had belonged to his grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade. He pulled

the cowllike hood over his head and strode majestically over to the lookingglass. He looked in thee a

moment on the strange face, like a child dismayed at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was half

uncontrollable laughter swept over him. He threw off the hood and turned once more to the window.

Consciousness had flooded back indeed. What would Sheila have said to see him there? The unearthly beauty

and stillness, and man's small labours, garden and wall and rooftree, idle and smokeless in the light of

daybreakthere seemed to be some halftold secret between them. What had life done with him to leave a

reality so clouded? He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door, crept with extreme caution up the

stairs. At a long, narrow landing window he confronted a panorama of starry nightgardens, sloping

orchards; and beyond them fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs, in the clear and cloudless darkness.

"My God, how beautiful!" a voice whispered. And a cock crowed mistily out. He stood staring like a child

into the wintry brightness of a pastrycook's. Then once more he crept stealthily on. He stooped and listened

at a closed door, until he fancied that above the beating of his own heart he could hear the breathing of the

sleeper within. Then, taking firm hold of the handle with both hands, he slowly, noiselessly turned it, and

peeped in on Alice. The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was down. And yet it was not

pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed, waiting. Then he edged softly forward and knelt down beside the bed.

He could hear her breathing now: long, low, quiet, unhasteningthe miracle of life. He could just dimly

discern the darkness of her hair against the pillow. Some long sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in

his heart with a grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a little peace, a brief

pause, however futile and stupid all his hopes of the night before had been. He leant his head on his hands on

the counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled movement, and knew that eyes wide

"There, there, dearest," he said in a low whisper, "it's only me, only me." He stroked the narrow hand and

gazed into the shadowiness. Her fingers lay quiet and passive in his, with that strange sense of immateriality

"Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed, because you would not see me. And mother would tell only so

very little. I didn't even know you had been ill." She pressed his hand between her own. "But this, you know,

"I think we mustn't tell her, dear. I couldn't help it; I felt so much I wanted to see you. I have been rather

"Why?" she said, stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with one soft finger. "You mustn't be so

miserable. You and me have never done such a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu, dear?"

It was too dark in the little fragrant room even to see her face so close to his own. And yet he feared. "Dr.

Simon," she went on softly, "said it was. But isn't your voice a little hoarse, dear? and it sounds so

melancholy in the dark. And oh"she squeezed his wrist"you have grown so thin! You do frighten me.

Whatever should I do if you were really ill? And it was so odd, dear. When first I woke I seemed to be still

straining my eyes in a dream, at such a curious, haunting facenot very nice. I am glad, I am glad you were

"Dark and sharp, and rather dwelling eyes; you know those long faces one sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a

"Like a conjuror's"it was the first unguarded and ungarbled criticism. "Perhaps, dear, if you find my voice

different, and my hand shrunk up, you will find my face changed, too like a conjuror's. . . . What then?"

She laughed gaily and tenderly. "You silly silly! I should love you more than ever. Your hands are icy cold. I

Lawford held tight his daughter's hand. "You do love me, Alice? You would not turn against me, whatever

happened? Ah, you shall see, you shall see!" A sudden burning hope sprang up in him. Surely when all was

well again these last few hours would not have been spent in vain. Like the shadow of death they had been,

against whose darkness the green familiar earth seems beautiful as the plains of paradise. Had he but realised

before how much he loved herwhat years of life had been wasted in leaving it all unsaid! He came back

from his reverie to find his hand wet with her tears. He stroked her hair, and touched gently her eyelids

"Ah, but, dear, you must remember your mother. She gets so anxious, and every word the doctor says is law.

"You know how I love having you," she said, and stopped. "Butbut . . . " He leaned closer. "Yes, yes,

come," she said, clutching his hand and hiding her eyes; "it is only my dreamthat horrible, dwelling face in

Lawford rose very slowly from his knees. He could feel in the dark his brows drawn down; there came a low,

sullen beating on his ear; he saw his face as it were in dim outline against the dark. Rage and rebellion surged

up in him; even his love could be turned to bitterness. Well, two could play at any game! Alice sprang up in

bed and caught his sleeve. "Dearest, dearest, you must not be angry with me now!"

He flung himself down beside the bed. Anger, resentment died away. "You are all I have left," he said.

It was not five yet. He put a few more coals on his fire and blew out the nightlight, and lay down. But it was

impossible to rest, to remain inactive. He would go down and search for that first volume of Quain.

Hallucination, Influenza, Insanitywhy, Sheila must have purposely mislaid it. A rather formidable figure

he looked descending the stairs in the grey dusk of dawn. The breakfastroom was at the back of the house.

He tilted the blind, and a faint light flowed in from the changing colours of the sky. He opened the glass door

of the little bookcase to the right of the window, and ran eye and finger over the few rows of books. But as he

stood there with his back to the room, just as the shadow of a bird's wing floats across the moonlight of a

pool, he became suddenly conscious that something, somebody had passed across the doorway, and in

passing had looked in on him. He stood motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning

slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first light. So sudden, so transitory had been

the experience it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive and sinister a

quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment he hesitated to move. A cold, indefinite sensation stole

over him that he was being watched; that some dim, evil presence was behind him, waiting, patient and

expectant, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where he stood. But, watch and wait as silently as he might,

only the day broadened at the window, and at last a narrow ray of sunlight stole trembling up into the dusky

At any rate Quain was found, with all the ills of life, from A to I; and Lawford turned back to his bondage

THE Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly

away. Dr. Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a

patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge, seemed to lurk. Even Mrs. Lawford had

appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr. Simon had happened on other cases in his experience

The voices and footsteps, even the froufrou of worshippers going to church, the voices and footsteps of

worshippers returning from church, had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had drawn across

his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few callers had called. Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had

been left with messages of sympathy. Even Mr. Critchett had respectfully and discreetly made his inquiries

Lawford had spent most of his time in pacing to and fro in his soft slippers. The very monotony had eased his

mind. Now and again he had lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He had dozed and awoke, cold and

torpid with dream. He had hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed,

towards clarifying his point of view. A consciousness had begun to stir in him that was neither that of the old,

easy Lawford, whom he had never been fully aware of before, nor of this strange, ghostly intelligence that

haunted the hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his distracted nerves. He had begun in a

vague fashion to be aware of them both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost as if there

really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within him. It would, of course, wear him down in time. There

All day he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence,

beyond these maddening walls. This heedful, silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant

yelp of a single, peevish bellwould they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical

greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night, its

secrecy, its immeasurable solitude. His eyelids twitched; the fire before him had for an instant gone black out.

He seemed to see dark, slowgesturing branches, grass stooping beneath a grey and windswept sky. He

started up; and remembrance of the morning returned to himthe glassy light, the changing rays, the

beaming gilt upon the useless books. Now, at last, at the windows, afternoon had begun to wane. And when

Sheila brought up his tea, as if Chance had heard his cry, she entered in hat and stole. She put down the tray,

"Alice says you are to eat every one of those delicious sandwiches, and especially the tiny omelette. You

have scarcely touched anything today, Arthur. I am a poor one to preach, I am afraid; but you know what

that will meana worse breakdown still. You really must try to think ofof us all."

"Not, of course, if you would prefer not. But Dr. Simon advised me most particularly to go out at least once a

day. We must remember, Arthur, this is not the beginning of your illness. Longcontinued anxiety, I suppose,

does tell on one in time. Anyhow, he said that I looked worried and rundown. I am worried. Let us both try

for each other's sakes, or even if only for Alice's, toto do all we can. I must not harass you; but is there

"You always look pretty, Sheila; tonight you look prettier: that is the only change, I think."

Mrs. Lawford's attitude intensified in it stillness. "Now, speaking quite frankly, what is it in you suggests

these remarks at such a time? That's what baffles me. It seems so childish, so needlessly blind."

"I am very sorry, Sheila, to be so childish. But I'm not, say what you like, blind. You are pretty: I'd repeat it if

Sheila lowered her eyes softly on to the richtoned picture in the glass. "Supposing," she said, watching her

lips move, "supposingof course, I know you are getting better and all thatbut supposing you don't

change back as Mr. Bethany thinks, what will you do? Honestly, Arthur, when I think it over calmly, the

whole tragedy comes back on me with such a force it sweeps me off my feet; I am for the moment scarcely

"I think, Sheila," replied a low, infinitely weary voice, "I think I should marry again." It was the same

wavering, faintly ironical voice that had slightly discomposed Dr. Simon that same morning.

"'Marry again'!" exclaimed incredulously the full lips in the looking glass. "Who?"

"You dear!" Sheila turned softly round, conscious in a most humiliating manner that she had ever so little

Her husband was pouring out his tea, unaware, apparently, of her change of position. She watched him

curiously. In spite of all her reason, of her absolute certainty, she wondered for a moment if this really could

be Arthur. And for the first time she realised the power and mastery of that eager and far too hungry face. Her

mind seemed to pause, fluttering in air, like a bird in the wind. She hastened rather unsteadily to the door.

"Oh yes; poor child, she looks so pale and miserable. We are going to Mrs. Sherwin's, and then on to church.

A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came over his face. "I wish you could stay with

It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a candle in the dark. But an hour's terror is better than

"I think," she said, "I too might say that. But there! giving way will do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone

only for an hour, or two at the most. And I told Mr. Bethany I should have to come out before the sermon: it's

"It's useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always consistently disliked my friends. It's scarcely likely that

He stood up. "It is useless to argue. If I do not go out, I shall certainly go mad. As for criminalwhy, that's a

"It is of no consequence, then, that the servants are already gossiping about this impossible Dr. Ferguson; that

you are certain to be seen either going or returning; that Alice is bound to discover that you are well enough

to go out, and yet not well enough to say goodnight to your own daughter?oh, it's monstrous, it's a frantic,

Lawford eyed her coldly and stubbornlythinking of the empty room he would leave awaiting his return, its

lamp burning, its fireflames shining. It was almost a physical discomfort, this longing unspeakable for the

twilight, the green secrecy and silence of the graves. "Keep them out of the way," he said in a low voice; "it

will be dark when I come in." His hardened face lit up. "It's useless to attempt to dissuade me."

"Why must you always be hurting me? why do you seem to delight in trying to estrange me?" Husband and

He shrugged his shoulders. "Ask me not to come back," he said; "that's nearer your hope!" and turned his face

to the fire. Without moving he heard her go out, return, pause, and go out again. And when he deliberately

wheeled round in his chair the little key lay conspicuous there on the counterpane.

THE last light of sunset lay in the west; a sullen wrack of cloud was mounting into the windless sky when

Lawford entered the little country graveyard again by its old weatherworn lychgate. The little old stone

church with its square tower stood amid trees, its eastern window faintly aglow with crimson and purple. He

could hear a steady, rather nasal voice through its open lattices. But the stooping stones and the cypresses

were out of sight of its porch. He would not be seen down there. He paused a moment, however; his hat was

drawn down over his eyes; he was shivering. He looked across and saw far over the harvest fields what

seemed a growing pallor in the sky. He would have the moon to go home by. "Home!"these trees, this

tongueless companionship, this heavy, winelike air, this soundless turfthese in some obscure desolate

fashion seemed far rather really home. His eyes wandered towards the fading crimson. And with that on his

right hand he began softly, almost on tiptoe, descending the hill. It seemed to him that the steady eyes of the

dead were watching him in his slow progress. The air seemed echoing with little faint, clear calls. He turned

and snapped his fingers at a robin that was stalking him with its stony twittering from bush to bush. But when

after some little time he came out of the narrow avenue and looked down, his heart misgave him, for some

one was already sitting there on his low and solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He stood hesitating, looking

steadily and yet half vacantly down on the motionless figure, and in a while a face was lifted in his direction,

"Not at all, not at all," said the stranger. "I have no privileges here; at least as yet."

Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. "It's astonishingly quiet and beautiful," he said.

The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. "Yes, it is, very," he replied. Thee was the faintest

The stranger raised his eyebrows. "Oh yes, often." He smiled. "It is my own modest fashion of attending

"My visits," said Lawford, "have been very fewin fact, so far as I know, I have only once been here

"I envy you the novelty." There was again the same faint, unmistakable antagonism in voice and attitude; and

yet so deep was the relief in talking to one who hadn't the least suspicion of anything unusual in his

appearance, that Lawford was extremely disinclined to turn back. He made another effort; for talking to

strangers had always been something of a difficulty to him, and advanced towards the seat. "You mustn't

indeed let me intrude upon you," he said, "but really I am very interested in this queer old place. Perhaps you

would tell me something of its history?" He sat down. His companion moved slowly to the other side of the

"To tell you the truth," he said, picking his way as it were from word to word, "its 'history,' as people call it,

does not interest me in the least. After all, it's not when a thing is, but what it is, that much matters. What this

is"he glanced, with head bent, across the shadowy stones"is pretty evident. Of course, age has its

"Oh yes, it's old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps, is mainly an affair of the imagination.

There's a tombstone near that little old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under the wall, still

even legibly late seventeenth century. That's pretty good weathering." He smiled faintly. "Of course, the

church itself is centuries older, drenched with age. But she's still sleepwalking while these old tombstones

"What interested me most, I think," said Lawford haltingly, "was this." He pointed with his stick to the grave

"Ah, yes, Sabathier's," said the stranger; "I know his peculiar history almost by heart."

Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the rather long, pale face. "Not, I suppose," he

His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. "Well, you know, there's a good deal

"Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried him outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they

"Haven't you noticed," drawled the other, "how green the grass grows down here, and how very sharp are

poor old Sabathier's thorns? Besides, he was a stranger, and they kept him out."

"But, surely," said Lawford, "was it so entirely a matter of choicethe laws of the Church? If he did kill

The stranger turned with a little shrug. "I don't suppose it's a matter of much consequence to him. I fancied I

was his only friend. May I venture to ask who you are so interested in the poor old thing?"

Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. He fidgeted. "Oh, a rather unusual thing happened to

"'Occurred?'" He raised his eyebrows. "I wish it had. I come here simply, as I have said, because it's quiet;

because I prefer the company of those who never answer one back, and who do not so much as condescend to

pay me the least attention." He smiled and turned his face towards the quiet fields.

Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. "Do you think," he said softly, "it is possible one ever could?"

There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier's grave; on this the stranger sat down. He

glanced up rather curiously at his companion. "Seldom the time and the place and the revenant altogether.

"Of course, of course," said Lawford eagerly. "But it is an absolutely new one to me. I don't mean that I have

never had such an idea, just in one's own superficial way; but"he paused and glanced swiftly into the

fastthickening twilight"I wonder: are they, do you think, really, all quite dead?"

"Ah, yes, I know," said Lawford. "But I believe in the resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and

supposing, when a man diessupposing it was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awful

inaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in a dark cupboard;

one mightsurely one mightjustg quietly, you know, try to get out? Wouldn't you?" he added.

"And, surely," he found himself beginning gently to argue again, "surely, what about, say, him?" He nodded

And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the unanswerable question.

"He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!" said Lawford, "how he must have wanted to get home! He killed

himself, poor wretch! think of the fret and fever he must have been injust before. Imagine it!"

"But it might, you know," suggested the other with a smile"it might have been sheer indifference."

"'Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish'no, no," said Lawford, his heart beating as if it would choke

It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger's features, but there seemed a faint suggestion of irony

in his voice. "And how do you suppose your angry, naughty child would set about it It's narrow quarters; how

Lawford sat quite still. "You sayI hope I am not detaining youyou say you have come here, sat here

"I was only wondering," said Lawford. He was cold and shivering. He felt instinctively it was madness to sit

here in this thin, gliding mist that had gathered in swathes above the grass, milkpale in the rising moon. The

"'For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause,'" he said slowly, with a little satirical

Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean, grey beams of light between the cypresses. But to

his wide, wandering eyes it seemed that a radiance other than hers haunted these mounds and leaning stones.

"Have you ever noticed it?" he said, putting out his hand towards his unknown companion; "this stone is

cracked from head to foot? . . . But there"he rose stiff and chilled"I am afraid I have bored you with my

company. You came here for solitude, and I have been trying to convince you that we are surrounded with

witnesses. You will forgive my intrusion?" There was a kind of oldfashioned courtesy in his manner that he

"I hope you will think nothing of the kind," said the other earnestly; "how could it be in any sense an

intrusion? It's the old story of Bluebeard. And I confess I should very much like a peep into his cupboard too.

Who wouldn't? But there, it's merely a matter of time, I suppose." He paused, and together they slowly

ascended the path already glimmering with heavy dew. At the porch they paused once more. And now it was

"Perhaps," he said, "you will give me the pleasure of some day continuing our talk. As for our friend below, it

so happens that I have managed to pick up a little more of his history than the sexton seems to have known

ofif you would care some time or other to hear it. I live only at the foot of the hill, not half a mile distant.

Lawford took out his watch. "You are really very kind," he said. "But, perhapswell, whatever that history

may be, I think you would agree that mine is evenbut, there, I've talked too much about myself already.

"Why, tomorrow, then," said his companion. "It's a flat wooden house, on the lefthand side. Come at any

time of the evening;" he paused again and smiled"the third house after the Rectory, which is marked up on

Lawford took out his pocketbook and a card. "Mine," he said, handing it gravely to his companion, "is

Lawfordat least . . ." It was really the first time that either had seen the other's face, unshadowed and

clearlit; and on Lawford's a moon almost at the full shone dazzingly. He saw an expressiondismay,

incredulity, overwhelming astonishmentstart suddenly into the dark, rather indifferent eyes.

"Why," said the other, laughing and turning away, "I think the moon must have bewitched me too."

LAWFORD listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in the diningroom. A light shone

faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. He very gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen, mounted the

stairs. He sat down in front of the fire, tired out, and bitterly cold in spite of his long walk home. But his mind

was wearier even than his body. He tried in vain to catch up the thread of his thoughts. He only knew for

certain that so far as his first hope and motives had gone his errand had proved entirely futile. "How could I

possibly fall asleep with that fellow talking there?" he had said to himself angrily; yet knew in his heart that

their talk had driven every other idea out of his mind. He had not yet even glanced into the glass. His every

thought was vainly wandering round and round the one curious hint that had drifted in, but which he had not

yet been able to put into words. Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep, with none to

watch or spywhat then? However ridiculous the idea, it was not more ridiculous, more incredible than the

actual fact. He might, it was just possible that he would by now have actually awakened just his own familiar,

everyday self again. And the thought of thatthough he hardly realised its full importactually did send

him on tiptoe for a glance that more or less effectually set the question at rest. This was much the same

dark, sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nights agoexpressionless, cadaverous, with

shadowy hollows beneath the glittering eyes. And even as he watched it its lips, of their own volition, it

He was not to be given much leisure, however, for fantastic reveries like this. As he leaned his head on his

hands, gladly conscious that he could not possibly bear this incessant strain for long, Sheila opened the door.

"I wish you would knock," he said angrily; "you talk of quiet; you tell me to rest, and think; and here you

come creeping and spying on me as if I was a child in a nursery. I refuse to be watched and guarded and

peeped on like this." He knew that his hands were trembling, that he could not keep his eyes fixed, that his

Sheila drew in her lips. "I have merely come to tell you, Arthur, that Mr. Bethany has brought Mr. Danton

into supper. He agrees with me it really would be advisable to take such a very old and prudent and practical

friend into our confidence. You do nothing I ask of you. I simply cannot bear the burden of this incessant

anxiety. Look, now, what your night walk has done for you! You look positively at death's door."

"Whatwhat an instinct you have for the right word!" he said softly. "And Danton, of all people in the

world! It was surely rather a curious, a thoughtless choice. Has he had supper?"

"I think," said Sheila indignantly, "it is hardly fair to speak of a very old and a very true friend of mine in

suchwell, vulgar terms as that. Besides, Arthur, as for believingwithout in the least desiring to hurt your

They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps, than she had been surprised into since she

left a slimmer girlhood behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing together on the

hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain of conflicting glances, for her husband had followed

instantly, and stood now behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contempt and defiance

confronting an old fat friend, whom that one brief challenging instant had congealed into a condition of

Mr. Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberately turned himself a little towards his companion.

His small eyes wandered a little restlessly, and instantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs. Lawford.

"You take such formidable risks, Lawford," said Mr. Bethany in a dry, difficult voice.

"Am I really to believe" he began huskily"I am sure, Bethany, you will My dear Mrs. Lawford!" said

"It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all," said a voice from the doorway. "To tell you the truth, I am too

tired to care a jot either way. And"he lifted a long arm"I must positively refuse to produce the least, the

remotest proof that I am not, so far as I am personally aware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart was

always an incorrigible sceptic. Aren't you, T. D.? You pride your dear old brawn on it in secret."

"Oh, but you know you are," drawled on the clear, slightly hesitating longdrawn syllables; "it's your

parochial metier. Firm, unctuous, subtle scepticism; and to that end your body flourishes. You were born fat;

you became fat; and fat, my dear Danton, has been deliberately thrust on youin layers! Lampreys! You'll

perish of surfeit some day, of sheer Dantonism. And fat, post mortem, Danton. Oh, what a basting's there!"

Mr. Bethany, with a convulsive effort, woke. He turned swiftly on Mrs. Lawford. "Why! why! could you not

"It's no good, Vicar. She's all sheer Laodicean. Blow hot, blow cold. North, south, east, westto have a

weathercock for a wife is to marry the wind. There's nothing to be got from poor Sheila but . . ."

"Lawford!" the little man's voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip; "I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it.

Some selfcommand; by dear good fellow, remember, remember it's only the will, the will that keeps us

Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened and flickered with shadows before his eyes.

"What's he mean, then," he muttered huskily, "coming here with his black, still carcasepeeping,

peepingwhat's he mean, I say?" There was a moment's silence. Then with lifted brows and wide eyes, that

to every one of his three witnesses left an indelible memory of clear and wolfish light within their glassy

"I suppose," began Danton, with an obvious effort to disentangle himself from the humiliation of the moment,

"Bless me, yes!" said Mr. Bethany cordially"fever! We all know what that means."

"Just think, think, Dantonthe awful incessant strain of such an ordeal! Think for an instant what such a

Danton inserted a plump, white finger between collar and chin. "Oh yes! Buteh?needlessly abusive. I

He poised himself, as it were, on the monolithic stability of his legs. "Eh?" he said.

Mr. Bethany sat down at the table. "I rather feared some such temporary breakdown as this, Danton. I think I

foresaw it. And now, just while we are all three alone here together in friendly conclave, wouldn't it be as

well, don't you think, to confront ourselves with the difficulties? I knowwe all know, that that poor

halfdemented creature is Arthur Lawford. This morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. This

awful calamity has suddenly fallen upon himthis change. I own frankly at the first sheer shock it staggered

me as I think for the moment it has staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow face to face, heard

him talk, and watched him there upstairs in this silence stir and awake and come up again to his trouble out of

his sleep, I had no more doubt in my own mind and heart that he was he than I have that Ipoor foolam I.

We do in some mysterious way, you'll own at once, grow so accustomedso inured, if you liketo each

other's faces (masks though they be) that we hardly realise we see them when we are speaking together. And

yet the slightest, the most infinitesimal change is instantly apparent. I have heard Lawford's own account.

Conscious or unconscious, he has been through some terrific strain, some such awful conflict with the unseen

powers that wethank God!have only read about, and never perhaps, until death is upon us, shall witness

for ourselves. What more likely, more inevitable that that such a thing should leave its scar, its cloud, its

masking shadow?call it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dread into a face we'd die for. Some

experience, which it would be nothing but a hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely aboutqone,

perhaps, which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no account ofhas put him temporarily at the

world's mercya mere nine days' wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton, is just where we come it.

We know the man himself; and it is to be our privilege to act as a bufferstate, to be intermediaries between

him and the rest of this deadly, craving, sheepish worldfor the time being; oh yes, just for the time being.

Other and keener and more knowledgable minds than mine or yours will some day bring him back to us

"My dear, good Danton," persisted Mr. Bethany with cherubic patience, "how old are you?"

"I don't see quite . . ." smiled Danton, with recovered ease, and rapidly mobilising forces. "Excuse the

"Good," said Mr. Bethany; "and I'm seventyone, and this child here"he pointed an accusing finger at

Sheila"is youth perpetual. So," he briskly brightened, "say, between us we're six score all told. Are

wecan we, deliberately, with this mere pinch of years at our command out of the wheeling millioins that

"No, we can't, of course," said Danton formidably, "not finally; that's all very well," he paused, and added,

Mr. Bethany rose cheerfully. "All right, Danton; I am afraid you are exactly what the poor fellow in his

delirium solemnly asseverated. And, jesting apart, it is in delirium that we tell our sheer, plain, unadulterated

truth: you're a nicely covered sceptic. Personally, I refuse to discuss the matter. Mere dull, stubborn

prejudice; bigotry, if you like. I will only remark just thisthat Mrs. Lawford and I, in our inmost hearts,

know. You, my dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merely incredulously grope. Faith versus reasonthat

prehistoric Armageddon. Some day, and a day not far distant either, Lawford will come back to us.

Thisthis shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by some inconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common

Nature it has been put up. He'll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage. But now, because I ask

it, and this poor child here entreats it, you will say nothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till Friday?

What stepbystep creatures we are, to be sure! I say Friday because it will be exactly a week then. And

what's a week?to Nature scarcely the unfolding of a rose! But still, Friday be it. Then, if nothing has

occurred, we will, we shall have to call a friendly gathering, we shall have to have a friendly consultation."

"I'm not, I hope, a brute, Bethany," said Danton apologetically; "but, honestly, speaking for myself, simply as

a man of the world, it's a big risk to be taking onwhat shall we call it?on mere intuition. Personally, and

even in a court of lawthough Heaven forbid it ever reaches that stagepersonally, I could swear that the

fellow that stood abusing me there, in that revolting fashion, was not Lawford. It would be easier even to

believe in him, if there were not thatthat glaze, that shocking simulation of the man himself, the very man.

But then, I am a sceptic; I own it. And 'pon my word, Mrs. Lawford, there's plenty of room for sceptics in a

"Very well," said Mr. Bethany crisply, "that's settled, then. With your permission, my dear," he added,

turning untarnishably clear, childlike eyes on Sheila, "I will take all riskseven to the foot of the gibbet:

accessory, Danton, after the face." And so direct and cloudless was his gaze that Sheila tried in vain to evade

it and to catch a glimpse of Danton's small, agatelike eyes, now completely under mastery, and awaiting

LAWFORD slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped in sleep, lethargic, and fretfully

haunted by inconclusive remembrances of the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and capacious

composure, brought him his breakfast tray, he watched her face for some time without speaking.

"Did anything happen last night? Would you mind telling me, Sheila? Who was it was here?"

"I don't quite understand what you mean by 'hopeless,' Arthur. And must I answer the other questions?"

Sheila crossed slowly to the window. "Well, quite honestly, Arthur, I was not very surprised. Whatever we

Lawford shut his eyes, and reopened them full on his wife's calm scrutiny, who had in that moment turned

"No," said Sheila; "butit was at least unfortunate. We can't, I suppose, rely on Mr. Bethany alone."

Lawford rolled his eyes as if in temporary vertigo. "Yes," he said. And Sheila once more prepared to make a

"Believe me, I had no intention to intrude." And this time the door really closed.

"Nothing could be better," said Dr. Simon; and Lawford, to his inexpressible relief, heard the fevered

throbbing of the doctor's motorcar rearise, and turned over and shut his eyes, dulled and exhausted with the

still unfriendliness of the vacant room. His spirits had sunk, he thought, to their lowest ebb. He scarcely

heeded the fragments of dreamsclear, green landscapes, amazing gleams of peace, the sudden, broken

voices, the rustling and calling shadowinesses of subconsciousness in this quiet sunlight of reality. The

clouds had broken, or had been withdrawn like a veil from the October skies. One thought alone was his

refuge; one face alone haunted him with its peace; one remembrance soothed himAlice. Through all his

scattered and purposeless arguments he strove to remember her voice, the lovingkindness of her eyes, her

In the afternoon he got up and dressed himself. He could not bring himself to stand before the glass and

deliberately shave. He even smiled at the thought of playing the barber to that lean chin. He dressed by the

"I couldn't rest," he told Sheila, when she presently came in on one of her quiet, cautious, heedful visits; "and

"Oh yes," said Lawford wearily; "I have discovered that infinitely worse things are infinitely commoner. But

"Tell me," said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. "How does it feel? does it even in the slightest degree affect

He turned his back and looked up at the broad, tilt portrait for inspection. "Practically, not at all," he said

hollowly. "Of course, one's nervesthat fellow Dantonwhen one's overtired. You have"his voice, in

"Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope

you will not think me unsympatheticbut don't you think we must sooner or later be thinking of what's to be

done? At present, though I fully agree with Mr. Bethany as to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business

up as long as possible, at least from the gossiping outside world, still we are only standing still. And your

malady, dear, I suppose, isn't. You will help me, Arthur? You will try and think? Poor Alice!"

"She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand why she must not see her father, and yet his

"At death's door," murmured Lawford under his breath; "who was it was saying that? Have you ever, Sheila,

in a dream, or just as one'e thoughts go sometimes, seen that door? . . . its ruinous stone lintel, carved into

lichenous stone heads . . . stonily silent in the last thin sunlight, hanging in peace unlatched. Heated, hunted,

in agonyin that cold, greenclad, shadowed porch is haven and sanctuary . . . But beyondO God,

Sheila stood listening with startled eyes. "And was all that in Quain?" she inquired rather flutteringly.

She shook herself, with a slight shiver. "Very well, then," she said and paused in silence.

Her husband yawned, and smiled, and almost as lit with that thin last sunshine seemed the smile that passed

for an instant across the reverie of that shadowy face. He drew his hand wearily over his eyes. "What has he

Sheila stood very quiet and still, as if in fear of scaring some rare, wild, timid creature by the least stir.

Lawford paused on the hearthrug with his comb in his hand. "It's just the last rags of that beastly influenza,"

he said, and began vigorously combing his hair. And yet, simple and frank though the action was, it moved

Sheila, perhaps, more than any other of the congested occurrences of the last few days. Her forehead grew

suddenly cold, the palms of her hands began to ache, she had to hasten out of the room to avoid revealing the

But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind of heedless reverie to watch, as it were, the

still visionary thoughts that passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He longed beyond measure for the

freedom that until yesterday he had not even dreamed existed outside the covers of some old, impossible

romancethe magic of the darkening sky, the invisible, flocking presence of the de3ad, the shock of

imaginations that had no words, of quixotic emotions which the stranger had stirred in that low, mocking,

furtive talk beside the broken stones of the Huguenot. Was the "change" quite so monstrous, so meaningless?

How often, indeed, he remembered curiously had he seemed to be standing outside these fastshut gates of

He opened the door, and leant his ear to listen. From far away came a rich, longcontinued chuckle of

laughter, followed by a clatter of a falling plate, and then, still more uncontrollable laughter. There was a

faint smell of toast on the air. Lawford ventured out on to the landing and into a little room that had once, in

years gone by, been Alice's nursery. He stood far back, from the strip of open window that showed beneath

the green blind, craning forward to see into the gardenthe trees, their knotted trunks, and then, as he stole

nearer, a flowerbed, late roses, geraniums, calceolaria, lobelia, the lawn andyes, three wicker chairs, a

footstool, a workbasket, a little table on the smooth, green grass in the honeycoloured sunhine; and Sheila

sitting there in the rich sunlight, her hands resting on the arms of her chair, her head bent, evidently deeply

engrossed in her thoughts. He crept an inch or two forward, and stooped. There was a hat on the

grassAlice's big garden hatand beside it lay Flitters, nose on paws, long ears sagging. He had forgotten

Flitters. Had Flitters forgotten him? Would he bark at the strange, distasteful scene of aDr. Ferguson? The

coast was clear, then. He turned even softlier yet, to confront, rapt, still, and hovering betwixt astonishment

and dread, the blue, calm eyes of his daughter, looking in at the door. It seemed to Lawford as if they had

"We thought," he began at last, "we thought just to beckon Mrs. Lawford from the window. Hehe is

Alice nodded. Her whole face was in a moment flooded with red, that ebbed and left her pale. "I will go down

and tell mother you want to see her. It was very silly of me. I did not quite recognise at first . . . I suppose,

thinking of my father . . ." The words faltered, and the eyes were lifted to his face again with a desolate,

"Certainly, certainly, by no means," he began, listening vaguely to the glib patter that seemed to come from

another mouth. "Your father, my dear young lady, I venture to think is really on the road to recovery. Dr.

Simon makes excellent progress. But, of coursetwo heads, we know, are so much better than one when

there's the leastthe least difficulty. The great thing is quiet, rest, isolation, no possibility of a shock,

For Alice stood gazing stirlessly on and on into this infinitely strange, infinitely familiar, shadowy,

phantasmal face. "Oh yes," she replied, "I quite understand, of course; but if I might just peep even, it

wouldI should be so much, much happier. Do let me just see him, Dr. Ferguson, if only his head on the

pillow! I wouldn't even breathe. Couldn't it, couldn't it possibly helpeven a faithcure?" She leant forward

impulsively, her voice trembling, and her eyes still shining beneath their faint, melancholy smile.

"I fear, my dear . . . it cannot be. He longs to see you. But with his mind, you know, in this state, it

"But mother never told me," broke in the girl desperately, "there was anything wrong with his mind. Oh, but

Lawford scanned swiftly the little square, beloved and memoried room that fate had suddenly converted for

him into a cage of unspeakable pain and longing. "Oh no; believe me, no! Not his brain, not that, not even

wandering; really; but always thinking, always longing on and on for you, dear, only. Quite, quite master of

"You talk," she broke in again angrily, "only in pretence! You are treating me like a child; and so does

mother, and so it has been ever since I came home. Why, if mother can, and you can, why may not I? Why, if

"But whowho 'can walk and talk in the night?'" inquired a very low, stealthy voice out of the quietness

Alice turned quickly. Her mother was standing at a little distance, with all the clam and moveless

"But as I came up the stairs I understood you to be inquiring something of Dr. Ferguson, 'if,' you were saying,

'he can walk and talk in the night': you surely were not referring to your father, child? That could not possibly

be, in his state. Dr. Ferguson, I know, will bear me out in that at least. And besides, I really must insist on

following out medical directions to the letter. Dr. Ferguson, I know, will fully concur. Do, pray, Dr.

Ferguson," continued Sheila, raising her voice even now scarcely above a rapid murmur"do pray assure

my daughter that she must have patience; that however much even he himself may desire it, it is impossible

that she should see her father yet. And now, my dear child, come down, I want to have a moment's talk with

Dr. Ferguson. I feared form his beckoning at the window that something was amiss."

Alice turned, dismayed, and looked steadily, almost with hostility, at the stranger, so curiously transfixed and

isolated in her small old playroom. And in this scornful yet pleading confrontation her eye fell suddenly on

the pin in his scarfthe claw and the pearl she had know all her life. From that her gaze flitted, like some

wild, demented thing's, over face, hair, hands, clothes, attitude, expression, and her heart stood still in an

awful, inarticulate dread of the unknown. She turned slowly towards her mother, groped forward a few steps,

turned once more, stretching out her hands towards the vague, still figure whose eyes had called so piteously

to her out of their depths, and fell fainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly watching

Sheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. "She has fainted?" he said; "oh, Sheila, tell meonly fainted?"

"Some day, Sheila" he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and without another word, without even

another glance at the still face and blue, twitching lids, he went rapidly out, and in another instant Sheila

heard the door shut. She got up quickly, and after a glance into the bedroom locked the door; then she

hastened upstairs for sal volatile and eau de cologne. Alice was sitting up when she returned, leaning against

It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the portico of his house. With a glance of

circumspection, he descended the steps, only to be made aware in so doing that Ada was with a kind of

furtive eagerness pointing out the mysterious Dr. Ferguson to a steadily gazing cook. One or two wellknown

and many a wellremembered face he encountered in the thin stream of City men treading blackly along the

pavement. It was a still, high evening, and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mind at sight

of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectable faces. He found himself walking with an affectation

of effrontery, and smiling with a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself from slinking, and the wolf

out of his eyes. He felt restless, and watchful, and suspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in the world.

His, then, was a disguise as effectual as a shabby coat and a glazing eye. His heart sickened. Was it even

worth while living on a crust of social respectability so thin and so exquisitely treacherous? He challenged no

one. One or two actual acquaintances raised and lowered a faintly inquiring eyebrow in his direction. One

even recalled in his confusion a smile of recognition just a moment too late. There was a peculiar aura in his

None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell in the imagination tolls on and on, the echo

of reality. If the worst should come to the worst, whythere is pasture in the solitary byways for the beast

that strays. He quickened his pace along lonelier streets, and soon strode freely through the little flagged and

cobbled village of shops, past the same small jutting window whose clock had told him the hour on that first

dark, hurried night. All was pale and faint with dying colours now; and decay was in the leaf, and the last

swallows filled the gold air with their clashing stillness. No one heeded him here. He looked from side to

side, exulting in the strangeness. Shops were left behind, the last milestone passed, and in a little while he

was walking downhill beneath the elm boughs, which he remembered had stood like a turreted wall against

the sunset when first he had wandered down into the churchyard. At the foot of the hill he passed by the

green and white Rectory, and there was the parson, a little fat, pursy man with wrists protruding from his

jacket sleeves as he stood on tiptoe, tying up a rambling roseshoot on his trim and cedared lawn. The next

house barely showed its old red chimneytops above its bowers; the next was empty, with windows vacantly

gazing, its garden peopled with great bearded weeds that stood mutely watching, as it were, the

seldomopened gate. Then came more high grandmotherly elms, a dense hedge of ever leaf that pricks, and

then Lawford found himself standing at the small canopied gate of the queer old wooden house that the

It stood square and high and dark in a kind of amphitheatre of verdure. Roses here and there sprang from the

grass, and a narrow boxedged path led to a small door in a kind of low, greenmantled wing, with one

square window above the porch. And as Lawford stood waiting, as one stands upon the eve of a new

experience, not without foreboding, he heard as if at a distance the sound of falling water. He still paused on

the country roadside, scrutinising this strange, still, wooden presence; but at last with an effort he pushed

open the gate, followed the winding path, and pulled the old iron hanging bell. There came presently a quiet

tread, and Herbert himself opened the door which led into a little square woodpanelled hall, hung with old

"Ah, yes, come in, Mr. Lawford," he drawled; "I was beginning to be afraid you were not coming."

Lawford laid hat and walkingstick on an old bench, and followed his churchyard companion up a slightly

inclined corridor and a staircase, and so into a high room, covered far up the yellowish walls with old books

on shelves and in cases, between which hung in little black frames, mezzotints, etchings, and old maps. A

large table stood a few paces from the deep alcove of the window, which was surrounded by a low, faded,

green seat, and screened from the sunshine by wooden shutters. And here the tranquil surge of falling water

shook incessantly on the air, for the three lower casements stood open to the fading sunset. On a smaller table

were spread cups, old earthenware dishes of fruit, and a big bowl of damask roses.

"Please sit down; I sha'n't be a moment; I am not sure that my sister is in; but if so, I will tell her we are ready

for tea." Left to himself in this quiet, strange old room, Lawford forgot for a while everything else, he was for

What seized his fancy most in this quiet old room was this incessant changing roar of falling water. It must be

the Widder, he said to himself, quite close to the walls. But not until he had had the boldness to lean head and

shoulders out of the nearest window did he fully realise how close indeed the Widder was. It came sweeping,

dark and deep, and begreened, full with the early autumnal rains, actually against the lower walls of the house

itself, and in the middle suddenly swerved in a black, smooth arch, and tumbled headlong into a great pool,

nodding with tall, slender waterweeds, and charged in its bubbled blackness here and there with the last

crimson of the setting sun. To the left of the house, where the waters floated free again, stood vast, still trees

above the clustering rushes; and in glimpses between their spreading boughs lay the farstretching

countryside, now dimmed with the first mists of approaching evening. So absorbed he became as he stood

leaning over the wooden sill above the falling water, that eye and ear became enslaved by the roar and

stillness, and in the faint atmosphere of age that seemed like a veil to hang about the odd old house and these

When at last he did draw back into the room it was perceptibly darker, and a thin, keen, shaft of recollection

struck across his mindthe recollection of what he was, and of how he came to be there, his reasons for

coming and of that dark, indefinable presence which, like a raven, had begun to build its dwelling in his

mind. He sat on, with eyes restlessly wandering, his face leaning on his hands; and in a while the door opened

and Herbert returned, carrying an old crimson and green teapot and a dish of hot cakes.

"They're all out," he said; "sister, Sallie, and boy; but these were in the oven, so we won't wait. I hope you

Lawford dropped his hands from his face and smiled. "I have been looking at the water," he said.

"My sister's favourite occupation; she sits for hourse and hours, with not even a book for an apology, staring

down into the black old roaring pot. It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you'd be surprised how

quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distracting than sheer silence. You don't know, after

all, what on earth sheer silence meanseven at Widderstone! But one can just realise a waternymph. They

chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate." He handed Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and

Lawford found himself listening out of a peculiar stillness of mind to the voice of this suave and rather

inscrutable acquaintance. "The curious thing is, do you know," he began rather nervously, "that in the last few

months, I have never noticed it before, never even caught the sound of the water."

"No, that's the best of it; nobody ever does. We are just buried alive. We have lived her for years, and

scarcely know a soulnot even our own, perhaps. Why on earth should one? Acquaintances, after all, are

"But that's just it," said Herbert. "I said acquaintances; that's just exactly what I'm going to provewhat very

old friends we are. You've no idea! It really is rather queer." He took up his cup and sauntered over to the

Lawford eyed him vacantly for a moment, and, following rather his own curious thoughts than seeking any

light on this somewhat vague explanation, again broke the silence. "It's odd, I suppose, but this house affects

me much in the same way as Widderstone does; I'm not particularly fancifulat least, I used not to be. But

sitting here I seem, I hope it isn't a very frantic remark, it seems as though, if only my ears would let me, I

should hearwell, voices. It's just what you said about the silence. I suppose it's the age of the place; it is

"Pretty old, I suppose; it's wormeaten and rateaten and tindery enough in all conscience; and the damp

doesn't exactly foster it. It's a queer old shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old local stuff I

"WHAT'S in a name?" laughed Herbert. "But it really is a queer showup of human oddity. A fellow comes

in here, searching; that's all;" his back was turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping his tea between

his sentences; "he comes inoh, it's a positive fact, for I've seen him myself, just sitting back in my chair

here, you know, watching him as one would a tramp in one's orchard." He cast a candid glance over his

shoulder. "First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes cautiously ina kind of grizzled,

fawncoloured face, middlesize, with big hands; and then, just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature,

he begins his precious searchshelves, drawers that are not here, cupboards gone years ago, questing and

nosing no end, and quite methodically too, until he reaches the window. Then he stops, looks back, narrows

his boxy lids, listensquite perceptibly, you know, a kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to open this

corner bookcase here, as if it were a door and goes out along what I suppose must have at some time been an

outside gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy, the house extended once beyond these windows.

Anyhow, out he goes quite deliberately, treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels, until, however far

you lean out of the window, you can't follow him any further. And thenand this is the bit that takes one's

fancywhen you have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been doing when the

wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat, with bolting eyes awaiting developments, just according to

your school of thought, or of nerves, you knowhe comes backcomes back"he turned round with a

delightfully boyish laugh"comes back, carrying a lighted candle. That really is a thrill, I assure you."

"Oh yes, twice," replied Herbert cheerfully. "And my sister, quite by haphazard, once saw him from the

garden. She was shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window

here, and go shuffling along, midair, across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high

corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes'

concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back againthe same distraction, the

same nebulous snuff colour, and a candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home."

"Ah, then," said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanning the bookbacks with eyes partially

closed: he turned the lifted teapot, and refilled his visitor's cup; "then, wherever you areI mean," he

added, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, "wherever the chance inmate of the room appears to be, he

comes straight for you, at a quite alarming velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were, silts inside."

Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over his mind. "'Fades inside? silts?'I'm

awfully stupid, but what on earth do you mean?" The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight; its own

darkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night, and Herbert deliberately lit a cigarette before

replying. His clear, pale face, with its smooth outline and thin mouth, and rather long, dark eyes, turned with

"Why," he said, "I mean frankly just that. Besides, it's Grisel's own phrase; and an old nurse we used to have

said much the same. He comes, or it comes towards you, first just walking, then with a kind of gradually

accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps straight into you," he tapped his chest, "me, whoever it may be is here.

"Be resumed, as it were, via you. You see, I suppose he is compelled to regain his circle, or Purgatory, or

Styx, whatever you like to call it, via consciousness. No one present, then no revenant or spook, or astral

body, or hallucination; what's in a name? And of course even an hallucination is mindstuff, and on its own,

as it were. What I mean is that the poor devil must have some kind of human personality to get back through

in order to make his exit from our sphere of consciousness into his. And of course, of course to make his

entrance too. If like a tenuous smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out in precisely the same

fashion. For really, if you weren't consciously expecting a quite terrific impact (you actually jerk forward in

the act of resistance unresisted), you would not notice his going. I am afraid I must be horribly boring you

with all these tangled theories. All I mean is, that if you were really absorbed in what you happened to be

doing at the time, the thing might come and go, with your mind for entrance an exit, as it were, without your

being conscious of it at all." There was a longish pause, in which Herbert slowly inhaled and softly breathed

"And whatwhat's the poor wretch searching for? And whatwhy, what becomes of him when he does

"Ah, there you have me! One merely surmises just as one's temperament or convictions lean. Grisel says it's

some poor derelict soul in search of peacethat the poor beggar wants finally to die, in fact, and can't. Sallie

smells crime. After all, what is every man?" he talked on; "a horde of ghostslike a Chinese nest of

boxesoaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in frontin our ancestors, back and

"Ah, that settles me again. Don't they call it an amoeba? But really I am abjectly ignorant of all that kind of

stuff. We are all we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anything outlandish,

bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy saidit's only the

It seemed to Lawford as if the last remark had wafted him bodily into the presence of his kind, blinking,

intensely anxious old friend, Mr. Bethany. And what leagues asunder the two men were who had happened

He drew his hand gropingly over his face, half rose, and again seated himself. "Whatever it may be," he said,

"the whole thing reminds me, you knowit is in a way so curiously like my ownmy own case."

Herbert sat on, a little drawn up in his chair, quietly smoking. The crash of the falling water, after seeming to

increase in volume with the fading of evening, had again died down in the darkness to a low, multitudinous

"'Bizarre,' you said; God knows I am." But Herbert still remained obdurately silent. "You remember,

"Insane!" There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. "You were lucidity itself. Besideswell,

honestly, if I may venture, I don't put very much truck in what one calls one's sanity: except, of course, as a

"But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really stand? That I went down into that old shadowy

"I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it was merely affectationthat what you said was

an affectation, I meanuntilwell, to be quite frank, it was the 'this' that so immensely interested me.

Especially," he added almost with a touch of gaiety, "especially the last glimpse. But if it's really not a

forbidden question, what precisely was the other? What precise manner of man, I mean, came down into

"It is my face that is changed, Mr. Herbert. If you'll try to understand memy face. What you see now is not

what I really am, not what I was. Oh, it is all quite differentI know perfectly well howhow absurd it

must sound. You won't press me further. But that's the truth: that's what they have done for me."

It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had been suddenly caught back in the silence that

had followed his confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette revealed

no sign of him. "I know, I know," he went gropingly on; "I felt it would sound to you like nothing but frantic,

incredible nonsense. You can't see it. You can't feel it. You can't here these hooting voices. It's no use at all

"As to that, Mr. Lawford, honestly, the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof

positive that you're not. Insanity is on another plane, isn't it? in which one can't compare one's states. As for

what you say being credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninetynine hundredths of this

amiable world of ours would have guffawed the poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor

credulous creatures as my sister and I he is no more and no less a fact, a personality, a jolly reality

thanwell, this teacup. Here we are, amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores of

books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and undefiled; and there's not a single one among them but reads

like a taradiddle. Yet grope between the lines of any autobiography, it's pretty clear what one has got,a

feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the indescribable. As for what you say your case is, the

bizarrethat kind very seldom gets into print at all. In all this makebelieve, all this pretence, how, honestly,

could it? But there, this is all immaterial. The real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You

just trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead menbut one moment, I'll light up." He struck a

match, and shading it in his hand from the night air straying through the open window, lit the two candles that

stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford's head. Then sauntering over to the window again, almost

as if with an affectation of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. "Nothing much struck

me," he went on, leaning back on his hands, "I mean on Sunday evening, until you said goodbye. It was

"That's the nuisance! I searched high and low for it the instant I got home. For the moment it has been

mislaid; but it must be somewhere in the house, and will turn up all in good time. It's the frontispiece of one

of a little old French collection of pamphlets, sewn up together quite amateurishly in a marbled paper

Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor.

"An extraordinary resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from memory; and perhaps it's not quite so

Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion's face in an intense and helpless silence. His mouth opened

"Of course," began Herbert again, "I don't say there's anything in itexcept just thethe coincidence." He

paused and glanced out of the open casement besid3e him. "But there's just one obvious question. Do you

Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at last. "No," he said, after a long pause,

"No Sabathier, then?" said Herbert, smiling. "And then there's another questionthis change; is it really as

complete as you suppose? Has itplease just warn me off if I am in the least intrudinghas it been

Lawford hesitated. "Oh yes," he said slowly, "it has been noticedmy wife, a few friends."

"Do you mind this infernal clatter?" said Herbert, laying his fingers on the open casement.

"My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all craziest conjecture. Stranger things even than this have

happened. There are dozens herein print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in the hands of the

potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight and corded up. We have practically no control over

their main functions. And look at the faces of uswhat atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of

image! But we know our bodies changeage, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. It proves they are

amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it is not in the least untenable that, by force of some violent

convulsive effort from outside, one's body might change. . . . It answers with odd voluntariness to friend or

foe, smile or snarl. As for what we call the laws of Nature, they are pure assumptions today, and may be

nothing better than scrapiron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal impudence!" He

Lawford nodded. Herbert taped his cigarette on the sill. "Just following up our conjecture," he said musingly,

"But surely," said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of candlelight, and murmurous sound, and

clearest darkness, towards this strange, deliberate phantom with the unruffled, clearcut features"surely

then, in that case, he is here now? And yet, on my word of honour, though every friend I ever had in the

world should deny it, I am the same; memory stretches back clear and sound to my childhood; I can see

myself with extraordinary lucidity, how I think, my motives and all that; and in spite of these voices that I

seem to hear, and this peculiar kind of longing to break away, as it were, just to press onit is I, I myself,

Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. "You mustn't let me tire you," he said; "but even on our theory

it would not necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's true this fellow Sabathier really

was something of a personality. He had a most wonderful itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze

something out of experience that isn't there; and he never seemed to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in

his fellowcreatures, especially the women he met, what even if they have they cannot give. The little book I

wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really does manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even

there he does absolutely take one's imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in the Charing

Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone for years. He's enormously vividquite beyond

my feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can't get nearer than two

years to his death. I shouldn't mind guessing some last devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath

of an instant too long beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he did kill himself; and, perhaps, died to

"After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?" Herbert continued after a while, his eyes

restlessly wandering from shelf to shelf. "You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that the

body fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in the sleep of the living it lies very

feebly guarded. And supposing in that state some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied,

just happens on itlike some hungry sexton beetle on the body of a mouse. SupposingI know it's the most

outrageous theorisingbut supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier's emanation, or whatever you

like to call it, horribly restless, by some fatality longing on and on just for life, or even for the face, the voice,

of some 'impossible she' whom he couldn't get in life, simply loathing all else; supposing he has been

lingering in ambush down beside those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowy

hospitalityoh, I know it; the dead do. And then, just by chance, one quiet autumn evening, a veritable

godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half

asleep, fagged out, depressed mind and body, perhaps; imagine yourself in his place, and he in yours!"

Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek hair shining. "The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn't

you have made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked the raid? I can just conceive itthe amazing struggle

in that darkness within a darkness; like some dazed alien bee bursting through the sentinels of a hive; one

mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the appalling stirring on the other side; the groping back to a house

dismantled, rearranged, not, mind you, disorganised or disintegrated . . ." He broke off with a smile, as if of

Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert's colourless face. There was not a sound else, it seemed, than

that slightly drawling, scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, baffling thoughts. Herbert

turned away with a shrug. "It's tempting stuff," he said, choosing another cigarette. "But anyhow, the poor

"Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mere imperfect simulacrum, to the

outward illusion of a passing likeness to the man, but to Sabathier himself!" His eyes moved slowly round

Herbert smiled indulgently. "If one can mean what is purely a speculation. I am only trying to look at the

thing dispassionately, you see. We are so much the slaves of mere repetition. Here is lifeyours and

minea kind of plenum in vacuo. It is only when we begin to play the eavesdropper; when something goes

askew; when one of the sentries on the frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoarse 'Qui vive? that we begin to

question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the calves of our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's

but his own satisfaction, just that one fundamental questionAre we the prisoners, the slaves, the inheritors,

the creatures, or the creators of our bodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for identity, or likeness or

personality, we have only our neighbours' nod for them, and just a fading memory. No, the old fairy tales

knew better; and witchcraft's witchcraft to the end of the chapter. Honestly, and just of course on that one

theory, Lawford, I can't help thinking that Sabathier's raid only just so far succeeded as to leave his

impression in the wax. It doesn't, of course, follow that it will necessarily end there. It mightit may be even

now just gradually fading away. It may, you know, need driving outwith whips and scorpions. It might,

Lawford sat cold and still. "It's no good, no good," he said, "I don't understand; I can't follow you. I was

always stupid, always bigoted and cocksure. These things have always seemed nothing but old women's tales

to me. And now I must pay for it. And this Nicholas Sabathier; you say he was a blackguard?"

"Well," said Herbert with a faint smile, "that depends on your definition of the word. He wasn't a flunkey, a

fool, or a prig, if that's what you mean. He wasn't perhaps on Mrs. Grundy's visiting list. He wasn't exactly

gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of temperament's so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it.

To the stodgy, suety world of course it's little else than sheer moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally, in

its own charming, stodgy way the world kept flicking cold water in his direction. Naturally it hissed . . . I

"There's only one more question," said Lawford in a dull, slow voice, stooping and covering his face with his

hands. "I know it's impossible fo ryou to realisebut to me time seems like that water there, to be heaping

up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the

whole surge of brass and wood, cymbal and drum will crash outand sweep me under. I can't tell you,

Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that mole in my mind's dark. You say it's just this

faceworking in. God knows, I find it easy to speak to youthis cold, clear sense, you know. The others

feel too much, or are afraid, orq Let me thinkyes, I was going to ask you a question. But no one can

answer it." He peered darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. "What remains now?

And at that moment there sounded, even above the gushing of the water beneath, there fell the sound of a

THE door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a

"My sister always forgets everything," said Herbert, turning to Lawford; "evne teatime. This is Mr.

Lawford, Grisel. We've been arguing no end. And we want you to give a decision. It's just this: Supposing if

by some impossible trick you had come in now, not the charming, familiar sister you are, but shorter, fatter,

"Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrificationby some unimaginable ingression or enchantment, by

The dark eyes passed slowly from her brother's face and rested gravely on their visitor's.

"But what a question! And I've had no tea." She drew her gloves slowly through her hand. "The thing, of

Lawford gazed quietly back into her clear, grave, deliberate eyes. "Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of

She turned her head and reflected, glancing from one to the other of the pure, steady candleflames.

Lawford took a deep breath, gazing mutely, forlornly, into the lovely, untroubled peace of her eyes, and

without the least warning tears swept up into his own. With an immense effort he turned, and choking back

every sound, beating back every thought, groped his way towards the square, black darkness of the open

"I must think, I must think," he managed to whisper, lifting his hand and steadying himself. He caught over

his shoulder the glimpse of a curiously distorted vision, a lifted candle, and a still face gazing after him with

infinitely grieved eyes, then found himself groping and stumbling down the steep, uneven staircase into the

darkness of the queer old wooden and hushed and lonely house. The night air cold on his face calmed his

"You'll come again," Herbert was saying with a hint of anxiety, even of apology in his voice.

Lawford nodded with eyes fixed blankly on the candle, and turning once more, made his way slowly down

the narrow, greenbordered path upon which the stars rained scattered light so feeble it seemed but as a haze

that blurred the darkness. He pushed open the little white wicket and turned his face towards the soundless,

leafcrowned hill. He had advanced hardly a score of steps in the thick dust when almost as if its very silence

had struck upon his ear he remembered the black, broken grave with its sightless heads that lay beyond the

leaves. And fear, vast and menacing, fear such as only children know, broke like a sea of darkness upon his

heart. He stopped deadcold, helpless, and trembling. And in the silence he heard a faint cry behind him and

light footsteps pursuing him. He turned again. In the thick, close gloom beneath the enormous elmboughs

the grey eyes shone clearly visible in the face upturned to him. "My brother," she began breathlessly"the

"It's not that, not that," Lawford muttered; "don't leave me; I am alone. Don't question me," he said with a

sob, looking down into her face, clutching her hand; "only understand that I can't, I can't go on." He swept a

The cold hand clasped his closer. "Hush, don't speak! Come back; come back! I am with you, a friend, you

Lawford clutched her hand as a blind man in sudden peril might clutch the hand of a child. He saw nothing

clearly; spoke almost without understanding his words. "Oh, but it's must," he said; "I must go on. You

seewhy, everything depends on struggling through: the future! But if you only knew There!" Again

his arm swept out, and the lean, terrified face turned shuddering from the dark.

"I do know; believe me, believe me! I can guess. See, I am coming with you; we will go together. As if, as I

did not know what it is to be afraid. Oh, believe me; no one is near; we go on; and see! it gradually, gradually

She had turned and they were steadily ascending as if pushing their way, battling on through some obstacle of

the mind rather than of the senses beneath the starpowdered, callous vault of night. And it seemed to

Lawford as if, as they pressed on together, some obscure, detestable presence as slowly, as doggedly had

drawn worsted aside. He could see again the peaceful outspread branches of the trees, the lychgate standing

in clearcut silhouette against the liquid dusk of the sky. A strange calm stole over his mind. The very

meaning and memory of his fear faded out and vanished, as the passedaway clouds of a storm that leave a

They stopped and stood together on the brow of the little hill, and Lawford, still trembling from head to foot,

looked back across the hushed and lightless countryside. "It's all gone now," he said wearily, "and now there's

"Please don't say thatunlessunless'a pligrim' too. I think, surely, you must own we did have the best

of it that time. Yesand I don't care who may be listening!but we did win through!"

The clear grey eyes showed not the faintest perturbation. "But I do; I do indeed, in part; I do understand, ever

They paused in the darkness face to face, the silence of the sky, arched in its vastness, above the little hill, the

She turned unquestioningly. And laughing softlyalmost as children do, the stalking shadows of a twilight

wood behind themthey trod in silence back to the house. They said goodbye at the gate, and Lawford

started once more for home. He walked slowly, conscious of an almost intolerable weariness, as if his

strength had suddenly been wrested away from him. And at the top of the hill he sat down on the bank beside

a nettled ditch, beneath a bush of purpleberried nightshade, and with his book pressed down upon the

wayside grass struck a match, and holding it low in the scented, windless air, turned slowly the cockled

Few of them were alike except for the dinginess of the print and the sinister smudge of the portrait. All were

sewn roughly together into a mouldstained, marbled cover. He lit a second match, and as he did so glanced

as if inquiringly over his shoulder. And a score or so of pages before the end he came at last upon the name

It was a likeness even more striking in its crudeness of ink and line and paper than the most finished of

portraits could have been. It repelled, and yet it fascinated him. He had not for a moment doubted Herbert's

calm conviction. And yhet as he stooped in the grass, closely scrutinising the blurred, obscure features, he felt

the faintest surprise not so much at the significant resemblance but at his own composure, his own steady,

unflinching confrontation with this sinister and intangible adversary. The match burned down to his fingers.

He stuffed the book into his pocket, and stared into the pale dial of his watch. It was a few minutes after

eleven. Midnight, then, would see him in. He rose stiffly and yawned in sheer exhaustion. Then, hesitating,

he turned his head and looked down towards the hollow. But a vague foreboding held him back. A sour and

vacuous incredulity swept over him. What was the use of all this struggling and vexation? What gain in living

on? Once dead his sluggish spirit at least would find its rest. Dust to dust indeed it would be for him. What

else, in sober earnest, had he been all his daily stolid life but half dead, scarce conscious, without a living

And even while he was still gloomily debating within himself he had turned towards home, and soon was

walking in a kind of reverie, even his extreme tiredness in part forgotten, and only a faraway, dogged

recollection in his mind that in spite of shame, in spite of all his miserable weakness, the words had been

Yet a desolate and odd air of strangeness seemed to drape his unlighted house as he stood looking up in a

kind of furtive communion with its windows. It affected him with that discomforting air of extreme and

meaningless novelty that things very familiar sometimes take upon themselves. In this leaden tiredness no

impression could be trustworthy. His lids shut of themselves as he softly mounted the steps. It seemed so

needlessly wide a door that soundlessly admitted him. But however hard he pressed the key his bedroom door

remained stubbornly shut until he found that it was already unlocked and he had only to turn the handle. A

nightlight burned in a little basin on the washstand. The room was hung, as it were, with the stillness of

night. And half lying on the bed in her dressinggown, her head leaning on the rail at the foot, was Alice, just

Lawford returned to the door and listened. It seemed he heard a voice talking downstairs, and yet not talking,

for it ran on and on in an incessant slightly argumentative monotony that had neither break nor interruption.

He closed the door, and stooping laid his hand softly on Alice's narrow, still childish hand that lay

halffolded on her knee. Her eyes opened instantly and gazed widely into his face. A slow, vacant smile of

sleep came and went and her fingers tightened gently over his as again he lids drooped down over the drowsy

"At last, at last, dear," she said; "I have been waiting such a time. But we mustn't talk much. Mother is

Faintly through the closeshut door came the sound of that distant, expressionless voice monotonously rising

"Why didn't you tell me, dear?" Alice still sleepily whispered. "Would I have asked a single question? How

"But the changethe change, Alice! You must have seen that. You spoke to me, you did think I was only

aa stranger; and even when you knew, it was only fear on your face, dearest, and aversion; and you turned

to your mother first. Don't think, Alice, that I amGod only knowsnot complaining. But truth is best

Her very hands seemed to quicken in his as now, with sleep quite gone, the fret of memory returned, and she

must reassure both herself and him. "But you see, dear, mother had told me that youbesides, I did know

you at once, really; quite inside, you know, deep down. I know I was perplexed; I didn't understand; but that

was all. Why, even when you came up in the dark, and we talkedif you only know how miserable I had

beenthough I knew even then there was something different, still I was not a bit afraid. Was I? And

shouldn't I have been afraid, horribly afraid, if you had not been you?" She repressed a little shudder, and

clasped his hand more closely. "Don't let us say anything more about it" she implored him; "we are just

together again, you and I; that is all that matters." But her words were like brave soldiers who have fought

Lawford listened; and that was enough just nowthat she still, in spite of doubt, believed in him, and

thought and cared for him. He seemed too tired now to have refused the least kindness. He made no answer,

but leant his head on the cool, slender fingers in gratitude and peace. And, just as he was, he almost instantly

fell asleep. He woke in the darkness to find himself alone. He groped his way heavily to the door and turned

the handle. But now it was really locked. Energy failed him. "I supposeSheila . . ." he muttered.

SHEILA, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window when he woke again. His breakfast tray stood

on a little table beside the bed. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at his wife. The morning light

"Have I, Sheila? I suppose I was tired out. It is very kind of you to have got everything ready like this."

"I am afraid, Arthur, I was thinking rather of the maids. I like to inconvenience them as little as possible; in

She paused to place a little pencil tick at the foot of the page of her butcher's book. "And did youdid you

"I understood," she said, turning slowly in her chair, "you gave me to understand that you went out with the

specific intention of trying to regain . . . But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I must be getting a little bit

hardened to the position, so far at least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of

much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously

erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr. Ferguson whose part you play so admirably you could scarcely spend

"'Failed' did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just now in your clothes on the bed, one might for

the moment be deceived into thinking there was a slightquite the slightest improvement. There was not

quite that"she hovered for the right word"that tenseness. Whether or no, whether you desired any such

change or didn't, I should have supposed in any case it would have been better to act as far as possible like

any ordinary person. You were certainly in an extraordinarily sound sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I

remembered that it was a little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to keep myself awake and

discovered that you had only just come home. I had no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my

headaches; a little thought might possibly have suggested that I should be anxious to hear. But no; it seems I

cannot profit by experience, Arthur. And even now you have not answered surely a very natural question.

You do not recollect, perhaps, exactly what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction even of

"It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside the brokendown grave of a suicide would

have the slightest effect on one'sone's physical condition; though possibly it might affect one's brain. It

would mine; I am at least certain of that. It as your own prescription, however; and it merely occurred to me

to inquire whether the actual experience has not brought you round to my own opinion."

"Yes, I think it has," Lawford answered calmly. "But I don't quite see what suicide has got to do with it;

"For prayer or praise?" Although Lawford had not actually raised his head, he became conscious rather of the

wonderfully adjusted mass of hair than of the pained dignity in the face that was now closely regarding him.

"I went," came the rigidly controlled retort, "simply to test an inconceivable story."

"Convinced, Arthur, of its inconceivability. But if you would kindly inform me what precise formula you

followed at Widderstone last night, I would tell you why I think the explanation, or rather your first account

"Candidly, Arthur, Mr. Danton doubts the whole story. Your very conductwell, it would serve no useful

purpose to go into that. Candidly, on the other hand, Mr. Danton did make some extremely helpful

suggestionsbasing them, of course, on the truth of your account. He has seen a good deal of life; and

certainly very mysterious things do occur even to quite innocent, wellmeaning people without the faintest

shadow of warning, and as Mr. Bethany himself said, evil birds do come home to roost, and often out of a

clear sky, as it were. But there, every fresh solution that occurs to me only makes the thing more

preposterous, more, I was going to say, disreputableI mean, of course, to the outside world. And we have

our duties to perform to them too, I suppose. Why, what can we say? What plausible account of ourselves

have we? We shall never be able to look anybody in the face again. I can onlyI am compelled to believe

that God has been pleased to make this precise visitation upon usan eye for an eye, I suppose, somewhere.

And to that conviction I shall hold until actual circumstances convince me that it's false. What, however, and

this is all that I have to say now, what I cannot understand are your amazing indiscretions."

"Well," said Lawford, "wasn't it indiscreet, don't you think, to risk divine retribution by marrying me?

Shouldn't you have inquired? Wasn't it indiscreet to allow me to remain here inin my 'visitation?' Wasn't it

indiscreet to risk the moral stigma this unhappy face of mine must cast on its surroundings? I am not sure

whether such a change as this constitutes cruelty . . . Oh, what is the use of fretting and babbling on like

"Am I to understand, then, that you refuse positively to discuss this horrible business any more? You are

doing your best to drive me away, Arthur; you must see that. Will you be very disappointed if I refuse to go?"

Lawford rose from the bed. "Listen just this once," he said, seating himself on the corner of the

dressingtable. "Imagine all thiswhatever you like to call itobliterated. Take this," he nodded towards

the glass, "entirely for itself, on its own merits, as it were. Let the dead past bury its dead. Which, now,

precisely really do you preferhim," he jerked his head in the directionof the dispassionate, youthful picture

He was so close to her now that he could see the faintest tremor on the face that had suddenly become grey

"I own it, I own it," he went on slowly; "the change is more than skindeep now. One can't go through what I

have gone through these last few terrifying days, Sheila, unchanged. They have played the devil with my

body; now begins the tampering with my mind. Not even Danton knows how it will end. But shall I tell you

why you won't, why you can't answer me that one questionhim or me? Shall I tell you?"

"It is because, my dear, you don't care the ghost of a straw for either. That onehe was worn out long ago,

and we never knew it. I know it now. Time and the sheer goingon of day by day, without either of us

guessing at it, wore that down till it had no more meaning for you or me than any other faded remembrance

of this interminable fooling with truth that we call life. And this onethe whole abject meaning of it lies

simply in the fact that it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage. I couldn't see how feeble a

hold I had on lifejust one's friend's opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now

isleave me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living on, one shadow of an iotaall I ask is, What am I

to do for you?" He turned away and stood staring down at the grey cinders of the fireplace.

"I answer that mad, wicked outburst with one plain question," said a low, trembling voice; "did you or did

"You sat there, just as you said you sat before; and with all your heart and soul strove to regainyourself?"

Lawford lifted a still, colourless face into the sunlight. "No," he said; "I spent the evening at the house of a

"Then I say it is infamous. You cast all this on me. You have brought me into contempt and poisoned Alice's

whole life. You dream and idle on just as you used to do, without the least care or thought or consideration

for others; and go out in this conditiongo out absolutely unashamedto spend the evening at a friend's.

Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helterskelter before the onset of a wolf were the thoughts

that a moment before had seemed so orderly and sober. "Not madpossessed," he said softly.

"And I add this," cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask, "somewhere in the past, whether of your own

life, or of the lives of those who brought you into the worldthe world which you pretend so conveniently to

despisesomewhere is hidden some miserable secret. God visits all sins. On you has fallen at last the

payment. That I believe. You can't run away, any more than a child can run away from the cupboard it has

been locked into for a punishment. Who's going to hear you now? You have deliberately refused to make a

Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound that had been the unceasing accompaniment

of all these later yearsthe rustling of his wife's skirts, her crisp, authoritative footsteps. And he turned

towards the flooding sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface of the lookingglass. No clear,

decisive thought came into his mind, only a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was

the end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone again, that was allalone, as in reality he had

always been alone, without having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had sxaid had been

th3e mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and irrevocable between himself and the past.

He sat dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling recognition tried to obtrude itself; again and again he

beat it back. And rather for something to distract his attention than for any real interest or enlightenment he

might find in its pages, he took out the grimy dog'seared book that Herbert had given him, and turned

slowly over the leaves till he came to Sabathier once more. Snatches of remembrance of their long talk

returned to him, but just as that dark, waterhaunted house had seemed to banish remembrance and the

reality of the room in which he now sat, and of the old familiar life; so now the house, the faces of yesterday

seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and the thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a

But a moment's comparison in the glass of the two faces side by side suddenly sharpened his attentionthe

resemblance was so oddly arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive. There was then something of

the stolid old Saxon left, he thought. Or had it been regained? Which was it? Not merely the complexity of

the question, but a halfconscious distaste of attempting to face it, set him reading very slowly and

laboriously, for his French was little more than fragmentary recollection, the first few pages of the life of this

buried Sabathier. But with a disinclination almost amounting to aversion he made very slow progress. Many

of the words were meaningless to him, and every other moment he found himself listening with intense

concentration for the least hint of what Sheila was doing, of what was going on in the house beneath him. He

had not very long to wait. He was sitting with his head leaning on his hand, the book unheeded beneath the

other on the table, when the door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for a moment, calm

"Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique, or even in anger. It would serve no purpose

to go on like thisthis incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes, misconceptions,

perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my

"Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly," she began again in a quiet, rapid voice. "Have you really

shown the slightest regard, I won't say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties

andand proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I can brooding on and on over the same

horrible, impossible thoughts. I withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. It is not even

Lawford did not turn his head. "Of course," he said, looking rather vacantly out of the window, "it was only

"Well," she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the bed with one gloved hand"well, I fell it is

my duty to withdraw it. Apart from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened in these

last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare, I see that even then what you have said about

our married life together can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for years past your

life has been nothing but a pretencea sham. You implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware

of it, Arthur. But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what might happen at any moment

to anybody, some actual defacement (you will forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)why, if what

you say is true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual fret and annoyance to you.

And thisthis change, I own, is infinitely harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all

that we hold seemly andand sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You do, you must see all that,

"Oh yes," said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the sunlight, "I see all that."

"Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say, or think, I shall still, at least so long as

nothing occurs to the contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr. Bethany has assured me repeatedly

that he has nono misgivings; that he understands. And even if I still doubted, which I don't, Arthur, though

it would be rather trying to have to accept one's husband at secondhand, as it were, I should have to be

satisfied. I daresay even such an unheardof thing as what we are discussing now, or something equally

ghastly, does occur occasionally. In foreign countries, perhaps. I have not studied such things enough to say.

We were all very much restricted in our reading as children, and I honestly think, not unwisely. It is enough

for the present to repeat that I do believe, and that whatever may happenand I know absolutely nothing

about the procedure in such casesbut whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always have your

interests at heart." Her words faltered and she turned her head away. "You did love me once, Arthur, I can't

forget that." The contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand smoothed gently the brass knob

"If," said Lawford, resting his face on his hands, and curiously watching the while his moving reflection in

"Yes; but if I said that that too was said only in haste, that brooding over the trouble thisthis

metamorphosis was bringing on us all had driven me almost beyond endurance; supposing that I withdrew all

that, and instead said now that I do still love you, just as I" he turned a little, and turned back again,

Sheila paused. "Could any woman answer such a question?" she almost sighed at last.

"Yes, but," Lawford pressed on, in a voice almost as naive and stubborn as a child's, "if I tried toto make

"I can't, I can't conceive such a position. Surely that alone is almost as frantic as it is heartless! Is it, is it even

"Well, I have not actually asked it. I own," he added moodily, almost under his breath, "it would be . . . But

there, Sheila, this poor old mask of mine is wearing out. I am somehow convinced of that. What will be left,

God only knows. You were saying" He rose abruptly. "Please, please sit down," he said; "I did not

"I shall not keep you a moment," she answered hurriedly; "I will sit here. The truth is, Arthur," she began

again almost solemnly, "apart from all sentiment andand good intentions, my presence here only harasses

you and keeps you back. I am not so bound up in myself that I cannot realise that. The consequence is that

after calmlyand I hope consideratelythinking the whole thing over, I have come to the conclusion that it

would arose very little comment, the least possible perhaps in the circumstances, if I just went away for a few

days. You are not in any sense ill. In fact, I have never known you so, so robust, so energetic. You will go out

alone: Mr. Bethany, perhaps . . . You could go out and ome in just as you pleased. Possibly," Sheila smiled

frankly beneath her veil, "even this Dr. Ferguson you have invented will be a help. It's only the servants that

"Then do not worry about them. I can easily explain. And if you would not mind letting her in, Mrs. Gull can

come in every other day or so just to keep things in order. She's entirely trustworthy and discreet. Or perhaps,

"Mrs. Gull will do nicely, Sheila. It's very good of you to have given me so much thought." A long, rather

"Oh, one other thing, Arthur. You sent out to Mr. Critchettdo you remember?the night you first came

home. I think, too, after the first awful shock, when we were sitting in our bedroom, you actually referred

toto violent measures. You will promise me, I may, perhaps, at least ask that, you will promise me on your

"Yes, yes," said Lawford, sinking lower even than he had supposed possible into the thin and lightless chill of

Sheila rose with a sigh only in part suppressed. "I have not seen Mr. Bethany again. I think, however, it

would be better to let Harry know; I mean, dear, of your derangement. After all, he is one of the familyat

least of mine. He will not interfere. He would, perhaps quite naturally, be hurt if we did not take him into our

confidence. Otherwise there is no pressing cause for haste, at least for another week or so. After that, I

suppose, something will have to be done. Then there's Mr. Wedderburn; wouldn't it be as well to let him

know that at least for the present you are quite unable to think of returning to town? That, too, in time will

have to be arranged, I suppose, if nothing happens meanwhile; I mean if things don't come right. And I do

hope, Arthur, you will not set your mind too closely on what may only prove false hopes! This is all intensely

Again Lawford, even though he did not turn to confront it, became conscious of the black veil turned towards

"I always rather fancied so," said Sheila reflectively, "he looks rather aa restless man. Oh, and then again,"

she broke off quickly, "there's the question of money. I supposeit is only a conjectureI suppose it would

be better to do nothing in that direction just for the present. Ada has now gone to the bank. Fifty pounds,

Arthur; it is out of my own private accountdo you think that will be enough, just, of course, for your

"As a bribe, hushmoney, or a thankoffering, Sheila?" murmured her husband wearily.

He did actually turn this time and glance steadily over his shoulder. "How long are you going for? and

"I proposed to go to my cousin's, Mrs. Lovat's; that is, of course, if you have no objection. It's near; it will be

a longdeferred visit; and she need know very little. And, of course, if for the least thing in the world you

should want me, there I am within call, as it were. And will you write? We are acting for the best, Arthur?"

Sheila pondered. "You think, you mean, they'll all say I ought to have stayed. Candidly, I can't see it in that

light. Surely every experience of life proves that in intimate domestic matters, and especially in those

between husband and wife, only the parties concerned have any means of judging what is best for them? It

has been our experience at any rate; though I must in fairness confess that, outwardly at least, I haven't had

The house was quiet. There was not a sound stirring in the still, sunny road of orchards and discreet and

drowsy villas. A long silence followed, immensely active and alert on the one side, almost morbidly lethargic

At last the last haunting question came in a kind of croak, as if only by a supreme effort could it be compelled

"My dear Arthur," cried Sheila, "it is surely, apart from mere delicacy, a parental obligation to screen the

poor child from the shock. Could she be at such a time in any better keeping that her mother's? At present she

only vaguely guesses. To know definitely that her father, infinitely worse than death, hadhad Oh, is it

Lawford made no stir. The quietest of raps came at the door. "The money from the Bank, m'm," said a faint

Sheila carefully opened the door a few inches. She laid the blue envelope on the dressingtable at her

husband's elbow. "You had better perhaps count it," she said in a low voice"forty in notes, the rest in

gold," and narrowed here eyes beneath her veil upon her husband's very peculiar method of forgetting his

Lawford's eyes fell and rested gravely on the dingy page of Herbert's meanlooking bundle of print. A queer

feeling of cold crept over him. "Yes," he said vaguely, "French," and hopelessly failed to fill in the silence

that seemed like some rather sleek nocturnal creature quietly waiting to be fed.

Sheila swept softly towards the door. "Well, Arthur, I think that is all. The servants will have gone by this

evening. I have ordered a carriage for halfpast twelve. If you would just write down any thing that occurs to

you to be necessary. Perhaps, too, it would be better if Dr. Simon were told that we shall not need him any

more, that you are thinking of a complete change of scene, a voyage. He is obviously useless. Besides, Mr.

Bethany, I think, is going to discuss a specialist with you. I have written him a little note, just briefly

"You remember everything," said Lawford, and it seemed to him it was a remark he had heard ages and ages

"I think, Sheila, if I do take a voyage I should almost prefer to work my passage. As for a mere 'change of

"It is only your face, Arthur," said Sheila solemnly, "that suggests these wicked stabs. Some day you will

"It is possible, Sheila; we none of us stand still, you know. One rips open a lid sometimes and the wax face

rots before one's eyes. Take your blue envelope, Sheila; and thank you for thinking of me. It's always the

"I wish," said Sheila almost pathetically, and yet with a faint quaver of resignation, "I wish it could be said

Sheila, with her husband's luncheon tray, brought also her farewells. Lawford surveyed, not without a faint,

shy stirring of incredulity, the superbly restrained presence. He stood before he drylipped, inarticulate, a

"Very well, Arthur; if you won't take it," she said. "I should scarcely have thought this the occasion for mere

"The tenth," she continued, as she squeezed the envelope into her purse, with only the least hardening of

voice, "although I daresay you have not troubled to remember itthe tenth will be the eighteenth anniversary

of our weddingday. It makes parting, however advisable, and though only for the few days we should think

nothing of in happier circumstances, a little harder to bear. But there, all will come right. You will see things

in a different light, perhaps. Words may wound, but time will heal." But even as she looked now closely into

his colourless, sunken face some distant memory seemed to well up irresistiblythe memory of eyes just as

na�ve, just as unassuming, that even in claiming her love had expressed only their own stold unworthiness.

"Did you know it? have you seen it?" she said, stooping forward a little. "I believe in spite of all . . ." He

"Wait till Mr. Bethany tells you; you will believe it perhaps from him." He saw the greygloved hand a little

She hesitated, listening to a small faraway voice that kept urging her with an almost froglike pertinacity to

do, to say something, and yet as stubbornly would not say what; and she was gone.

RAYING and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the gate. Lawford, peeping between the

blinds, looked down on the coachman, with reins hanging loosely from his red, squatthumbed hand, seated

in his tight livery and indescribable hat on the faded cushions. One thing only was in his mind; and it was

almost with an audible cry that he turned towards the figure that edged, white and trembling, into the chill

and silent room. He took the narrow shoulders in his arms and covered the lightbrown hair with kisses.

"Don't look at me, don't look at me," he said, "only remember, dearest, I would rather have died down there

and been never seen again than have given you pain. Runrun, your mother's calling. Write to me, think of

He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening, till the door had shut gently behind the last rat to leave

the sinking ship. All the clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzy sickening flare

and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear, loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end.

There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. To give up was to go to perdition: to go

forward was to go mad. And even madnesshe sat up with trembling lips in the twilightmadness itself

was only a state, only a state. You might be bereaved, and the pain and hopelessness of that would pass. You

might be cast out, betrayed, deserted, and still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a brave face a friend.

But madness!it surged in on him with all the clearness and emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his

hand clutching the bedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for the presences and the

voices that have their thinwalled dwelling beneath the shallow crust of consciousness. Inky blackness

drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he was powerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to

turn; no air to breathe. And yet there was a low, continuous, nevervarying stir as of an enormous wheel

whirling in the gloom. Countless infinitesimal faces arched like glimmering pebbles the huge dimcoloured

vault above his head. He heard a voice above the monstrous rustling of the wheel, clamouring, calling him

back. He was hastening headlong, muttering to himself his own flat, meaningless name, like a child repeating

as he runs his errand. And then as if in a charmed, cold pool he awoke and opened his eyes again on the

gathering darkness of the great bedroom, and heard a quick, importunate, longcontinued knocking on the

Cramped and heavylimbed, he felt his way across the room and lit a candle. He stood listening awhile, with

eyes fixed on the door that stood a little open. All in the room seemed acutely, fantastically still. The flame

burned him, enisled in the sluggish air. He stole softly to the door and looked out and again listened. Again

the knocking broke out more impetuously and yet still with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding the

flame of his candle in the shell of his left hand, Lawford moved slowly, with chin uplifted, to the stairs. He

bent forward a little, and stood motionless and drawn up, with pupils slowly contracting and expanding, as he

gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim, louring presence that had fallen back before him.

"Thank God, thank God!" he heard Mr. Bethany mutter. "I mustn't call, Lawford," came a hurried whisper as

if the old gentleman were pressing his lips to speak through the letterbox. "Come down and open the door;

"Yes, I am coming," said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his breath, and stair by stair he descended,

driving steadily before him the crouching, gloating, menacing form, darkly lifted up before him against the

"Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?" came the anxious old voice again, striving in

"No, no," muttered Lawford, "I am coming; coming slowly." He paused to breathe, his hands trembling, his

hair lank with sweat, and still with eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in the

darknessan adversary that, if he should but close his lids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with

its evil. "So long as you don't get in," he heard himself muttering, "so long as you don't get in, my friend!"

"What's that you're saying?" came up the muffled, querulous voice; "I can't for the life of me hear, my boy."

"Nothing, nothing," came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs. "I was only speaking to myself."

Quite deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes, Lawford pushed forward a pace or two

into the airless, empty drawingroom, and grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black,

oblique shadow across his face, his eyes fixed like an animal's, then drew the door steadily towards him. And

suddenly some power that had held him tense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head, and, his face quivering

with fear and loathing, spat defiance as it were in a passion of triumph into the gloom.

Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another moment his candle was gleaming out on the

"You gave me quite a fright," said the old man almost angrily; "have you hurt your foot, or something?"

"What!" said Mr. Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his unspectacled eyes; "has she cut off the gas,

Mr. Bethany sat down on one of the hard old wooden chairs that stood on either side the lofty hall, and

breathing rather thickly, rested his hands on his knees. "What's happened?" he inquired, looking up into the

candle. "I left my glasses, old fool that I am, and can't, my dear chap, see you very plainly. But your

"What, the whole thing! Oh no, my dear fellow; be frank with me; not the whole thing?"

"Yes," said Lawford, "the whole thingvery, very gradually, imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But

The two faces with the candle between them seemed as it were to gain light each from the other.

"Well, well," said Mr. Bethany, "every man for himself, Lawford; it's the only way. But what's going to be

"You've squabbled? Oh, but my dear, honest old, honest old idiot, there's scores of families here in this

parish, within a stone's throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other's eyes out, every day of

their earthly lives. It's perfectly natural. Where should we poor old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we

"Yes," said Lawford, "but you see, this was not our earthly life. It was between us."

"Listen, listen to the dear mystic!" exclaimed the old creature scoffingly. "What depths we're touching! Here's

the first serious break of his lifetime, and he's gone stark, staring transcendental! Ah well!" He paused and

glanced quickly about him, with his curious birdlike poise of head. "But you're not alone here?" he inquired

"Yes," said Lawford; "but there's plenty to think aboutand read. I haven't thought or read for years."

"No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and the book's called Life. Bless me, his solemn

old voice is grinding epigrams out of even this poor old parochial barrelorgan. You don't suppose, my dear

boy, you are the only serious person in the world? What's more, it's only skin deep."

"Come here," said Mr. Bethany. "Where's the whiskey, where's the cigars? You shall smoke and drink, and

I'll watch. If it weren't for a pitiful old stomach, I'd join you. Come on!" He led the way into the diningroom.

He looked tinier, more wizened, and sinewy that ever as he stooped to open the sideboard. "Where on earth

Lawford put the candlestick down on the table. "There's only one thing," he said, watching his visitor's

"Look here, Lawford," snapped Mr. Bethany; "I've come round here, hooting through your letterbox to talk

sense, not sentiment. Why has your wife deserted you? Without a servant, without a single It's perfectly

"On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn't have gone on. Alone I all b forget thisthis lupus. We are

alone, whether we know it or not; you said it yourself. And it's better to realise it stark and unconfused.

Besides, you have no idea whatwhat odd things . . . there may be; there is something on the other side. I'll

Mr. Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from his knees with a halfempty syphon of

sodawater. "Look here, Lawford," he said; "if you really want to know what's your most insidious and most

dangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual pride. You've won what you think a domestic victory; and you

can scarcely bear the splendour. Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what is this 'other side' which the superior

doublefaced creature's going to win through to now?" He rapped it out almost bitterly, almost

Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly arisen the peace, the friendly, unquestioning

stillness, the thunderous lullaby old as the grave. "It's only a fancy. It seemed I could begin again."

"Well, look here," said Mr. Bethany, his whole face suddenly lined and grey with age. "You can't. It's the one

solitary thing I've got to say, as I've said to myself morn, noon, and night these scores of years. You can't

begin again; it's all a delusion and a snare. You say we're alone. So we are. The world's a dream, a stage, a

mirage, a rack, call it what you willbut you don't change, you're no illusion. There's no crying off for you,

no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You've got thisthis trouble, this afflictionmy dear, dear fellow, what

shall I say to tell you how I grieve and groan for youoh, yes, and actually laughed, I confess it, a vile

hysterical laughter, to think of it. You've got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it's come like a thief in

the night; but bear it you must, and alone! They say death's a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long

undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must

stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade. Well then, and not another word

of sense shall you worm out of my wornout old brains after todayall I say is, don't give in! Why, if you

stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, the old, fat sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off

under my eyes in his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything about human nature I'd say it to your

face, and a fig for your vanity and resignationyour last state will be worse than the first. There!" He

bunched up a big white handkerchief and mopped it over his head. "That's done," he said, "and we won't go

back. What I want to know now is what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping? What are you going to

think about? I'll stayyes, yes, that's what it must be: I must stay. And I detest strange beds. I'll stay, you

Lawford gazed gravely. "There is one little thing I wanted to ask you before you go. I've wormed out an

extraordinary old French book; andjust as you sayto pass the time, I've been having a shot at translating

Mr. Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time to dodge his friend's eyes, to gain as best he

could some sustained, unobserved glance at this baffling face. "Where is your precious French book?" he said

"Fire away, then!" Lawford rose and glanced about the room. "What, no light there either?" snapped Mr.

Bethany. "Take this; I don't mind the dark. There'll be plenty of that for me soon."

Lawford hesitated at the door, looking rather strangely back. "No," he said, "there are matches upstairs." He

shut the door after him. The darkness seemed cold and still as water. He went slowly up, with eyes fixed wide

on the floating, luminous gloom, and out of memory seemed to gather, as faintly as in the darkness which

they had exorcised for him, the strange, pitiful eyes of the night before. And as he mounted a chill, terrible,

Mr. Bethany was sitting as he had left him, looking steadily on the floor, when Lawford returned. He

flattened out the book on the table with a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle nearer, he adjusted his

"H'm! don't know him. Anyhow, precious poor stuff this is. This Sabathier, whoever he is, seems to be a kind

of claptrap, eighteenthcentury adventurer who thought the world would be better off, apparently, for a long

account of all his sentimental amours. Rousseau, with a touch of Don Quixote in his composition, and an

echo of that prince of bogies, Poe! What, in the name of wonder, induced you to fix on this for your holiday

"I never said he wasn't. He's a good deal too much alive for my old wits, with his Mam'selle This and

Madame The Other; interesting enough, perhaps, for the professional literary nose with a taste for patchouli."

Mr. Bethany peered over his glasses at his ingenuous questioner. "I should say decidedly that the fellow was

a very rare character, so long as by rare you don't mean good. It's one of the dullest stupidities of the present

day, my dear fellow, to dote on a man simply because he's different from the rest of us. Once a man strays out

of the common her4d, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels. From what I can gather in

just these few pages this Sabathier appears to have been an amorous, adventurous, emotional Frenchman,

who went to the dogs as easily and as rapidly as his own nature and his period allowed. And I should say,

Lawford, that he made precious bad reading for a poor old troubled hermit like yourself at the present

Mr. Bethany, with some little impatience, turned back to the engraving. "'Nicholas de Sabathier,'" he

muttered. "'De,' indeed!" He poked in at the foxy print with narrowed eyes. "I don't deny it's a striking, even

perhaps, a rather taking face. I don't deny it." He gazed on with an even more acute concentration, and looked

up sharply. "Look here, Lawford, what in the name of wonderwhat trick are you playing on me now?"

"Trick?" said Lawford; and the word fell with the tiniest plash in the silence, like a vivid little float upon the

The old face flushed. "What conceivable bearing, I say, has this dead and gone old roue on us now?"

"Resemblance?" repeated Mr. Bethany in a flat voice, and without raising his face again to meet Lawford's

"But even, my dear fellow (forgive my dull old brains!), even if there was just the faintest superficial

"Buried in Widderstone?" The keen, childlike blue eyes looked almost stealthily up across the book; the old

man sat without speaking, so still that it might even be supposed he himself was listening for a very distant

"He is buried in the grave beside which I fell asleep," said Lawford; "all green and still and broken," he added

faintly. "You remember," he went on in a repressed voice"you remember you aske dme if there was

Mr. Bethany pushed the book a few inches away from him. "Who, did you say, who was it you said put the

thing into your head? A queer friend surely?" he paused helplessly. "And how, pray, do you know," he began

again more firmly, "even if there is a Sabathier buried at Widderstone, how do you know it is this Sabathier?

It's not, I think," he added boldly, "a very uncommon name; with two b's at any rate. Whereabouts is the

"Quite down at the bottom, under the trees. And the little seat I told you of is there, too, where I fell asleep.

You see," he explained, "the grave's almost isolated; I suppose because he killed himself."

Mr. Bethany clasped his knuckled fingers on the tablecloth. "It's no good," he concluded after a long pause;

"the fellow's got up into my head. I can't think him out. We must thrash it out quietly in the morning with the

blessed sun at the window; not this farthing dip. To me the whole idea is as revolting as it is incredible. Why,

above a centuryno, no! And on the other hand, how easily one's fancy builds! A few straws and there's a

nest and squawking fledglings, all complete. Is that whyis that why that good, practical wife of yours and

all your faithful household have absconded? Does it"he threw up his head as if towards the house above

Mr. Bethany tossed the huggermugger of pamphlets across the table. "Then, for simple sanity's sake, don't.

Hide it; burn it; put the thing completely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where is this wonderful friend?"

"And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?" he leant forward almost threateningly. "There isn't

"Oh no," said Lawford. "We are quite alonewith this, you know," he pointed to the book, and smiled

Again Mr. Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again shook himself and raised his eyes.

"Well, then," he said, in a voice almost morose in its fretfulness, "what I suggest is that first you keep quiet

here; and next, that you rwrite and get your wife back. You say you are better. I think you said she herself

noticed a slight improvement. Isn't it just exactly what I foresaw? And yet she's gone! But that's not our

business. Get her back! And don't for a single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a single instant, I

implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream. . . .

"It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or contriving; or at any rateshe said itof

"She said that!" Mr. Bethany sat back. "I see, I see," he said. "I'm nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And

there was I, not ten minutes ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. God bless me,

Lawford, how long we take alearning! To think thisthis"he laid a long, lean hand at arm's length flat

upon the table toward his friend"to think this is our old jogtrot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw

you over, you old wolf in sheep's wool! I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to sleep?"

Lawford took a deep breath. "You're going, old friend, to sleep at home. And II'm going to give you my

arm to the Vicarage gate. Here I am, immeasurably relieved, fitter than I've been since I was a dolt of a

schoolboy. On my word of honour; I can't say why, but I am. I don't care that, vicar, honestlypuffed up

with spiritual pride. If a man can't sleep with pride for a bedfellow, well, he'd better try elsewhere. It's no

good; I'm as stubborn as a mule; that's at least a relic of the old man. I care no more," he raised his voice

firmly and gravely"I don't care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!"

Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. "Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!" he

muttered, "nor the devil himself, I suppose!" He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of the

face he could so dimlyand of set purposediscern; and without a word trotted off into the hall. Lawford

"'Pon my word, you haven't had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; just a quarter of an hour, eh?"

"Not me," said Mr. Bethany; "if you won't have me, home I go. I refuse to encourage this miserable

grasswidowering. What would they say? What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shocking

He suffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed umbrella. "Better not leave a candle," he said.

A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up through the fanlight as, with a smile that could be

described neither as mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestive of all three,

Lawford quietly opened the drawingroom door and put down the candlestick on the floor within.

"What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?" came the almost fretful question from under the

THE first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when Lawford again let himself into his

deserted house. He stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and cheese, and ate it, sitting

on the table, watching the leafy eastern sky through the painted bars of the area window. He munched on,

hungry and tired. His night walk had cooled head and heart. Having obstinately refused Mr. Bethany's

invitation to sleep at the Vicarage, he had sat down on an old low wall, and watched until his light had shone

out at his bedroom window. Then he had simply wandered on, past rustling, glimmering gardens, under the

great timbers of yellowing elms, hardly thinking, hardly aware of himself except as in a faraway vision of a

sluggish, insignificant creature struggling across the tossedup crust of an old, incomprehensible world. The

secret of his content in that long, leisurely ramble had been that ever by a scarcely realised effort it had not

lain in the direction of Widderstone. And now, as he sat hungrily devouring his breakfast on the table in the

kitchen, with the daybreak comforting his eyes, he thought with a positive mockery of that poor old

nightthing he had driven inch by inch into the safe keeping of his pink and white drawingroom. Don

Quixote, Poe, and Rousseauthey were familiar but not very significant labels to a mind that had found very

poor entertainment in reading. But they were at least representative enough to set him wondering which of

their influences it was that had inflated with such a gaseous heroism the Lawford of the night before. He

thought of Sheila with a not unkindly smile, and of the rest. "I wonder what they'll do?" had been a question

almost as much in his mind during these last few hours as had "What am I to do?" in the first bout of his

"visitation." But the "they" was not very precisely visualised. He saw Sheila, and Harry, and dainty paleblue

Mrs. Lovat, and cautious old Wedderburn, and Danton, and Craik, and cheery, gossipy Dr. Sutherland, and

the verger, Mr. Dutton, and Critchett, and the gardener, and Ada, and the whole vague populous host that

keep one as definitely in one's place in the world's economy as a firmset pin in the camphored moth. What

his place was to be only time could show. Meanwhile there was in this loneliness at least a respite.

Solitude!he bathed his weary bones in it. He laved his eyelids in it, as in a woodland brook after the heat of

noon. He sat on in calmest reverie till his hunger was satisfied. Then, scattering out his last crumbs to the

burds from the barred window, he climbed upstairs again, past his usual bedroom, past his detested guest

room, up into the narrow sweetness of Alice's, and flinging himself on her bed fell into a long and dreamless

By ten next morning Lawford had bathed and dressed. And at halfpast ten he got up from Sheila's fat little

French dictionary and his memoirs to answer Mrs. Gull's summons on the area bell. The little woman stood

with arms folded over an empty and capacious bag, with an air of sustained melancholy on her friendly face.

She wished him a very nervous "Good morning," and dived down into the kitchen. The hours dragged slowly

by in a silence broken only by an occasional ring at the bell. About three she emerged from the house and

climbed the area steps with her bag hooked over her arm. He watched the little black figure out of sight,

watched a man in a white canvas hat ascend the steps to push a blueprinted circular through the letterbox.

It had begun to rain a little. He returned to the breakfastroom and with the window wide open to the rustling

coolness of the leaves, edged his way very slowly across from line to line of the obscure French print.

Sabathier none the less, and in spite of his unintelligible literariness, did begin to take shape and consistency.

The man himself, breathing, and thinking, began to live for Lawford even in those few, halfarticulate pages,

though not in quite so formidable a fashion as Mr. Bethany had summed him up. But, as the west began to

lighten with the declining sun, the same old disquietude, the same old friendless and foreboding ennue stole

over Lawford's solitude once more. He shut his books, placed a candlestick and two boxes of matches on the

At a mean little barber's shop with a pole above his lettered door he went in to be shaved. And a few steps

further on he sat down at the crumblittered counter of a little baker's shop to have some tea. It pleased him

almost to childishness to find how easily he could listen and even talk to the oiled and crimpy little barber,

and to the pretty, consumptivelooking, printdressed baker's wife. Whatever his face might now be

conniving at, the Arthur Lawford of last week could never have hobnobbed so affably with his social

For no reason in the world, unless to spend a moment or two longer in the little baker's shop, he bought

sixpennyworth of cakes. He watched them as they were deposited one by one in the bag, and even asked for

one sort to be exchanged for another, blushing a little at his excuse"They were so very delicious."

He climbed out of the shop, and paused on the wooden doorstep. "Do you happen to know Mr. Herbert's?" he

The baker's wife looked up at him with clear, reflective eyes. "Mr. Herbert's?that must be some little way

"Well, yes, it is," said Lawford, rather foolishly; "I hardly know why I asked. It's past the churchyard at

Lawford looked at her face, but could find nothing more to say, so he smiled again, rather absently, and

He sat down outside the churchyard gate on the very bank where he had in the sourness of the nettles first

opened Sabathier's memoir. The world lay still beneath the pale sky. Presently the little fat rector walked up

the hill, his wrists still showing beneath his sleeves. Lawford meditatively watched him pass by. A little boy

with a switch, a tiny nose, and a swinging gallipot, his cheeks lit with the sunset, followed soon aftger.

Lawford beckoned him with his finger and held out the bag of tarts. He watched him, half incredulous of his

prize, and with many a cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long while he sat alone, only

the evening birds ringing out of the greenness and silence of the churchyard. What a haunting, inexplicable

Colour suddenly faded out of the light streaming between the branches. And depression, always lying in

ambush of the novelty of his freedom, began like mist to rise above his restless thoughts. It was all so devilish

emptythis raft of the world floating under evening's shadow. How many sermons had he listened to,

enriched with the simile of the ocean of life. Here it was, come home to roost. He had fallen asleep,

ineffectual sailor that he was, and a thief out of the cloudy deep had stolen oar and sail and compass, leaving

"Are they worth, do you think, quite a penny?" suddenly inquired a quiet voice in the silence. He looked up

"The first half is well worth the pennyits originality! I can't afford twopence. So you must give me what

Lawford gazed rather blankly across the twilight fields. "I was wondering," he said with an oddly naive

"They say, you know," Grisel replied solemnly, "drowned sailors float midway, suffering their sea change;

"Philosophy!" said Lawford; "I am a perfect fool. Has your brother told you about me?"

"Then you do know?" He stopped dead, and turned to her. "You really realise it, looking at me now?"

"I realise," she said gravely, "that you look even a little more pale and haggard than when I saw you first the

other night. We both, my brother and I, you know, thought for certain you'd come yesterday. In fact, I went

into Widderstone in the evening to look for you, knowing your nocturnal habits!" She glanced again at him

"Does he? He's tremendously interested; but then, he's pretty easily interested, when he's interested at all. If

he can possibly twist anything into the slightest show of a mystery, he will. But, of course, you won't, you

can't take all he says seriously. The tiniest pinch of salt, you know. He's an absolute fanatic at talking in the

"I mean if once a theory gets into his headthe more farfetched, so long as it's original, the betterit

flowers out into a positive miracle of incredibilities. And of course you can rout out evidence for anything

under the sun from his dingy old folios. Why did he lend you that particular book?"

"He said it was Sabathier." She seemed to think intensely for the merest fraction of a moment, and turned.

He touched her arm, and they stopped again, face to face. "Tell me what difference exactly you see," he said.

"I am quite myself again now, honestly; please tell me just the very worst you think."

"I think, to begin with," she began, with exaggerated candour, "his is rather a detestable face."

"Whyvery troubled; oh yesbut his was like some bird of prey. Yourswhat mad stuff to talk like

They had come to the wicket in the dark, thorny hedge. "Would it be very dreadful to walk on a littlejust to

"What I wanted to say was" began Lawford, and forgetting altogether the thread by which he hoped to

lead up to what he really wanted to say, broke off lamely; "I should have thought you would have absolutely

"It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well understands. Besides, we weren't

cowardswe weren't cowards a bit. My childhood was one long, reiterated terrornights and nights of it.

But I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one so much as dreamt of the company I had. Ah, and you didn't

see either that my heart was absolutely in my mouth, that I was shrivelled up with fear, even at sight of the

fear on your face in the dark. There's absolutely nothing so catching. So, you see, I do know a little what

nerves are; and dream too sometimes, though I don't choose charnel houses if I can get a feather bed. A

coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one of the bravest things in a man I ever heard of.

Bulletsthat kind of courageno real woman cares twopence for bullets! An aunt of mine stared a man

right out of the house with the thing in her face. Anyhow, whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are

"Will you" began Lawford, and stopped. "What I wanted to say was," he jerked on, "it is sheer horrible

hypocrisy to be talking to you like thisthough you will never have the faintest idea of what it has meant

and done for me. I mean . . . And yet, and yet, I do feel when just for the least moment I forget what I am, and

that isn't very often, when I forget what I have become and what I must go back toI feel that I haven't any

business to be talking with you at all. 'Quits!' And here I am, an outcast from decent society. Ah, you don't

She bent her head and laughed under her breath. "You do really stumble on such delicious compliments. And

yet, do you know, I think my brother would be immensely pleased to think you were an outcast from decent

society if only he could be thought one too. He has been trying half his life to wither decent society with

neglect and disdainbut it doesn't take the least notice. The deaf adder, you know. Besides, besides; what is

all this meek talk? I detest meek talkgods or men. Surely in the first and last resort all we are is ourselves.

Something has happened; you are jangled, shaken. But to us, believe me, you are simply one of the fewer

friendsand I think, after struggling up Widderstone Lane hand in hand with you in the dark, I have a right

to say 'friends'than I could count on one hand. What are we all if we only realised it? We talk of dignity

and propriety, and we are like so many children playing with knucklebones in a giant's scullery. Come along,

he will, some suppertimefor us, each in turnand how many even will so much as look up from theird

play to wave us goodbye? that's I meanthe plot of silence we are all in. If only I had my brother's lucidity,

how much better I would have said all this! It is only, believe me, that I want ever so much to help you, if I

mayeven at risk, too," she added rather shakily, "of having that help quite snubbed."

The lane had narrowed. They had climbed the arch of a little stone bridge that spanned the smooth, dark

Widder. A few late starlings were winging far above them. Darkness was coming on apace. They stood for

awhile looking down into the black, flowing water, with here and there the mild silver of a star dim leagues

below. "I am afraid," said Grisel, looking quietly up, "you have led me into talking most pitiless nonsense.

How many hours, I wonder, did I lie awake in the dark last night, thinking of you? Honestly, I shall never,

"Thinking of me? Do you really mean that? Then it was not all imagination; it wasn't just the drowning man

The grey eyes questioned him. "You see," he explained in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard, "itit

came back again, andI don't mind a bit how much you laugh at me! I had been asleep, and had a most

awful dream, one of those dreams that seem to hint that some day that will be our real world, that some day

we may awake where dreaming then will be of this; and I woke, and there was a tremendous knocking going

"Yes," said Lawford rather stolidly, "they were all out, as it happened. And, of course," he went on quickly,

"there was nothing for me to do but simply to go down and open the door. And yet, do you know, at first I

simply couldn't move. I lit a candle, and thenthen somehow I got to know that waiting for me was

justbut there," he broke off halfashamed, "I mustn't bother you with all this morbid stuff. Will your

"My brother will be in, and, of course, expecting you. But as for 'bother,' believe mewell, did I quite

"Thatthat presence, that shadow. I don't mean, of course, it's a real shadow. It comes, doesn't it,

fromfrom within? As if from out of some unheardof hiding place, where it has been lurking for ages and

ages before one's childhood; at least, so it seems to me now. And yet although it does come from within,

there it is, too, in front of you, before your eyes, feeding even on your fear, just watching, waiting for

"Then, and you must remember the poor old boy had been knocking all this timemy good friendMr.

Bethany, I meanknocking and calling through the letterbox, thinking I was in extremis, or something;

thenhow shall I describe it?well, you came, your eyes, your face, as clear as when, you know, the night

"And then, weyou and I, you knowsimply drove him downstairs, and I could hear myself grunting as if

it was really a physical effort; we drove him, step by step, downstairs. And" He laughed outright, and

boyishly continued his adventure. "What do you think I did then, without the ghost of a smile, too, at the

idiocy of the thing? I locked the poor beggar in the drawingroom. I saw him there, as plainly as I ever saw

anything in my life, and the furniture glimmering, though it was pitch dark; I can't describe it. It all seemed so

desperately real, absolutely vital then. It all seems so meaningless and impossible now. And yet, although I

am utterly played out and done for, and however absurd it may sound, I wouldn't have lost it; I wouldn't go

back for any bribe there is. I feel just as if a great bundle had been rolled off my back. Of course, the

queerest, the most detestable part of the whole business is that itthe thing on the stairswas this"he

lifted a grave and haggard face towards her again"or rather that," he pointed with the stick towards the

Again they had stopped together before the white gate, and this time Lawford pushed it open, and followed

She paused with her hand on the bell. "Was it my brother who actually put that horrible idea into your

"Oh no, not really put it into my head," said Lawford hollowly. "He only found it there; lit it up."

She laid her hand lightly on his arm. "Whether he did or not," she said, with an earnestness that was almost

an entreaty, "of course, you must agree that we every one of us have some such experiencethat kind of

"Ah, but," began Lawford, turning forlornly away, "you didn't see, you can't have realisedthe change."

She pulled the bell almost as if in some inward triumph. "But don't you think," she suggested, "that that, like

the other, might be, as it were, partly imagination too? If now you thought back . . ."

But a little old woman had opened the door, and the sentence, for the moment, was left unfinished.

THERE was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For a moment Grisel stood by the open

window, looking out. Then she turned impulsively. "My brother, of course, will ask you too," she said; "we

had made up our minds to do so if you came again; but I want you to promise me now that you won't dream

of going back tonight. That surely would be temptingwell, not Providence. I couldn'' rest if I thought you

might be alone; like that again."" Her voice died away into the calling of the waters. A light moved across the

dingy old rows of books and as his sister turned to go our Herbert appeared in the doorway, carrying a

"Ah, here you are!" he said. "I guessed you had probably met." He drew up, burdened, before his visitor. But

his clear, black glance, instead of wandering off at his first greeting had intensified. And it was almost with

an air of absorption that he turned away. He dumped his book on to a chair and it turned over with scattered

leaves on to the floor. He put the lamp down and stooped after it, so that his next words came up muffled, and

as if the remark had been forced out of him. "You don't feel worse, I hope?" He got up and faced his visitor

But Herbert's long, oval, questioning eyes beneath the sleek black hair were still fixed on his face. "I am

afraid, my dear fellow," he said, with something more than his usual curiously indifferent courtesy, "the

"The question is," answered Lawford, with a kind of tired yet whimsical melancholy in his voice, "though I

am not sure that the answer very much matterswhat's going to put me together again? It's the old story of

Humpty Dumpty, Herbert. Besides, one thing you said has stuck out in a quite curious way in my memory. I

"Why, you said even though Sabathier had failed, though I was still my own old stodgy self, that you thought

the facethe face, you know, might work in. Somehow, sometimes, I think it has. I does really rather haunt

me. In that casewell, what then?" Lawford had himself listened to this involved explanation much as one

watches the accomplishment of a difficult trick, marvelling more at its completion at all than at the difficulty

"'Work in,'" repeated Herbert, like a rather blase child confronted with a new mechanical toy; "did I really say

that? well, honestly, it wasn't bad; it's what one would expect on that hypothesis. You see, we are only

different, as it were, in our differences. Once the foot's over the threshold, it's nine points of the law! But I

don't remember saying it." He quite boyishly and naively confessed it: "I say such an awful lot of things. And

I'm always changing my mind. It's a standing joke against me with my sister. She says the recording angle

will have two sides to my account: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and

Saturdaysdiametrically opposite convictions, and both wrong! Sundays I am all things to all men. As for

Sabathier, by the way, I do want particularly to have another go at him. I've been thinking him over, and I'm

afraid in some ways he won't quite wash. And that reminds me, did you read the poor chap?"

"I just grubbed through a page or two; but most of my French was left at school. What I did do, though, was

to show the book to an old friend of oursmy wife's and minejust to skima Mr. Bethany. He's an old

Herbert had sat down, and with eyes slightly narrowed was listening with particular attention. He smiled a

little magnanimously. "His verdict, I should think, must have been a perfect joy."

"He said," said Lawford, in his rather low, monotonous voice, "he said it was precious poor stuff, that it

reminded him of patchouli; and that Sabathierthe print I meanlooked looked a foxy old roue. They

Lawford nodded. "But then," he added simply, "whenever he comes to see me now he leaves his spectacles at

And at that, as if at some preconcerted signal, they both went off into a simple shout of laughter, unanimous

But this first wild bout of laughter over, the first real bursting of the dam, perhaps, for years, Lawford found

"You see," he said presently, and while still his companion's face was smiling around the remembrance of his

laughter, like ripples after the splash of a stone, "Bethany has been absolutely my sheetanchor right through.

And I wasit wasyou can't possibly realise what a ghastly change it really was. I don't think any one ever

Herbert opened his hand and looked reflectively into the palm before allowing himself to reply. "I wonder,

you know; I have been wondering a good deal; simply taking the other point of view for a moment; was it? I

don't mean 'ghastly' exactly (like, say, smallpox, G.P.I., elephantiasis), but was it quite so complete, so

Lawford thought on a little further. "You know how one sees oneself in a passionwhy, how a child

looksthe whole face darkened and drawn and possessed? That was the change. That's how it seems to

come back to me. And something, somebody, dodging behind the eyes. Yes; more that than even any

excessive change of feature, except, of course, that I also seemed Shall I ever forget that first cold,

stifling stare into the lookingglass! I certainly was much darker, even hair. But I've told you all this before,"

he added wearily, "and the scores and scores of times I've thought it! I used to sit up thee in the big spare

bedroom my wife put me up in, simply gloating. My flesh seemed nothing more than an hallucination: there I

was, haunting my body, an old grinning tenement, and all that I thought I wanted, and couldn't do without, all

I valued and prided myself onstacked up in the drizzling street below. Why, Herbert, our bodies are only

glass or cloud. They melt, don't they, like was in the sun once we're out. But those first few days don't make

very pleasant thinking. Friday night was the first, when I sat there like a twitching waxwork, soberly debating

between Bedlam here and Bedlam hereafter. I even sometimes wonder whether its very repetition has not

dulled the memory or distorted it. My wife," he added ingenuously, "seems to think there are signs of a slight

Herbert surveyed his visitor critically. "You say 'dark,'" he said; "but surely, Lawford, your hair now is nearly

Although the remark carried nothing comparatively of a shock with it, yet it seemed to Lawford as if an

electric current had passed over his scalp, coldly stirring every hair upon his head. But somehow or other it

was easier to sit quietly on, to express no surprise, to let them do or say what they liked. "Well," he retorted

with an odd, crooked smile, "you must remember I am a good deal older than I was last Saturday. I grew grey

"But it's like this, you know," said Herbert, rising excitedly, and at the next moment, on reflection, quietly

reseating himself. "How many of your people actually saw it? How many owned to it as being as bad, as

complete, as you made out? I don't want for a moment to cut right across what you said last nightour

talkbut there are two sides to every question, and as often as not the less conspicuous has sounder roots.

"I think really, do you know, I would rather not go over the detestable thing again. Not many; my wife,

though, and a man I know called Danton, whowho's prejudiced. After all, I have myself to think about too.

And right through, right throughoh, I own that; oh, there wasn't the least doubt of thatthey all in their

hearts knew it was me. They knew I was behind. I could feel that absolutely always; it's not just eyes and ears

we use, there's us ourselves to consider, though God alone knows what that means. But the password was

there, as you might say; and they all knew I knew it, allexcept"he looked up as if in

bewilderment"except just one, a poor old lady, a very old friend of my mother's, whom II Sabathiered!"

"WhomyouSabathiered," repeated Herbert carefully, with infinite relish, looking sidelong at his visitor.

"And it is just precisely that . . ." But at that moment his sister appeared in the doorway to say that supper was

ready. And it was not until Herbert was actually engaged in carving a cold chicken that he followed up his

advantage. "Mr. Lawford, Grisel," he said, "has just enriched our jaded language with a new verbto

Sabathier. And if I may venture to define it in the presence of the distinguished neologist himself, it means,

'To deal with histrionically'; or, rather, that's what it will mean a couple of hundred years hence. For this

moment it means, 'To act under the influence of subliminilisation'; 'To perplex, or bemuse or estrange with

otherness'. Do tell us, Lawford, more about the little old lady!" He passed with her plate a little meaningful

"But I've been plaguing your sister enough already. You'll wish . . ." he began, and turned his tiredout eyes

towards those others awaiting them so frankly they seemed in their perfect friendliness a rest from all this

troubles. "You see," he went on, "what I kept on thinking and thinking of was to get a quite unbiased and

unprejudiced view. She had known me for years, though we had not actually met more than once or twice

since my mother's death. And there she was sitting with me at the other end of just such another little seat

as"he turned to Herbert"as ours, at Widderstone. It was on Bewley Common: I can see it all now; just

before sunset. And I simply turned and asked her in a kind of whining, affected manner if she remembered

me; and when after a long time she came round to owning that to all intents and purposes she did notI

professed to have made a mistake in recognising her. I think," he added, glancing up from one to the other of

"H'm," said Herbert solemnly; "I wish I had as sensitive a conscience. But as your old friend didn't recognise

you, who's the worse? As for her not doing so, just think of the difference a few years makes to a man, and

any sever attack. Life wears so infernally badly. Who, for that matter, does not change, even in character; and

yet who professes to see it? Mind, I don't say in essence! But then how many of the human ghosts one meets

does one know in essence? One doesn't want to. It would be positively cataclysmic. And that's what brings

me round to feel, Lawford, if I may venture to say so, that you may have brooded a little too keenly onon

your own. Tell any one you feel ill; he will commiserate with you to positive nausea. Tell any priest your soul

is in danger; will he wait for proof? It's misereres and penances world without end. Tell any woman you love

her; will she, can she, should she, gainsay you? There you are! The cat's out of the bag, you see. My sister

and I sat up half the night talking the thing over. I said I'd take the plunge. I said I'd risk appearing the

crassest, contradictoriest wretch that ever drew breath. I don't deny that what I hinted at the other night must

seem in part directly contrary to what I'm going to say now." He wheeled his black eyes as if for inspiration,

and helped himself to salad. "It's this," he said. "Isn't it possible, isn't it even probable that being ill, and

overstrung, moping a little over things more or less out of the common ruck, and sitting there in a kind of

tranceisn't it possible that you may have very largely imagined the change? Hypnotised yourself into

believing it much worsemore profound, radical, acuteand simply absolutely hypnotising others into

thinking so, too? Christendom is just beginning to rediscover that there is such a thing as faith, that it is just

possible that, say, megrims or melancholia may be removed at least as easily as mountains. The converse, of

course, is obvious on the face of it. A man fails because he thinks himself a failure. It's the men that run away

that lose the battle. Supposing then, Lawford"he leaned forward, keen and suave"supposing you have

Lawford had grown accustomed during the last few days to finding himself gazing out like a child into

reality, as if from the windows of a dream. He had in a sense followed this long, loosely stitched, preliminary

argument; he had at least in part realised that he sat there between two clear friendly minds acting in the

friendliest and most obvious collusion; but he was incapable of fixing his attention very closely on any single

fragment of Herbert's apology, or of rousing himself into being much more than a dispassionate and not very

interested spectator of the little melodrama that Fate, it appeared, had at the last moment decided rather

capriciously to twist into a farce. He turned with a smile to the face so keenly fixed and enthusiastic with the

Herbert lifted his glass as if to his visitor's acumen and set it down again without tasting it. "Why, my dear

fellow," he said triumphantly, "even a dream must have a peg. Yours was this unforgetable old suicide.

Candidly now, how much of Sabathier was actually yours? In spite of all that that fantastical fellow, Herbert,

said last night, dead men don't tell tales. The last place in the world to look for a ghost is where his traitorous

bones lie crumbling. Good heavens! think what irrefutable masses of evidence there would be at our

fingertips if every tombstone hid its ghost! No; the fellow just arrested you with his creepy epitaph; an

epitaph, mind you, that is in a literary sense distinctly fertilising. It catches one's fancy in its own crude way,

as pages and pages of infinitely more complicated stuff take possession of, germinate, and sprout in ones

imagination in another way. We are all psychical parasites. Why, given his epitaph, given the surroundings, I

wager any sensitive consciousness could have guessed at his face; and guessing, as it were, would have

"I think, dear, you are talking absolute nonsense; what do they call it'darkening counsel'? It's 'the hair of

"Well, then, you see," said Herbert over a hasty mouthful, and turning again to his victim"then, you see,

when you were just in the pink of condition to credit any idle tale you heard, then I came in. What, with the

least impetus, can one not see by moonlight? The howl of a dog turns the midnight into a Brocken; the branch

of a tree stoops out at you like Beelzebub crusted with gadflies. I'd, mind you, sipped of the deadly old

Huguenot too. I'd listened to your innocent prattle about the child kicking his toes out on death's cupboard

door; what more likely thing in the world, then, than that with that moon, in that packed air, I should have

swallowed the bait whole, and seen Sabathier in every crevice of your skin? I don't say there wasn't any

resemblance; it was for the moment extraordinary; it was even when you were here the other night distinctly

arresting. But no (poor old Grisel, I'm nearly done) all I want to say is this: that if we had the 'foxy old roue

here now, and Grisel played Paris between the three of us, she'd hand over the apple not to you, but to me."

"No, nor do I," said Herbert. "All that I mean, sagacious child, is, that Mr. Lawford no more resembles the

poor wretch now than I resemble the Apollo Belvidere. If you had only heard my sister scolding me, railing at

me for putting such ideas into your jangled head! They don't affect me one iota. I am, I suppose, what is

usually called rather imaginative (not, by all that's miraculous, of course, the creative variety!); and all that

that pseudo kind of stuff means is that I can sup with the devil, spoon for spoon, and could sleep in

Bluebeard's linencloset without turning a hair. You, if I am not very much mistaken, are not much troubled

with that very unprofitable quality, and so, I suppose, when a crooked and bizarre fancy does edge into your

mind it roots there." And that said, not without some little confusion, and a covert glance of inquiry at his

sister, Herbert made all the haste he could to catch up the course that his companions had already finished.

If only, Lawford thought, this insufferable weariness would lift awhile he could enjoy the quiet, the easy,

headless talk, and this very friendly topsyturvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his nerves, and even take

"You see," he said, turning to Grisel, "I don't think it really very much matters how it all came about. I never

could believe it would last. It may perhapssome of it at least may be fancy. But then, what isn't? What is

trustworthy? And now your brother tells me my hair's turning grey. I suppose I have been living too slowly,

too sluggishly, and they thought it was high time to stir me up." He saw with extraordinary vividness the low,

panelled room; the still, listening face; the white muslin shoulders and dark hair; and the eyes that seemed to

recall some faroff desolate longing for home and childhood. It was all a dream. That was the end of the

matter. Even now, perhaps, his tired old stupid body was lying hunched up, drenched with dew upon the little

old seat under the mistwreathed branches. Soon it would bestir itself and wake up and go off homehome

to Sheila, to the old deadly round that once had seemed so natural and inevitable, to the old dull

They returned up the dark old staircase to Herbert's bookroom, and he talked on to very quiet and passive

listeners in his own fantastic endless fashion. And ever and again Lawford would find himself intercepting

fleeting and anxious glances at his face, glances almost of remorse and pity; and thought he detected beneath

this irresponsible contradictory babble an unceasing effort to clear the sky, to lure away too pressing

Herbert even went so far as to plead guilty, when Grisel gave him the clue, of having a little heightened and

overcoloured his story of the restless phantasmal old creature that haunted their queer wooden quite

hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and yawning to take up their candles, it was, after all,

after a rather animated discussion, with many a hairraising ghost story brought in for proof between brother

and sister, as to exactly how many times that snuffcoloured spectre had made his appearance; and, with less

unanimity still, as to the precise manner in which he was in the habit of making his precipitant exit.

"You do at any rate acknowledge, Grisel, that the old creature does appear, and that you saw him yourself

step out into space when you were sitting down there under the willow shelling peas. I've seen him twice for

certain, once rather hazily; Sallie saw him so plainly she asked his business: that's five. I resign."

"Acknowledge!" said Grisel; "of course I do. I'd acknowledge anything in the world to save argument. Why, I

don't know what I should do without him. If only, now, Mr. Lawford would give him a fair chance to show

himself; reading quietly here about ten minutes to one, or shelling peas even, if he prefers it. If only he'd stay

But he needed little persuasion to stay at least one night. The prospect of that long, solitary walk, of that tired,

stupid stooping figure dragging itself along the interminable country roads with only a house more hateful to

him than a cage to a rat at the end of it, had made at least going home an impossibility. "It is notit isn't, I

swear itthe other that keeps me back," he had solemnly assured the friend that smiled her real relief at his

acceptance, "butif you only knew how empty it's all got now; all reason gone even to go on at all."

"But doesn't it follow!" she had cried almost gaily. "After two such terrific splendid exorcisms! Swept and

garnished, you know. And don't I just envy you the looking round for new lodgers again! What a vivid seven

He said goodnight; shutto the latched door of his long, low room, ceilinged with rafters close under the

steep roof, its brown walls hung with quiet, dark, pondering and beautiful faces looking gravely across at

him. And with his candle in his hand he sat down on the bedside. All speculation was gone. The noisy clock

of his brain had quite run down again. He turned towards the old oval lookingglass on the dressingtable

without the faintest stirring of interest, suspense, or anxiety. What did it matter what a man looked like?a

now familiar but how enfeebled and deprecating voice seemed to say. He knew assuredly that a change had

come. Even Sheila had noticed it. And since then what had he not gone through! But terror, and strife, and

rage, had died down and away. What now was here instead seemed of little moment, so far at least as this

world was concerned. At last he rose with an effort, crossed the uneven floor, and looked in unmovedly on

what was his own poor face come back to him: changed, indeed, almost beyond belief from the sleek,

selfsatisfied, genial yet languid Arthur Lawford of the past years, and haunted yet with some faint trace of

the set and icy sharpness, and challenge, and affront of the dark Adventurer, but faded! He had expected to

find it so. Would itthe thought vanished across his mindwould it have been as unmistakably there had

He hardly knew how long he stood there, leaning on his hands, surveying almost listlessly in the candlelight

that lined, bedraggled, grey and hopeless countenance, those darksocketed, smouldering eyes, whose pupils

even now were so dilated that a casual glance would have failed to detect the least hint of any iris. "It must

have been something pretty bad you were, you know, or something pretty bad you did," they seemed to be

He knelt down by force of habit to say his prayers; but no words came. Well, between earthly friends a

betrayal such as this would have caused a livelong estrangement and hostility. The God the old Lawford used

to pray to would forgive him, he thought wearily, if just for the present he was a little too sore at heart to play

the hypocrite. But if, while kneeling, he said nothing, he saw a good many things, in such tranquillity and

clearness as the mere eyes of the body can share but rarely with their sisters of the imagination. And now it

was Alice who looked mournfully out of the dark at him; and now the little old charwoman, Mrs. Gull, with

her bag hooked over her arm, climbed painfully up the area steps; and now it was the lean, vexed face of a

friend, nursing some restless and anxious grievance against himMr. Bethany; and then and ever again it

was the face of one who seemed pure dream and fantasy and yet . . . he listened intently and fancied even

now he could hear the voices of brother and sister talking quietly and circumspectly together in the room

A QUIET knocking on the door aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and Herbert's head was poked

into the room. "There's a bath behind that door over there," he whispered, "or if you like I'm off for a bathe in

the Widder. It's a luscious day. Shall I wait? All right," and the head was withdrawn. "Don't put much on,"

The green and glory of the morning, it seemed, must have been seized overnight by spiders and the dew.

Everywhere the gleaming nets were hung, and everywhere there rose a tiny splendour from the dewdrops, so

clear and pure and changeable it seemed with their fire and colour they shook a tiny crystal music in the air.

Herbert led the way along a clayey downward path beneath hazels tossing softly together their twigs of nuts,

until they came out into a rounded hollow that, mounded with thyme, sloped gently down to the green banks

of the Widder. The water poured like clearest glass beneath a rain of misty sunbeams.

"My sister always says that this is the very dell Boccaccio had in his mind's eye when he wrote the

'Decameron.' There really is something almost classic in those pines. And I'd sometimes swear with my eyes

just out of the water I've seen Dryads half in hiding peeping between those beeches. Good Lord, Lawford,

The water was marvellously cold, and seemed to Lawford, as it rilled tingling over his shoulders, and as he

plunged his nightdistorted eyes beneath its blazing surface, as if indeed it was charged with some strange

unearthly enchantment to wash away in its icy clearness even the memory of the dull and tarnished days

behind him. If one could but tie up anyhow that stained bundle of inconsequent memories called life, and

fling it into a cupboard remoter even than Bluebeard's, and lock the door, and drop the quicklyrusting key

into these living waters! He dressed himself with window thrown open to the blackbirds and thrushes, and the

occasional shrill, solitary whistling of a robin. But, like the soursweet fragrance of the brier, its wandering,

desolate burst of music had power to waken memory, and carried him instantly back to that first aimless

descent into the evening gloom of Widderstone again. Surely never such a ghoulish face looked out on its

man before as that which confronted him as borrowed razor he stood shaving those sunken chaps, that

angular chin! And even now beneath the lantern of broad daylight, just as within that other face had lurked

the undeniable ghost and presence of himself, so now beneath these sunken features seemed to float, tenuous

as smoke, scarcely less elusive than a dream, between eye and object, the sinister darkness of the face that in

those two bouts with fear he had b some strange miracle managed to repel. "Work in," the chance phrase

came back. It had worked in in sober earnest; and so far as the living of the next few weeks went, surely it

might prove an ally without which he could not simply conceive himself as struggling on at all.

But quite as dexterous minds as even restless Sabathier's had him just now in safe and kindly keeping. All the

quiet October morning Herbert kept him talking and stooping over his extraordinary collection of books.

"You see," he explained to Lawford, standing amid a positive archipelago of precious "finds," with his foot

hoisted on to a chair and a patchedup, seastained folio on his knee, "I honestly detest the mere give and

take of what we are fools enough to call Life. I don't deny Life's there," he swept his hand towards the open

window"in that frantic Tophet we call London; but there's not focus, no point of vantage. Even a scribbler

only gets it piecemeal and through a dulled medium. We learn to read before we know how to see; we

swallow our tastes, convictions, and emotions whole; so that ninetenths of the world's nectar is merely

honeydew." He smiled pleasantly into the fixed vacancy of his visitor's face. "And so I've just gone on," he

continued amiably, "collecting just this particular kind of stuffwhat you might call riffraff. There's not a

book here, Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in itjust Life, seen through a living eye,

and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost

"But surely," said Lawford, trying for the twentieth time to pretend to himself that these endless books carried

the faintest savour of the delight to him which they must, he rather forlornly supposed, shower upon Herbert,

"Rare! the world simply swarms with it. But before you can bottle it up in a book it's got to be articulate. Just

for a single instant imagine yourself Falstaff, and if there weren't hundreds of Falstaffs in every generation, to

be ensamples of his ungodly life, he'd be as dead as a doornail tomorrowimagine yourself Falstaff, and

being so, sitting down to write 'Henry IV.' or 'The Merry Wives'! It's simply preposterous. You wouldn't be

such a fool as to waste the time. A mere Elizabethan scribbler comes along with a gift of expression and an

observant eye, lifts the bloated old tippler clean out of life, and swims down the ages as the greatest genius

the world has ever seen. Whereas, surely, though you mustn't let me bore you with all this piffle, it's Falstaff

is the genius, and W. S. merely a talented reporter. (Of course, mind you, when we come to the Sonnets,

that's a very different cry.) But Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, Mercutiothey live on their own, as it were. The

newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. You jostle them at every street

corner. There's a Polonius in every firstclass railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are

boardingschools. What the devil are you, my dear chap, but genius itself, with all the world brand new upon

your shoulders? And who'd have thought it of you ten days ago? It's simply and solely because we're all, poor

wretches, dumbdumb as butts of Rhenish; dumb as drummerless drums. Here am I, my dear fellow,

trickling out thisthis whey that no more expresses me than Tupper does Sappho. But that's what I want to

mean. How jolly rich everything is, if you only stick to life! Here it is packed away behind these rotting

covers, just the real thing, no respectable stodge; no mere parasitic stuff; not more than a dozen poets; scores

of outcasts and vagabondsand the real thing in vagabonds is pretty rare in print, I can tell you. We're all

sodden with facts, drugged with the secondhand, and barnacled with respectability untiluntil the touch

"I mean when you cease to be a puppet only and sit up in the gallery too. When you squeeze through to the

other side. When you get a living inkling. When you become articulate to yourself."

"I am awfully stupid," Lawford murmured, "but even now I don't really follow you a bit. But when, as you

"Why, then," said Herbert with a shrug almost of despair, "then begins the weary tramp back. One by one

drop off the truisms, and the Grundyisms, and all the stillborn claptrap of the marketplace sloughs off. Then

"Saving one's soul," groaned Lawford; "why, I am not even sure of my own body yet." He walked slowly

over to the window and with every thought in his head as quiet as doves on a sunny wall, stgared out into the

garden of green things growing, leaves fading and falling water. "I tell you what," he said, turning

irresolutely, "I wonder if you could possibly find time to write me out a translation of Sabathier. My French

is much too hazy to let me really get at the chap. He's gone now; but I really should like to know what kind of

"Oh, Sabathier!" said Herbert, laughing. "What do you think of that, Grisel?" he asked, turning to his sister,

who at that moment had looked in at the door. "Here's Mr. Lawford asking me to make a translation of

Lawford sighed. And not until he had slowly descended half the narrow, uneven stairs that led down to the

diningroom did he fully realise the guile of a sister that could induce a hopeless bookworm to waste a

whole morning over the stupidest of companions, simply to keep his tiredout mind from rankling, and give

"I think, do you know," he managed to blurt out at last"I think I ought to be thinking of getting home

"You shall go this evening," said Herbert, "if you really must insist on it. But honestly, Lawford, we both

think that after what the last few days must have been, it is merely common sense to take a rest. How can you

possibly rest with a dozen empty rooms echoing every thought you think? There's nothing more to worry

about; you agree to that. Send your people a note saying that you are here, safe and sound. Give them a

chance of lighting a fire, and driving in the fatted calf. Stay on with us just the week out!"

Lawford turned from one to the other of the two friendly faces. But what was dimly in his mind refused to

"But it's just this thinking that's the deucethis prepostgerous habit of having continually to make up one's

mind. Off with his head, Grisel! My sister's going to take you for a picnic; we go every other fine afternoon;

Once alone again with Grisel, however, Lawford found talking quite unnecessary. Silence seemed to fall

between them as quietly and restfully as evening flows into night. They walked on slowly through the fading

woods, and when they had reached the top of the hill that sloped down to the dark and foamless Widder, they

sat down in the honeyscented sunshine on a knoll of heather and bracken, and Grisel lighted the little

spiritkettle she had brought with her, and busied herself very methodically over making tea.

That done, she clasped her hands round her knees, and sat now gossiping, now silent in the pale autumnal

beauty. There was a bird wistfully twittering in the branches overhead, and ever and again a withered leaf

would circle down from the motionless beech boughs arched in their stillness beneath the thin blue sky.

"Men, you know," she began again suddenly, starting out of reverie, "really are absurdly blind; and just a

little bit absurdly kindly stupid. How many times have I been at the point of laughing out at my brother's

deliciously naive subtleties! But you do, you will understand, Mr. Lawford, that he was, that we are both

"Yes, but that's just itthat horrible word 'kindness'! If ever there were two utterly selfabsorbed people,

without a trace, with an absolute horror of kindness, it is just my brother and I. It's most of it false and most

of it useless. We all surely must take what comes in this topsyturvy world. I believe in saying out:that the

more one thinks about life the worse it becomes. There are only two kinds of happiness in this worlda

wooden post's and Prometheus's. And who ever heard of any one having the impudence to be kind to

Prometheus? As for a miserable 'medium' like me, not quite a post and leagues and leagues from even

envying a Prometheus, she's better for the powder without the jam. But that's all nothing. What I can't help

thinkingand it's not a big giving my brother away, because we both think itthat it was partly our

thoughtlessness that added at least something toto the rest. It was perfectly absurd. He saw you were ill; he

sawhe must have seen even in that first Sunday talkthat your nerves were all askew. And who doesn't

know what 'nerves' means nowadays! And yet he deliberately chattered. He loves itjust at large, you know,

like me. I told him before I came out that I intended, if I could, to say all this. And now it's said you'll please

"Please don't talk about forgiveness. But when you say he chattered, you mean about Sabathier, of course.

And that, you know, I don't care a fig for now. We can settle all that between ourselveshim and me, I

She looked up fleetingly into his eyes, leant back her head and laughed. "'Prey!' there never was a glimpse."

"And 'change'?" Their eyes met again in an infinitely brief, infinitely bewildering argument.

"Really, really, scarcely perceptible," she assured him, "except, of course, how horribly, horribly ill you look.

And that only seems to prove to me you must be hiding something else. No illusion on earth couldcould

"You think, I know," he persisted, "that I must be persuaded and cosseted and humoured. Yes, you do; it's my

poor old sanity that's really in both your minds. Perhaps I amnot absolutely sound. Anyhow, I've been

watching it in your looks at each other all the time. And I can never, never say, never tell you what you have

done for me. But you see, after all, we did win through; I keep on telling myself that. So that now it's purely

from the most selfish, practical motives that I want you to be perfectly frank with me. I have to go back, you

know; and some of them, one or two of my friends I mean, are not all on my side. Think of me as I was when

you came into the room, three centuries ago, and you turned and looked, frowning at me in the candlelight;

remember that and look at me now! What is the difference? Does it shock you? Does it make the whole world

seem a trick, a sham? Does it simply sour your life to think such a thing possible? Oh, the hours I've spent

gloating on Widderstone's miserable mask of skin and bone, as I was saying to your brother only last night,

and never knew until they shuffled me that the old self too was nothing better than a stifling suffocating

"But don't you see," she argued softly, turning her face away a little, "you were a stranger then (though I

certainly didn't mean to frown). And then a little while after we were, well, just human beings, shoulder to

shoulder, and if friendship does not mean that, I don't know what it does mean. And now, you arewell, just

you: the you, you know, of three centuries ago! And if you mean to ask me whether at any precise moment I

have been conscious that this you I am now speaking to was not the you of last night, or of that dark climb up

the hill, why, it is simply frantic to think it could ever be necessary to say over and over again, No. But if you

mean, Have you changed else? All I could answer is, Don't we all change as we grow to know one another?

What were just features, what just dingily represents one, as it were, are forgotten, or rather get remembered.

Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the

alphabet to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is always ever after A,

undistinguished, halfforgotten, yet standing at last for goodness knows what real wonderful thingsor for

just the dry bones of soulless words? Is that it?" She stole a sidelong glance into his brooding face, leaning

"Yes, yes," came the rather dissatisfied reply. "I do agree; perfectly. But then, you seeI told you I was

going to talk of nothing but myselfwhat did at first happen to me was something much worse, and, I

"And yet, didn't you tell us, that of all your friends not one really denied in their hearts yourwhat they

would call, I supposeyour identity; except that poor little offended old lady. And even she, if my intuition

is worth a penny piece, even she when you go soon and talk to her will own that she did know you, and that it

was not because you were a stranger that she was offended, but because you so ungenerously pretended to be

"Oh, yes," said Lawford, "I am going to ask her forgiveness. I don't know what I didn't vow to take her for a

peaceoffering if the chance should ever comeand the courageto make my peace with her. But now that

the chance has come, and I think the courage, it is the desire that's gone. I don't seem to care either way. I feel

"After all," he went plodding on, "there is more than just the mere day to day to consider. And one doesn't

realise that one's face actually is one's fortune without a shock. And that that gone, one is, as your brother

said, just like a bee come back to the wrong hive. It undermines," he smiled rather bitterly, "one's views

rather. And it certainly sifts one's friends. If it hadn't been just for my old"he stopped dead, and again

pushed slowly on"if it hadn't been for our old friend, Mr. Bethany, I doubt if we should now have had a

soul on our side. I once read somewhere that wolves always chase the old and the wounded out of the pack.

And after all, what do we do? Where do we keep the homeless and the insane? And yet, you know," he added

ruminatingly, "it is not as if mine was ever a particularly lovely or lovable face; while as for the poor wretch

"You think," he retorted almost bitterly, "you think I am talking like a child."

"Well, there I am," said Lawford inconsequently. "And now; well, now, I suppose, the whole thing's to begin

again. I can't help beginning to wonder what the meaning of it all is; why one's duty should always seem so

very stupid a thing. And then, too, what can there be on earth that even a buried Sabathier could desire?" He

glanced up in a really animated perplexity at the still, dark face turned in the evening light towards the

darkening valley. And perplexity deepened into a disquieted frownlike that of a child who is roused

suddenly from a daydream by the halfforgotten question of a stranger. He turned his eyes almost furtively

away as if afraid of disturbing her; and for awhile they sat in silence. . . . At last he turned again almost shyly.

"Yes, yes," said Grisel eagerly; "we should both love it, of course. Isn't it curious?I simply knew you had a

"Wait! just wait!" replied the quiet, confident voice, "that will come too. One thing at a time, my dear friend.

You've won your old self back again; you'll win your old love of life back again in a little while; never fear.

Oh, don't I know that awful Land's End after illness; and that longing, too, that gnawing longing, too, for

Ultima Thule! So, it's a bargain between us that you bring your daughter soon." She busied herself over the

teathings. "And, of course," she added, as if it were an afterthought, looking across at him in the pale green

sunlight as she knelt, "you simply won't think of going back tonight. . . . Solitude, I really do think, solitude

just now would be absolute madness. You'll write today and go, perhaps, tomorrow?"

Lawford looked across in his mind at his square ungainly house, fullfronting the afternoon sun. He tried to

"Well, why not? Why not? Just to reassure yourself that all's well. And come back here to sleep. If you'd

really promise that I'd drive you in. I'd love it. There's the jolliest little governesscart we sometimes hire for

our picnics. May I? You've no idea how much easier in our minds my brother and I would be if you would.

And then tomorrow, or at any rate the next day, you shall be surrendered, whole and in your right mind.

HERBERT himself went down to order the governesscart, and packed them in with a rug. And in the dusk

Grisel set Lawford down at the corner of his road and drove on to an old bookseller's with a commission from

her brother, promising to return for him in an hour. Dust and a few straws lay at rest as if in some abstruse

arrangement on the stones of the porch just as the last faint whirling gust of sunset had left them. Shut lids of

sightless indifference seemed to greet the wanderer from the curtained windows. He opened the door and

went in. For a moment he stood in the vacant hall; then he peeped first into the blinddrawn diningroom,

faintly, dingily sweet, like some old empty winebottle. He went softly on a few aces and just opening the

door looked in on the faintly glittering twilight of the drawingroom. But the congealed stump of candle that

he had set in the corner as a final rancorous challenge to the beaten Shade was gone. He slowly and

deliberately ascended the stairs, conscious of a peculiar sense of ownership of what in even so brief an

absence had taken on so queer a look of strangeness. It was almost as if he might be some lone heir come in

the rather mournful dusk to view what melancholy fate had almost unexpectedly bestowed on him.

"Work in"what on earth else could this chill sense of strangeness mean? Would he ever free his memory

from that one haphazard, haunting hint? And as he stood in the doorway of the big, calm room, which seemed

even now to be stirring with the restless shadow of these last few faraway days; now pacing sullenly to and

fro; now sitting hunchedup to think; and now lying impotent in a vain, hopeless endeavour only for the

breath of a moment to forgethe awoke out of reverie to find himself smiling at the thought that a changed

face was practically at the mercy of an incredulous world, whereas a changed heart was no one's deadly dull

affair but its owner's. The merest breath of pity even stole over him for the Sabathier who after all had dared;

and had needed, perhaps, nothing like so arrogant and merciless a coup de grace to realise that he had so

"But there, that's done!" he exclaimed out loud, not without a tinge of regret that theories, however brilliant

and bizarre, could never now be anything elsethat now, indeed, that the symptoms had gone, the "malady,"

for all who had not been actually admitted into the shocked circle, was become anything more than an inanely

"tall" story; stuffing not even savoury enough for a goose. How wide exactly, he wondered, would Sheila's

discreet, shocked circle prove? He stood once more before the lookingglass, hearing again Grisel's words in

the still, green shadow of the beechtree, "Except of course, horribly, horribly ill." "What a fool, what a

There was still nearly an hour to be spent in this great barn of faded interests. He lit his candle and descended

into the kitchen. A mouse went scampering to its hole as he pushed open the door. The memory of that

ravenous morning meal nauseated him. It was sour and very still here; he stood erect; the air smelt faint of

earth. In the breakfastroom the bookcase still swung open. Late evening mantled the garden; and in sheer

ennui again he sat down at the table, and turned for a last not unfriendly hobanob with his poor old friend

Sabathier. He would take the thing back. Herbert, of course, was going to translate it for him. Now if the

patient old Frenchman had stormed Herbert insteadthat surely would have been something like a coup!

Those frenzied books! The absurd talk of the man! Herbert was perfectly righthe could have entertained

He turned the woolly leaves over very slowly. He frowned impatiently, and from the end backwards turned

them over again. Then he lay the book softly down on the table and sat back. He stared with narrowed lids

into the flame of his quiet, friendly candle. Every trace, every shred of portrait and memoir were gone. Once

more, slowly, punctiliously, he examined page by page the blurred and unfamiliar French, the sooty heads,

the long, lean noses, the baggy eyes passing like figures in a peepshow one by one under his hand, to the last

fragmentary and dexterously mended leaf. Yes, Sabathier was gone. Quite the old slow Lawford smile crept

over his face at the discovery. And yet it was a smile a little sheepish too, as he thought of Sheila's quiet

And the next instant he had looked up sharply, with a sudden peculiar shrug, and a kind of cry, like the first

thin cry of an awakened child, in his mind. Without a moment's hesitation he climbed swiftly upstairs again

to the big sepulchral bedroom. He pressed with his fingernail the tiny spring in the lookingglass. The

Yet, strangely enough, beneath all the clashing thoughts that came flocking into his mind as he stood with the

empty drawer in his hand, was a wounding yet still a little amused pity for his old friend Mr. Bethany. So far

as he himself was concerned the discoverywell, he would have plenty of time to consider everything that

could possibly now concern himself. Anyhow, it could only simplify matters. He remembered waking to that

old wave of sickening horror on that first unhappy morning; he remembered the keen yet owlish old face

blinking its deathless friendliness at him, and the steady pressure of the cold, skinny hand. As for Sheila, she

had never done anything by halves; certainly not when it came to throwing over a friend no longer necessary

to one's social satisfaction. But she would edge out cleverly, magnanimously, triumphantly enough, no doubt,

when the day of reckoning should come, the day when, her nets wide spread, her bait prepared, he must stand

up before her outraged circle and prove himself her clear and lawful husband, perhaps even to the very

"Poor old thing!" he said again; and this time his pity was shared almost equally between both witnesses to

Mr. Bethany's ingenuous little document, the loss of which had fallen so softly and pathetically that he felt

He shut back the telltale drawer, and after trying to collect his thoughts in case anything should have been

forgotten, he turned with a deep, trembling sigh to descend the stairs. But on the landing he drew back at the

sound of voices, and then a footstep. Soon came the sound of a key in the lock. He blew out his candle and

"Yes," he said. "All's safe; and I am in. What if I had been out?" It was like dropping tiny pebbles into a deep

"Then I was to go back, sir." And a moment after the discreet voice floated up with the faintest tinge of

"No, Ada; and please tell your mistress from me that Dr. Ferguson will not be in till late." A keen but rather

forlorn smile passed over his face. "He's dining with friends at Holloway. But of course if she should want to

"Say that I'm a little better; your mistress will be relieved to hear that I'm a little better; still not quite myself

"Miss Alice's, sir; but she came quite against my wishes, and I hope you won't repeat it, sir. She promised if

she came that mistress shouldn't know. I was only afraid she might disturb you, oror Dr. Ferguson. And

"Ah, that I don't know; so perhaps it would be as well not to mention him at all. Is Miss Alice there?"

"I said I would tell her if you were alone. But I hope you'll understand that it was only because she begged so.

There came a hasty step in the hall and a hurried murmur of explanation. Lawford heard her call as she ran up

the stairs; and the next moment he had Alice's hand in his and they were groping together through the

"You won't cry out, dear," he heard himself imploring, "you'll just hold tight to that clear common sense, my

dear; and above all you won't tell. It must be our secret; a dead, dead secret from every one, even from your

mother, for just a little while; just a mere two days or soin case. I'mI'm better, dear."

He fumbled with the little box of matches, dropped one, broke another; but at last the candleflame dipped,

brightened, and with door shut and the last paleness of dusk at the window Lawford turned and looked at his

daughter. She stood with eyes wide open, like the eyes of a child walking it its sleep; then twisted her fingers

more tightly within his. "Oh, dearest, how ill, how ill you look!" she whispered; "but there, never

mindnever mind! It was all a miserable dream, then; it won't, it can't come back? I don't think I could bear

its coming back. And mother told me such curious things; as if I were a child and understood nothing. And

even after I knew that you were youI mean before I sat up here in the dark to see youshe said that you

were gone and would never come back; that a terrible thing had happeneda disgrace which we must never

speak of; and that all the other was only a pretence to keep people from talking. But I did not believe then,

"There, never mind now, dear, what she said. It was all meant for the best, perhaps. But here I am; and not so

nearly ill as I look, Alice; and there's nothing more to trouble ourselves about; not even if it should be

necessary for me to go away for a time. And this is our secret, mind; she doesn't dream; just a dead secret

They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly along the hushed road Lawford heard in the

silence a leisurely, indolent beat of little hoofs approaching, and the sound of wheels. A sudden wave of

feeling swept over him. He took Alice's quiet, loving face in his hands and kissed her passionately. "Do not

so much as think of me yet, or doubt, or question; only love me, dearest, and soonand soon"

"We'll just begin again, just begin again, won't we? all three of us together, just as we used to be. I didn't

mean to have said all those horrid things about mother. She was only dreadfully anxious and meant

The haggard face turned slowly, listening. "I hear, I understand, but I can't think very clearly now, Alice; I

can't, dear; my miserable old tangled nerves. I just stumble along as best I can. You'll understand better when

you get to be a poor old thing like me. We must do the best we can. And of course you'll see, Dillie, how

awfully important it is not to raise false hopes. You understand? I mustn't risk the least thing in the world,

must I? And now goodbye; only for a few hours now! And not a word, not a word to a single living soul."

He extinguished the candle again, and led the way to the top of the stairs. "Are you there, Ada?"

"Yes, sir," answered the same quiet, imperturbable voice from under the black straw brim. Alice went slowly

down, but at the foot of the stairs, looking out into the cold, blue, lamplit street she paused as if at a sudden

She stood panting a little in the darkness, listening to some cautious yet uneasy thought that seemed to haunt

her mind. "I thoughtit seemed there was something we had not said,k something I could not understand.

But there, it is nothing! You know what a fanciful old silly I am. You do love me? Quite as much as ever?"

The outer door closed softly, the footsteps died away. Lawford still hesitated. He took hold of the stairs above

his head as he stood on the landing, and leaned his head upon his hands, striving calmly to disentangle the

perplexity of his thoughts. His pulses were beating in his ear with a low, muffled roar. He looked down

between the blinds to where against the blue of the road beneath the straggling yellow beams of the lamp

stood the little cart and drooping, shaggy pony, and Grisel sitting quietly there awaiting him. He shut his eyes

as if in hope by some convulsive effort of mind to break through this subtle glasslike atmosphere of dream

that had stolen over consciousness, and blotted out the significance, almost the meaning of the past. He

turned abruptly. Empty as the empty rooms around him, unanswering were mind and heart. Life was a tale

He went slowly downstairs. And even then the doubt came: Would he ever come back? Who knows? he

thought; and again stood pondering, arguing, denying. At last he seemed to have come to a decision. He made

his way downstairs, opened and left ajar a long, narrow window in a passage to the garden beyond the

kitchen. He turned on his heel as he reached the gate and waved his hand as if in a kind of forlorn mockery

towards the darkly glittering windows. The drowsy pony woke at touch of the whip.

Grisel lifted the rug and squeezed a little closer into the corner. She had drawn a veil over her face, so that to

Lawford her eyes seemed to be dreaming in a little darkness of their own as he laid his hand on the side of the

cart. "It's a most curious thing," he said, "but peeping down at you just now when the sound of the wheels

came, a memory came clearly back to me of years and years agoof my mother. She used to come to fetch

me at school in a little cart just like this, and a little pony just like this, with a thick dusty coat. And once I

remember I was simply sick of everything, a failure, and fagged out, and all that, and was looking out in the

twilight; I fancy even it was autumn too. It was a little side staircase window; I was horribly homesick. And

she came quite unexpectedly. I shall never forget itthe misery, and then, her coming." He lifted his eyes,

cowed with the incessant struggle, and watched her face for some time in silence. "Ought I to stay?"

"Don't you think, perhaps, that even that has a good many disguisesconvention, cowardice, weakness,

ennui; they all take their turn at hooting in its feathers? You must, you really must have rest. You don't know;

you don't see; I do. Just a little snap, some one last exquisite thread gives way, and then it is all over. You see,

"No; I mean you: your trouble, that horrible empty house, andoh, dear me, yes; your courage too!"

"Listen!" said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see the pale, veiled face through this mist that

had risen up over his eyes. "I have no courage apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to come!a

stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we

not all hauntedevery one! That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the pretenceoh,

how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage! Be just

the memory of my mother, the face, the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream leaves echoing.

She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse stooped a little closer to him and laid her

"I hear, you know; I hear too," she whispered. "But oh, dear friend, we mustn't listen. Come now. It grows so

The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter of the pony's hoofs. Night had darkened to its

deepest when their lamp shone white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely spoken. Lawford had

simply watched pass by, almost without a thought, the arching trees, the darkening fields; had watched rise

up in a mist of primrose light the harvest moon to shine in saffron on the faces and shoulders of the few

wayfarers they met, or who passed them by. The still, grave face beneath the shadow of its veil had never

turned, through the moon poured all her flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in

sudden alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden doubt had assailed him so instantly that he

had half put out his hand to touch her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and stillness should

be, even as the moment's fancy had suggested, only a fargone memory returned in dream.

Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came down, and they talked a little in the

coolness of the garden. He lit a cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove the drowsy little

IT WAS a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat quietly narrowing his eyes over his thoughts,

which, when the fancy took him, he scattered out upon the others' silence. Lawford apparently had not yet

shaken himself free from the sorcery of the moonlight. His eyes shone dark and full like those of a child who

has trespassed beyond its hour for bed, and sit marvelling at reality in a waking dream.

Long after they had bidden each other goodnight, long after Herbert had trodden on tiptoe with his candle

past his closed door, Lawford sat leaning on his arms at the open window, staring out across the motionless,

moonlit trees that seemed to stand like draped and dreaming pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana at

last beside the crashing music of the waters. And he himself, the self that never sleeps beneath the tides and

waves of consciousness, was listening, too, almost as unmovedly and unheedingly to the thoughts that

clashed in conflict through his brain. Why, in this strange, transitory life was one the slave of these small

cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling

waterswhat if there, too, were merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely a

blind, reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul,

Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an impossible dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with their

still pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. "Here's not your rest," cried one insistent voice; "she is the

mystery that haunts day and night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance has given you back eyes

to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings of a longgone life have torn down the veil age

spins so thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull fools men

are!" He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to the rather coarse old Lawford conscience

Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He saw their sharpbeaked heads turn this

way, that way, as they floated on outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the hoarse roar of the

water under the huge thinleafed trees, not a sound was stirring. "One thing," he seemed to hear himself

mutter as he turned with a shiver from the morning air, "it won't be for long. You can, at least, poor devil,

wait the last act out." If anywhere and anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of a pennyif it was only his

own small dull part to carry a mock spear, and shout huzza! with the restthere was nothing for it, he

He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep it seemed they had lost their livelong

skill in finding it. Not the echo of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his mind. He knew

vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the last few days was gone. But the thought had no

power to move him now. Sheila's good sense, and Mr. Bethany's stubborn loyalty were alike old stories that

had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that portentous family gathering that had sat

so often in his fancy during these last few days, around his diningroom table, discussing with futile decorum

the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him down. Half dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door

slowly open and, like the timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before the stricken and

astonished company. His eyes opened halffearfully, and glanced up in the morning twilight. Their

perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands

Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly here and there as the tasteless

fancy took him, while Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the

unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he

read, too, however farfetched, or lively, or sententious, or gross seemed either as if it really were of the

same texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, or else was

only the meaningless ramblings of an idle pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the

"Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are your very busy?" he asked at last, taking refuge on a chair in the far

"Bless me, no; not a bitnot a bit," said Herbert amiably, laying down his pen. "I'm afraid the old

leatherjackets have been boring you. It's a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at

secondhandpurely a bad habit, like morphia, or laudanum. But once in, you know there's no recovery.

"It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I get muddled up with other things

Herbert surveyed him critically. "What exactly is your interest now, Lawford? You don't mean that my old

"No sting; oh no! I was only curious. But you yourself still think it really, don't you?"

"I was simply trying then to find a theory to fit the facts as you experienced them. But now that the facts have

"I see," was the cryptic answer. "And yet, Herbert," he solemnly began again, "it has changed me; even in my

way of thinking. When I shut my eyes nowI only discovered if by chanceI see immediately faces quite

strange to me; or places, sometimes thronged with people; and once an old well with some one sitting in the

shadow. I can't tell you how clearly, and yet it is all altogether different from a dream. Even when I sit with

my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of faint, colourless mirage. In the old days, I mean before

Widderstone, what I saw was only what I'd seen. Nothing came uncalled for, unexplained. This makes the old

life seem so blank; I really did not know what extraordinarily real things I was doing without. And whether

for that reason or another, I can't quite make out what really I did want then, and was always fretting and

striving for. I can see no wisdom or purpose in anything now but to get to one's journey's end as quickly and

bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in

the evening at the end of it; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stoppingplace as any other inn would be.

Our experience here is so scanty and shallownothing more than the moment of the continual present.

Surely that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we shall all have to begin again. Probably

Sabathier himself . . . But there, what on earth are we, Herbert, when all is said? Who is it hashas done all

this for uswhat kind of self? And to what possible end? Is it that the clockwsork has been wound up and

must still jolt on awhile with jarring wheels? Will it never run down, do you think?"

"You see," continued Lawford, in the same quiet, dispassionate undertone, "I wouldn't mind if it was only

myself. But there are so many of us, so many selves, I mean; and they all seem to have a voice in the matter.

"The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out over this rotten illusion. To go back into the

ravages of just your ordinary routine in this state would simply be sheer midsummer madness. Do be guided

by me just this once! We'll go, all three of us, a good tenmile walk today, and thoroughly tire you out. And

tonight you shall sleep herea really sound, refreshing sleep. Then tomorrow, whole and hale, back you

shall go; honestly. Here's Grisel. Now, do be persuaded! It's only professional strong men should ask

So, though Lawford made no answer, it was agreed. Before noon they had set out on their walk across the

fields. And after rambling on just as caprice took them, past reddening blackberry bushes and copses of hazel,

and flaming beech, they sat down to spread out their meal on the slope of a hill, overlooking quiet ploughed

fields and grazing cattle. Herbert stretched himself with his back to the earth, and his placid face to the pale,

cloudless sky, while Lawford, even more dispirited after his walk, wandered up to the crest of the hill.

At the foot of the hill, upon the other side, lay a farm and its outbuildings, and a pool of water beneath a

group of elms. It was vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of weed. And about half

a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely

to the wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken solitude of its green hill. And it

seemed as if a thin, dark cloud began to be quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill, and wailing cry, and

barn, and water faded out. And he was staring, as it were, in an endless stillness at an open window against

which the sun was beating in a bristling torrent of gold, while out of the garden beyond came the voice of

some evening bird singing with such an unspeakable ecstasy of grief it seemed it must be perched upon the

confines of another world. The light gathered to a radiance almost intolerable, driving back with its raining

beams some memory, forlorn, remorseless, remote. His body stood dark and senseless, rocking in the air on

the hillside as if bereft of its spirit. Then his hands were drawn over his eyes. He turned unsteadily and made

"What is thatthere?" he said almost menacingly, standing with bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert.

"'That!'what?" said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. "Why, what's wrong, Lawford?"

"That," said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in his voice; "those fields and that old

Lawford turned wide, vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and shuddered. "No, no; not Detcham. I know it;

indeed I do, but it has gone out of my mind. Not Detcham; I've been there before; don't look at me! Horrible,

horrible! It takes me backI can't think. I stood there, trying, trying; it's all in a blur. Don't ask mea

Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. "Don't think; don't try! Why should you? We can't; we mustn't

Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again irresolutely towards the steep of the hill. "I think, you know," he

said, stooping and whispering, "he would knowthe window and the sun and the singing. And, of, of course

it was too late. You understandtoo late! And once . . . you can't go back; oh no! You won't leave me? You

see, if you go, it would only be all . . . I could not be quite so alone. But DetchamDetcham? perhaps

ytell me? perhaps you will not trust metell me? That was not the name." He shuddered violently and

turned doglike, beseeching eyes. "Tomorrowyes, tomorrow," he said, "I will promise anything if you

will not leave me now. Once" But again the thread running so faintly through that inextricable maze of

She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer him at once.

In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big wood fire in the old bookroom, where,

staring into the playing flames, he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he seemed

merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She opened the little piano at the far end of the

room and played on and on as fancy ledChopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely, forlorn old

English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about

itself the hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the thoughts of a solitary child.

Ever and again a log burnt through its strength, and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the

stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance towards his visitor, and to turn another page. At last

the music, too, fell silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his hand and eyed almost timidly brother

"You won't," he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme confidence, "you won't much notice? They

come and go. I try not toto speak. It's the only way through. It is not that I don't know they're only dreams.

But if once thethe others thought there had been any tampering"he tapped his forehead

meaningly"here: if once they thought that, it would, you know, be quite over then. How could I prove . .

.?" He turned cautiously towards the door, and with laborious significance nodded his head at them.

Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire. "Tampering, my dear chap: That's what the lump

"Yes, yes," said Lawford, touching his arm, "but you know what I mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then

They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite distinctly in the still nightshaded house they heard

his door gently close. Then, as if by consent, they turned and looked long and questioningly into each other's

"You mean?" he questioned her; but still he had again to read her answer in her eyes.

"Oh, very well, Grisel," he said quietly, "you know best," and returned once more to his writing.

For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a little after midnight he woke, with his face

towards the uncurtained window, though for many minutes he lay brightly confronting all Orion, that from

blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering square, he could not lift or stir his cold and

leaden limbs. He rose at last and threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed from

the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he

seemed in body that sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost all the remainder of

the lagging darkness pacing softly to and fro; one face only before his eyes, the one sure thing, the one thing

Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the

back of the house, went off cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned Lawford was in his place at

the breakfasttable. He sat on, moody and constrained, until even Herbert's haphazard talk trickled low.

"I fancy my sister is nursing a headache," he said at last, "but she'll be down soon. And I'm afraid from the

looks of you, Lawford, your night was not particularly restful." He felt his way very heedfully. "Perhaps we

walked you a little too far yesterday. We are so used to tramping that" Lawford kept thoughtful eyes

"I see what it is, Herbertyou are humouring me again. I have been wracking my brains in vain to remember

what exactly did happen yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in sleep. I get so farand then I'm

done. It won't give up a hint. But you really mustn't think I'm an invalid, oror in my second childhood. The

truth is," he added naively, "it's my first, come back again. But now that I've got so far, now that I'm really

better, I" He broke off rather vacantly, as if afraid of his own confidence. "I must be getting on," he

summed up with an effort, "and that's the solemn fact. I keep forgetting I'mI'm a ratepayer!"

Herbert sat round in his chair. "You see, Lawford, the very term is little else than Doubledutch to me. As a

matter of fact Grisel sends all my hushmoney to the horrible people that do the cleaning up, as it were. I

can't catch their drift. Government to me is merely the spectacle of the clever, or the specious, managing the

dull. It deals merely with the physical, and just the fringe of consciousness. I am not joking. I think I follow

you. All I mean is that the obligationsmainly tepid, I take itthat are luring you back to the fold would be

the very ones that would scare me quickest off. The imagination, the appeal faded: we're dead."

"Oh yes, of course," said Herbert intelligently. "Only temporarily. It's this beastly gregariousness that's the

devil. The very thought of it undoes mewith an absolute shock of sheepishness. I suddenly realise my

human nakedness; that here we are, little better than naked animals, bleating behind our illusory wattles on

the slopes ofof infinity. And nakedness, after all, is a wholesome thing to realise only when one thinks too

much of one's clothes. I peer sometimes, feebly enough, out of my wool, and it seems to me that all these

busybodies, all these factdevourers, all this newsreading rabble, are nothing brighter than very dullwitted

children trying to play an imaginative game, much too deep for their poor reasons. Even then we have left the

fanatics and the Mammonites out. The others, the 'happy mediums,' daren't wink, daren't so much as look at

one another. Their principles are like some old savage chief's tophat: it clinches his unpresentableness. I

don't mean, of course, my dear fellow, that your wanting to go home is anything gregarious, but I do think

their insisting on your coming at once might be. Still, I know you won't visit this stuff on me as anything

more than just my 'scum,' as Grisel calls the fine flower of my maiden meditations. All that I really want to

say, all that I hope, my dear chap, there's not by this time the least need for me to say, is that we should both

be more than delighted if you'd stay just as long as it will not be a bore for you to stay. Stay till you're heartily

tired of us! Go back, now, if you must; tell them how much better you are. Bolt off to a nerve specialist. He'll

say complete resta change of scene, and all that. They all do. Instinct via intellect. And why not take your

rest here? We are such miserably dull company to one another it would be a greater pleasure to have you with

Lawford listened. "I wish," he began, and stopped dead again. "Anyhow, I'll go back. I am afraid,

Herbert, I've been playing truant. It was all very well while To tell you the truth I can't think quite

"Right you are," said Herbert, pretending to be cheerful. "You can't expect, your really can't, everything to

come right straight away. Just have patience. And now, let's go out and sit in the sun. They've mixed

And about half an hour afterwards he glanced up from his book to find his visitor fast asleep in his garden

Grisel had taken her brother's place, with a little pile of needlework beside her on the grass, when Lawford

again opened his eyes under the rosy shade of a parasol. He watched her for a while, without speaking.

"That depends on how long you have been awake," she said, smiling. "My brother tells me," she went on,

beginning to stitch, "that you have made up your mind to leave us today. Perhaps we are only flattering

ourselves that it has been a rest. But if it hasis that, do you think, quite wise?"

He leant forward and hid his face in his hands. "It's becauseit's because it's the only 'must' I can see."

"But even 'musts'well, we have to be sure even of 'musts,' haven't we? Are you?" She glanced up and for

an instant their eyes met, and the falling water seemed to be sounding out of a distance so remote it might be

"Supposing," he said very slowly, and almost as if speaking to himself, "supposing Sabathierand you know

he's only just like a friend now one mustn't be seen talking tosupposing he came back; what then?"

"Oh, but Sabathier's gone: he never really came. It was only a fancya mood. It was only youanother

"Oh, very well," he said fretfully, "you too! But if he did, if he did, come really back: 'prey' and all?"

"Would my 'must' still be his?" The face he raised to her, as he leaned forward under the direct light of the

sun, was so lined and haggard, the thought crossed her mind that it did indeed seem little more than a

"You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be even thinking of defeat now?"

"Nor you mine! It was a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a reason why you should cast your mind back?

"Only," said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, "only because I love you:" and listened in the

silence to the words as one may watch a bird that has escaped out of its cage steadily flying on and on till lost

For an instant the grey eyes faltered. "But that, surely," she began in a low voice, still steadily sewing, "that

was our compact last nightthat you should let me help, that you should trust me just as you trusted the

mother years ago who came in the little cart with the shaggy pony to the homesick boy watching at the

window. Perhaps," she added almost mischievously, "in this odd shuffle of souls and faces, I am that mother,

and most frightfully anxious you should not give in. Why, even because of the tiredness, even because the

cause seems vain, you must still fight onwouldn't she have said it? Surely there are prizes, a daughter, a

career, no end! And even they gonestill the self undimmed, undaunted, that took its dubbing like a man."

"I know you know I'm all but crazed; you see this wretched mind all littered and broken down; look at me

like that, then! Forget even you have befriended me and pretend Why must I blunder on and on like

Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a hidingplace. "We can't talk here. How mad the whole

day is! Listen, listen! I doI do love youmother and woman and friendfrom the very moment you

came. It's all so clear, so clear: that, and your miserable 'must,' my friend. Come, we will go away by

SHE came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without

speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall.

Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran steeply up the hillside. And by and by

they came to a glen where the woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green hollow of

saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours. "There," she said, holding out her hand to him, "now we

are alone. Just six hours or soand then the sun will be there," she pointed to the treetops to the west, "and

then you will have to go; for good, for goodyou your way, and I mine. What a tanglea tangle is this life

of ours! Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and I? Friends of an hour! What will

you think of me? Does it matter? Don't speak! Say nothingpoor face, poor hands! If only there were

something to look toto pray to!" She bent over his hand and pressed it to her breast. "What worlds we've

They wandered on a little way, and came back, and listened to the first few birds that flew up into the higher

They talked, and were silent, and talked again; without question, or sadness, or regret, or reproach; she

mocking even at themselves, mocking at this "change""Why, and yet without it, would you ever even have

dreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman went to his restless grave for mefor me! Need we understand!

Were we told to pry? Who made us human must be human too. Why must we take such care, and make such

a fretthis soul! I know it, I know it; it is all we have'to save,' they say, poor creatures. No, never to

spend, and so they daren't for a solitary instant lift in on the finger from its cage. Well, we have; and now,

soon, back it must go, back it must go, and try its best to whistle the day out. And yet, do you know, perhaps

the very freedom does a little shake itsits monotony. It's true, you see, they have lived a long time; these

"There, and you are hungry?" she asked him, laughing in his eyes. "Of course, of course you arescarcely a

mouthful since that first still wonderful supper. And you haven't slept a wink, except like a tiredout child

after its first party, in that old garden chair. I sat and watched, and yes, almost hoped you'd never wake in

casein case! Come along, see, down there. I can't go home just yet. There's a little old innwe'll go and sit

down thereas if we were really trying to be romantic! I know the woman quite well; we can talk

They sat at a little table in the garden of "The Cherry Trees," its thick green branches burdened with ripened

fruit. And Grisel tried to persuade him to eat and drink, "for tomorrow we die," she said, her hands

"There are dozens and dozens of old stories, you know," she said, leaning on her elbows, "dozens and dozens,

meaning only us. You must, you must eat; look, just an apple. We've got to say goodbye. And faintness will

double the difficulty." She lightly touched his hand as if to compel him to smile with her. "There, I'll peel it;

and this is Eden; and soon it will be the cool of the evening. And then, oh yes, the voice will come! What

nonsense I am talking! Never mind!" They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly through the air

and with busy claws set to its nets; and those small ghosts the robins went whistling restlessly among the

A little child came out of the porch of the inn into the garden, and stood with its battered doll in its arms,

softly watching them awhile. But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst out laughing and

Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. "You see," he said, "the whole world mocks me. You say

'this evening;' need it be, must it be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me! If you only

knew what we should only detest each other for saying and for listening to! The whole thing's dulled and

staled. Who wants a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the converted?and

II'm converted to Sabathier's God. Should we be sitting here talking like this if I were not so? I can't, I

"Won't you understand?" he continued. "I am an outcasta felon caught redhanded, come in the flesh to a

hideous and righteous judgment. I hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do love you with

all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don't ask now, even. I can, I would begin again. God knows my

face has changed enough even as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; how easily I could

hide awayin your memory; and just wait, wait for you. In time, dear, even this wild futile madness too

"I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, put off, forget as I may, must is must. Right

and wrong, who knows what they mean, exce3pt that ones' to be done and one's to be forsworn; orforgive,

my friend, the truest thing I ever saidor else we lose the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd

weary of me. I know you, M. Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though you have risen from

your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or flesh and blood; and not to do what one old raven within

you cries you must, would bge in time to hate the very sound of my footstep. You shall go back, poor

turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced

the dark. Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what always are and must be foolish

reasons because they are not reasons at all but ghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is

your only hope of peace. And should I have staked so much on your finding that, and now throw up the

game! Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk half the way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my

brother guessesat least my madness. I've talked and talked him nearly past his patience. And then, when

you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely and soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can't

even hear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!well, I always thought it was much too plain a tale to

have as dull an ending. And with us the powers beyond have played a newer trick, that's all. Another hour,

and we will go. Till then there's just the solitary walk home and only the dull old haunted house that hoards as

Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame, with a melancholy rapture in their

uplifted boughs above their fading coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness,

awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that had sung in the spring sang now amid the

Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacup on his knee while he pretended to be

"Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile," said Grisel. She stood for a moment in

her white gown, her face turned towards the clear green twilight of the open window. "I have promised to

walk part of the way with him. But I think first we must have some tea. No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We

The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather difficult silence, only the least degree of

nervousness apparent, so far as Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof, sustained air of impersonality that

"Your sister said just now, Herbert," blurted Lawford at last, "'Here's Nicholas Sabatheir come to say

goodbye': well, Iwhat I want you to understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was, but also that it

Herbert slowly turned. "I don't quite see why 'goodbye,' Lawford. Andfrankly, there is nothing to explain.

We have chosen to live such a very outoftheway life," he went on, as if following up a train of through. . .

. "The truth is, if one wants to live at allone's own life, I meanthere's no time for many friends. And just

steadfastly regarding your neighbour's bill as you follow it down into the Nowhereit's that that seems to me

the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go on one's own way, doing one's best to free one's mind

of cantand I dare say clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One runs that risk. And the

consequence is that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don't think I care a groat for any

opinion as human as my own, good or bad. My sister's a million times a better woman than I am a man. What

possibly could there be, then, for me to say?" He turned with a nervous smile that yet seemed to be the very

Lawford glanced involuntarily towards the door that stood in shadow duskily ajar. "Well," he said, "we have

talked, and we think if must be that, until, at least," he smiled faintly, "I can come as quietly as your old ghost

you told me of; and in that case it may not be so very long to wait." Their eyes met fleetingly across the still,

listening room. "The more I think of it," Lawford pushed slowly on, "the less I understand the frantic

purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I went down, as you said, 'a godsend of a little Miss

Muffet,' and the inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to dance my little wooden

dance and to wait till the showman should put me down into his box again. And nowwell, here I am. The

whole thing has gone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all my friends to swear to; and yet,

Herbert, if you'll forgive me troubling you with all this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or

desire remains unchanged. You will think of all that, I hope. It's not, of course, the ghost of an apology, only

Herbert rose and paced slowly across to the window. "The longer I live, Lawford, the more I curse this futile

gift of speech. Here am I, wanting to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal directly to mind,

would be merely as the wind passing through the leaves of a tree with just oneone multitudinous rustle, but

which, if I tried now to put into wordswell, daybreak would find us still groping on. Personally, I have

grown tired of facing enigmas no mortal man has ever answered to his own or to any one else's satisfaction.

His merciful contemporaries did not scrawl it on poor old Sabathier's tombstone, but there is no peace for the

wicked, and we're all, I suppose, pretty much that, if what wicked means is to be sick to death of one's

limitations and sick to death of trying to scramble over them. I've worn boots out at the game, I can tell you.

Who hasn't? Say no more, my dear fellow. Explanation wasn't a bit needed. We're just where we were; that's

"Well," said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turn thought into such primitive speech, "that's

where we stand, then." He got up suddenly like a man awakened in the midst of unforeseen danger. "Where is

your sister?" he cried, looking into the darkness. And as if in actual answer to his entreaty, they heard the

clinking of the cups on the little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying into the room. She

sat down on the window seat and put the tray down beside her. "It will be before dark even now," she said,

They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physical exhaustion as peasants have who have

been labouring in the fields since daybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long road began

that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she stopped with a sob beside an old scarred

milestone by the wayside. "This, my dear friend, is as far as I can go," she said. She stooped, and laid her

hand on the cold, mossgrown surface of the stone. "Even now it's wet with dew." She rose again and looked

strangely into his face. "Yes, yes, here it is," she said, "oh, and worse than any fear. But nothing now can

"Don't think, don't think," she said, taking his hands, and lifting them to her bosom. "It's only how the day

goes; and it has all, my dear, happened scores and scores of times beforemother and child and friendand

lovers that are all these too, like us. We mustn't cry out. Perhaps it was all before even we could speakthis

sorrow came. Take all the hope and all the future: and then may come our chance."

"What's life to me now! You said the desire would come back; that I should shake myself free. I could if you

would help me. I don't know what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care for nothing,

wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dull voice keeps saying that I have no right telling

you all this. You will know best. I know I am nothing. I ask nothing. If we love another, what is there else to

"Nothing, nothing to say, except only goodbye. What could you tell me that I have not told myself over and

over again? Reason's gone. Thinking's gone. Now I am only sure." She smiled shadowily. "What peace did he

They stood in utter solitude awhile in the evening gloom. The air was as still and cold as some grey,

unfathomable, untraversed sea. Above them uncountable clouds drifted slowly across space.

"Why do they all keep whispering together?" he said in a low voice, with cowering face. "Oh if you knew,

Grisel, how they have hemmed me in; how they have come pressing in through the narrow gate I left ajar.

Only to mockand mislead. It's all dark and unintelligible." He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows

that seemed to him to be gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her lips with his

fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to fill earth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave

and lovely overshadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death the nearer field of an

immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint cry. And he found himself running and running, just as

he had run that other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards his earthly home.

HE WAS utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged, unglancing pertinacity without

looking behind him. And then he rested under the dewsodden hedgeside and buried his face in his hands.

Once, indeed, he did turn and walk back with hard, uplifted face for many minutes, but at the meeting with an

old woman who, in the late dusk passed him unheeded on the road, he stopped again, and after standing

awhile looking down in the dust, trying to gather up the tangled threads of his thoughts, he once more set off

It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house. The lamp at the roadside obscurely lit its

breadth and height. Lamplight within, too, was showing yellow between the Venetian blinds; a cold gasjet

gleamed out of the basement window. He seemed bereft now of all desire or emotion, simply the passive

witness of things external in a calm which, though he scarcely realised its cause, was an exquisite solace and

relief. His senses were intensely sharpened with sleeplessness. The faintest sound struck clear and keen on his

As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to the porch, and leaning between stone pilaster

and wall, listened intently for any rumour of those within. He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice

quietly speak on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell silent, by Sheila's, rapid,

rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just

come it, or were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the cumbersome door. It

was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over

the balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible but a narrow strip of the white

table, on which lay a black cotton glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute,

An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of knocking for admission, of confronting

Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the cold, echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild,

almost metallic, flash of recognition. He stepped softly down again, and paused at the open gate. Once before

the voices of the night had called him: they would not summon him for ever in vain. He raised his eyes again

towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the alien out? He narrowed his lids and

smiled up at the vacuous, unfriendly house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the

gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long, white window was ajar.

With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, climbed in, and stood listening again in the black passage

on the other side. When he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was stilled, he trod

on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough,

perhaps, to admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he could see Ada sitting at the empty

table, beneath the single whistling chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading,

apparently; but her back was turned to him, and he could not distinguish her arm beyond the elbow. But

almost in an instant he discovered, as, drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had

covertly, instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table beneath, and was transfixedly listening

too. He turned his eyes away and waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over

One by one, with a thin, remote exultation in his progress, he mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each

deliberate and groping step the voices above him became more clearly audible. And at last, in the darkness of

the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of the diningroom door, he stood on the

threshold of the drawingroom, and could hear with varying distinctness what these friendly voices were so

absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some contrivance of science, registering passively the

least sound, the faintest syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought that speech conveyed. He

simply stood hearkening, fixed and motionless, like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden

"Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won't understand that it's far worse than that." Sheila

seemed to be upbraiding, or at least reasoning with, the last speaker. "Ask Mr. Dantonhe actually saw

"'Saw him,'" repeated the thick, still voice. "He stood there, in that very doorway, Mrs. Lovat, and positively

railed at me. He stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I wasn't unfriendly to

the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it I thought it was simplyI did indeed, Mrs. LawfordA

monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it; shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I

could have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford thanwell, I won't repeat what

particular word occurred to me. But there!" the corpulent shrug was almost audible, "we all know what old

Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far as mere character is concerned; the right man in the right

place; but as gullible and as softhearted as a tomtit. I've said all this before, I know, Mrs. Lawford, and

been properly snubbed for my pains. But if I had been Bethany I'd have sifted the whole story at the

beginning, the moment he put his foot into the house. Look at that Tichborne fellowwent for months and

months, just picking up one day what he floored old Hawkinswasn't it?with the next. But of course," he

added gloomily, "now that's all too late. He's wormed himself into a tolerably tight corner. I'd just like to see,

though, a British jury comparing the claimant with his photograph, 'pon my word I would. Where would he

"But, my dear Mr. Danton," went on the clear, languid voice Lawford had heard break so lightheartedly into

laughter, "you don't mean to tell me that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she sees himor, for

the matter of that, when she doesn't see him? If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo

tomorrow, I'd recognize him at the very first blushliterally! He'd go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or

complain that the lamps had been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's paper. Oh, besides, Tom's

"That's precisely what I think, Mrs. Lovat; one is saturated with one's personality, as it were."

"You see, that's just it! That's just exactly every woman's husband all over; he's saturated with his personality.

"But that," broke in Sheila crisply"that's just precisely what I asked you all to come in for. It's because I

know now, apart altogether from the mere evidence, thatthat he is Arthur. Mind, I don't say I ever really

doubted. I was only so utterly shocked, I suppose. I positively put posers to him; but his memory was perfect

in spite of the shock which would have killed aa more sensitive nature." She had risen, it seemed, and was

moving with all her splendid impressiveness of silk and presence across the general line of vision. But the

hall was dark and still; her eyes were dimmed with light. Lawford could dimly survey her there unmoved.

"The girl's scared out of her wits," said Sheila, returning to her audience. "I've told you all that miserable

Ferguson storya piece of calm, callous presence of mind I should never have dreamed my husband capable

of. And the curious thing isat least, it is not longer curious in the light of the ghastly facts I am only

waiting for Mr. Bethany to tell youfrom the very first she instinctively detested the very mention of his

"I believe, you know," said Mr. Craik with some decision, "that servants must have the same wonderful

instinct as dogs and children; they are natural, intuitive judges of character."

"Yes," said Sheila gravely, "and it's only through that that I got to hear of thethe mysterious friend in the

"I don't want to suggest anything, Mrs. Lawford," began Mr. Craik rather hurriedly, "but wouldn't it perhaps

be wiser not to wait for Mr. Bethany? It is not at all unusual for him to be kept a considerable time in the

vestry after service, and today is the Feast of St. Michael's and all Angels, you know. Mightn't your husband

"Craik's right, Mrs. Lawford; it's not a bit of good waiting. Bethany would stick there till midnight of any old

woman's spiritual state could keep her going so long. Here we all are, and at any moment we may be

interrupted. Mind you, I promise nothingonly that there shall be no scene. But here I am, and if he does

come knocking and ringing and lunging out in the disgusting mannerwell, all I ask is permission to speak

for you. 'Pon my word, to think what you must have gone through! It isn't the place for ladies just

"Besides, supposing the romantic lady of the ponycarriage has friends? Are you a pugilist, Mr. Craik?"

"I hope I could give some little account of myself, Mrs. Lovat; but you need have no anxiety about that."

"There, Mr. Danton! So as there is not the least cause for anxiety even if poor Arthur should return to his

earthly home, may we share your dreadful story at once, Sheila; and then, perhaps, hear Mr. Bethany's

"Honestly, you know, you are a big of a sceptic, Mrs. Lovat," pleaded Danton playfully. "I've seen him."

"I don't think there's the least chance of Arthur returning tonight," said Sheila solemnly. "I am perfectly well

aware it's best to be as cheerful as one canand as resolved; but I think, Bettie, when even you know the

whole horrible secret, you won't think Mr. Danton waswas horrified for nothing. The ghastly, the awful

"Well, I dare say Mr. Craik will explain it much better than I can. By a devil, dear." The voice was perfectly

poised and restrained, and Mr. Craik did not see fit for the moment to embellish the definition.

"It's in the Bible, Bettie, over and over again. It was quite a common thing in the Middle Ages; I think I'm

right in saying that, am I not, Mr. Craik?" Mr. Craik must have solemnly nodded or abundantly looked his

unwilling affirmation. "And what has been," continued Sheila temperately, "I suppose may be again."

"When the fellow began raving at me the other night," began Danton huskily, as if out of an unfathomable pit

of reflection, "among other things he said that I haven't any wish to remember was that I was a sceptic. And

Bethany said ditto to it. I don't mind being called a sceptic: why, I said myself Mrs. Lovat was a sceptic just

now! But when it comes to 'devils,' Mrs. LawfordI may be convinced about the other, but 'devils'! Well,

I've been in the City nearly twentyfive years, and it's my impression human nature can raise all the devils

we shall ever need. And another thing," he added, as if inspired, and with an immensely intelligent blink, "is

"I'll certainly look it up, Danton. But I take it that Mrs. Lawford is not so much insisting on the word, as on

thethe manifestation. And I'm bound to confess that the Psychical Research Society, which has among its

members quite eminent and entirely trustworthy men of scienceI am boutd to admit they have become

curiously stories to tell. The old idea was, you know, that there are seventytwo princely devils, and as many

as seven millionercommoners. It may very well sound quaint to our ears, Mrs. Lovat; but there it is. But

whether that has any bearing onon what you were saying, Danton, I can't say. Perhaps Mrs. Lawford will

throw a little more light on the subject when she tells us on what precise facts herher distressing theory is

Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stooping forward a little he could, each in tourn,

scrutinise the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the farther end of the table;

squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown.

"Yes," Mrs. Lovat was saying, "I quite agree, Mr. Craik. Seventytwo princes, and no princesses! But do

"I mean this," said Sheila firmly. "When I went in for the last time to say goodbyeand of course it was at

his own wish that I did leave him; and precisely why he wished it is now only too apparentI had brought

him some money from the bankfifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty pounds. And quite by the merest chance I

glanced down, in passing, at a book he had apparently been reading, which he seemed very anxious to

conceal with his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe he studied a little before we were

married, andwell, I detest anything like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, 'Why, you're reading

"And can't you even confide to us the title, Sheila?" said Mrs. Lovat reproachfully.

"Wait a minute," said Sheila; "you shall make as much fun of the thing as you like, Bettie, when I've finished.

I don't know why, but that peculiar, stealthy book haunted me. 'Why French?' I kept asking myself. Arthur

hasn't opened a French book for years. He doesn't even approve of the entente. His argument was that we

ought to be friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When Ada came back the

next evening and said he was out, I came the following morning by myself and knocked. No one answered,

and I let myself in. His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over the houseone

even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner of the drawingroom. I suppose it was foolish, but I

was alone, and just that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state of mind. I

hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something seemed to say to meand it was surely

providential'Go downstairs!' And there in the breakfastroom the first thing I saw on the table was this

booka dingy, ragged, bleared, patchedup, oh, a horrible, a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too

here and there); and beside3 it was by own little school dictionary, my own child's" She looked up

"Peep between the blinds, Mr. Craik; it may be poor Mr. Bethany confronting Pneumonia on the porch."

"There's no one there," said the curate, returning softly from his errand. "Please continue youryour

"Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the pages. It was full of the most

revolting confessions and trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur

collection ofof horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when

towards the end of the book, about thirty pages from the end, I came upon thisgloating up at me from the

She cast one rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk skirt, drew out from the pocket beneath

the few poor crumpled pages, and passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view,

as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his

"What did I say?" he said. "What did I say? What did I tell old Bethany in this very room? What d'ye think of

that, Mrs. Lovat, for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d'ye make of that, Craikeh?"

Mrs. Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her fingertips handed the sheet son to her neighbour,

She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her pocket. She swept her hands over her

"Like! It's the livin' image. The livin' image," he repeated, stretching out his arm, "as he stood there that very

"What will you say, then," said Sheila, quietly, "what will you say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de

Danton's little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further into his head. "I'd say, Mrs. Lawford, if

you'll excuse the word, that it might be a dam horrible coincidenceI'd go farther, an almost incredible

coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I'd say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable

piece of trickery. That's what I'd say. Oh, don't you know, Mrs. Lovat. When a scamp's a scamp, he'll stop at

"Ah, but that's not all," said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by one. "We all of us know that my

husband's story was that he had gone down to Widderstoneinto the churchyard, for his convalescent

ramble; that story's true. We all know that he said he had had a fit, a heart attack, and that a kind ofof

stupor had come over him. I believe on my honour that's true too. But no one knows but he himself and Mr.

Bethany and I, that it was an old broken grave, quite at the bottom of the hill, that he chose for his resting

place, andI can't get the scene out of my headthat the name on that one solitary tombstone down there

"You don't mean," said Mr. Craik, who had not removed his gaze from Sheila's face, "I am not to take it that

"You mean," said Mrs. Lovat crisply, "that the man in the grave is the man in the book, and the man in the

Danton rose cumbrously from his chair, looking beadily down on his three friends.

"Oh, but you know, it isn'tit isn't right," he began. "Lord! I can see him now. Glassyyes, that's the very

word I saidglassy! It won't do, Mrs. Lawford; on my solemn honour, it won't do. I don't deny it, call it

what you like; yes, devils, if you like. But what I say as a practical man is that it's just rankthat's what it is!

Bethany's had too much rope. The time's gone by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all very well, but

after all it's justice that clinches the bargain. There's only one way: we must catch him; we must lay the poor

wretch by the heels before it's too late. No publicity. God bless me, no! We'd have all the rags in London on

us! They'd pillory us nine days on end. We'd never live it down. No, we must just hush it upa home or

something; an asylum. For my part," he turned like a huge toad, his chin low on his collar"and I'd say the

same if it was my own brother, and, after all, he is your husband Mrs. LawfordI'd sooner he was in his

grave. To lay himself open! I can't stand ithonestly, I can't stand it. And yet," he jerked his chin over the

peak of his collar towards the ladies, "and yet you say he's being fetched! comes creeping home, and is

fetched at dark by a lady in a ponycarriage. God bless me! It's rank. What," he broke out violently again,

"what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played

such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word,

and all deference to you, Mrs. Lawford. But I know this, a couple of hundred years ago they would have

burnt a man at the stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here! I don't know how, and I don't know

when: his mother, I've always heard say, was a little eccentric; but the truth is he's managed by some unholy

legerdemain to get the thing at his finger's ends; that's what it is! Think of that unspeakable book! Left open

on the table! Look at his Ferguson game! It's our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of mischief. It

reflects all round. There's no getting out of it; we're all in it. And tar sticks. And then there's poor little Alice

to consider, andand yourself, Mrs. Lawford; I wouldn't give the fellowfriend though he was, in a

wayit isn't safe to give him five minutes' freedom. We've simply got to save you from yourself, Mrs.

Lawford; that's what it isand from oldfashioned sentiment. And I only wish Bethany was here now to

He stirred himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood in the middle of the hearthrug, gently

oscillating, with his hands behind his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent house his posture

At the same moment, at the creak of a footstep on the kitchen stairs, Lawford also had drawn soundlessly

"While Mr. Danton 'is thinking,' Sheila," Mrs. Lovat was softly interposing, "do please listen a moment to

me! Do you mean really that that Frenchmanthe one you've pocketedis the poor creature in the grave?"

"Yes, Mrs. Lawford," said Mr. Craik, putting out his face a little, "are we to take it that you mean that?"

"It's the same date, dear, the same name even to the spelling; what possibly else could I think?"

"And that the poor creature in the grave actually climbed up out of the darkness andwell, what?"

"I know no more than you now, Bettie. But the two facesyou must remember you haven't seen my husband

"Pah! Bethany, Craik! He'd back Old Nick himself if he came with a good tale. We've got to act; we've got to

"Well," began Mrs. Lovat, smiling a little remorsefully beneath the arch of her raised eyebrows, "I sincerely

hope you'll all forgive me; but I really am, heart and soul, with Old Nick, as Mr. Danton seems on intimate

terms enough to call him. Dead, he is really immensely alluring; and alive, I think, awfully pitiful andand

pathetic. But if I know anything of Arthur he won't be beaten by a Frenchman. As for just the face, I think, do

you know, I almost prefer dark men""qshe glanced up at the face immediately in front of the clock"at

least," she added softly, "when they are not looking very vindictive. I suppose people often are possessed,

"As a matter of fact, Mrs. Lovat, there are seven. But I think in this case Mrs. Lawford intends to suggest not

so much thatthat her husband is in that condition; habitual sin, you knowgrave enough, of course, I

ownbut that he is actually being compelled, even to the extent of a more or less complete change of

physiognomy, to follow the biddings of some atrocious spiritual influence. It is no breach of confidence to

say that I have myself been present at a deathbed where the struggle against what I may call the end was

perfectgly awful to witness. I don't profess to follow all the ramifications of the affair, but though possibly

Mr. Danton may seem a little harsh, such harshness, if I may venture to intercede, is not necessarily

"If you only knew the awful fear, the awful uncertainty I have been in, Bettie! Oh, it is worse, infinitely

worse, than you can possibly imagine. I have myself heard the voice speak out of hima high, hard, nasal

voice. I've seen what Mr. Danton calls the 'glassiness' come into his face, and an expression so wild and so

appallingly depraved, as it were, that I have had to hurry downstairs to hide myself from the thought. I'm

willing to sacrifice everything for my own husband and for Alice; but can it be expected of me to go on

harbouring. . . ." Lawford listened on in vain for a moment; poor Sheila, it seemed, had all but broken down.

"Look here, Mrs. Lawford," began Danton huskily, "you really mustn't give way; you really mustn't. It's

awful, unspeakably awful, I admit. But here were are; friends, in the midst of friends. And there's absolutely

Ada stood in the doorway looking in. "All I've come to ask, ma'am," she said in a low voice, "is, Am I to stay

"What's that? What's that you're sayhing?" broke out the husky voice again. "Control yourself! Speak gently!

"Begging your pardon, sir, I'm perfectly under control. And all I say is that I can't stay any longer alone

"'Somebody'but who?" said Sheila out of the silence. "You come up here, Ada, with these idle fancies.

"No knock, no footstep, m'm, that I've heard. It's Dr. Ferguson, m'm. He was here that first night; and he's

been here ever since. He was here when I cam on Tuesday; and he was here last night. And he's here now. I

can't be deceived by my own feelings. It's not right, it's not outspoken to keep me in the dark like this. And if

Lawford in his utter weariness had nearly closed the door and now sat bent up on a chair, wondering vaguely

when this poor play was coming to an end, longing with an intensity almost beyond endurance for the keen

night air, the open sky. But still his ears drank in every tiniest sound or stir. He heard Danton's lowered voice

muttering his arguments. He heard Ada quietly sniffing in the darkness of the hall. And this was his world!

This was his life's panorama, creaking on at every step. This was the 'must' Grisel had sent him back

tothese poor fools packed together in a panic at an old stale tale! Well, they would all come out presently,

and cluster; and the crested, cackling fellow would lead them safely away out of the haunted farmyard.

"Look here, my good girl, we haven't the least intention of keeping you in the dark. If you want to leave your

mistress like this in the midst of her anxieties she says you can go and welcome. But it's not a bit of good in

the world coming up with these cockandbull stories. The truth is your master's mad, that's the sober truth

of ithopelessly insane, you understand; and we've got to find him. But nothing's to be said, d'ye see? It's

got to be done without fuss or scandal. But if there's any witness wanted, or anything of that kind, why, here

you are; and," he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible hoot, "and well worth your while! You did see

Ada stood silent a moment. "I don't know, sir," she began quietly, "by what right you speak to me about what

you call my cockandbull stories. If the master is mad, all I can say to anybody is I'm very sorry to hear it. I

came to my mistress, sir, if you please; and I prefer to take my orders from who has a right to give them. Did

Sheila had swept solemnly to the door. "Mr. Danton meant all that he said quite kindly, Ada. I can perfectly

understand your feelingsperfectly. And I'm very much obliged to you for all your kindness to me in very

trying circumstances. We are all agreedwe are forced to the terrible conclusion whichwhich Mr. Danton

has justexpressed. And I know I can rely on your discretion. Don't stay on a moment if you really are

afraid. But when you say 'some one,' Ada, do you meansome one like you or me; or do you meanthe

"I've been sitting in the kitchen, m'm, unable to move. I'm watched everywhere. The other evening I went into

the drawingroomI was alone in the houseand . . . I can't describe it. It wasn't dark; and yet it was all

still and black, like the ruins after a fire. I don't mean I saw it, only that it was like a scene. And then the

watchingI am quite aware to some it may sound all fancy. But I'm not superstitious, never was. I only

mean, m'm, that I can't sit long alone. Else I'm quite myself. So if so be you don't want me any more; if I can't

"Very well, Ada; thank you. You can go out this way." The door was unchained and unbolted, and

"She's quite a good creature at heart," she explained frankly, as if to disclaim any finesse, "and almost

quixotically loyal. But what really did she mean, do you think? She is so obstinate. That maddening 'some

one'! How they do repeat themselves! It can't be my husband; not Dr. Ferguson, I mean. You don't

supposeoh surely, not some one else!" Again the dark silence of the house seemed to drift in on the little

Mr. Craik cleared his throat. "I failed to catch quite all that the maid said," he murmured apologetically; "but

I certainly did gather it was to some kind ofof emanation she was referring. And the 'ruin,' you know. I'm

not a mystic; and yet do you know, that somehow seemed to me almost offensively suggestive ofof

demonic influence. You don't suppose, Mrs. Lawfordand of course I wouldn't for a moment venture on

such a conjecture unsupportedbut even if this restless spirit (let us call it) did succeed in making a footing,

it might possibly be rather in the nature of a lodging than a permanent residence. Moreover we are, I think,

bound to remember that probably in all spheres of existence like attracts like; even the Gadarene episode

seems to suggest a possible multiplication!" he peered largely. "You don't suppose, Mrs. Lawford. . . ?"

"I think Mr. Craik doesn't quite relish having to break the news, Sheila dear," explained Mrs. Lovat

soothingly, "that perhaps Sabathier's out. Which really is quite a heavenly suggestion, for in that case your

husband would b in, wouldn't he? Just our old stolid Arthur again, you know. And next Mr. Craik is

suggesting, and it certainly does seem rather fascinating, that poor Ada's got mixed up with the Frenchman's

friends, or perhaps, even, with one of the seventytwo princes royal. I know women can't, or mustn't reason,

Danton started. "I wasn't really listening to the girl," he explained nonchalantly, shrugging his black

shoulders and pursing up his eyes. "Personally, Mrs. Lovat, I'd pack the baggage off tonight, box and all.

"You mustn't be depressedmust he, Mr. Craik? After all, my dear man, the business, as you call it, is not

exactly entailed. But really, Sheila, I think it must be getting very late. Mr. Bethany won't come now. And the

dear old thing ought certainly to have his say, before we go any further; oughtn't he, Mr. Danton? So what's

the use of worriting poor Ada's ghost any longer. And as for poor ArthurI haven't the faintest desire in the

world to hear the little cart drive up, simply in case it should be to leave your unfortunate husband behind it,

Sheila. What it must be to be alone all night in this house with a dead and buried Frenchman's facewell, I

"And yet, Mrs. Lovat," said Mr. Craik, with some little show of returning gaiety, "as we make our bed, you

"But in this case, you see," she replied reflectively, "if all accounts are true, Mr. Craik, it's manifestly the

wicked Frenchman who has made the bed, and Sheila who refu But look! Mr. Danton is fretting to get

"If you'll all go to the door," said Danton, seizing a fleeting opportunity to raise his eyebrows more

expressively even than if he had again shrugged his shoulders at Sheila, "I'll put out the light."

The night air flowed into the dark house as Danton slowly felt his way out of the diningroom. "There's only

one thing," said Sheila slowly. "When I last saw my husband, you know, he was, I think, the least bit better.

He was always stubbornly convinced it would all come right in time. That's why, I think, he's been spending

"For my part," said Mrs. Lovat, breathing the faint wind that was rising out of the west, "I'd sigh; I'd rub my

eyes; I'd thank God for such an exciting dream; and I'd turn comfortably over and go to sleep again. I'm all

"For my part," said Danton, looming in the dusk, "friend or no friend, I'd cut theI'd cut him dead. But don't

Voices, however, broke out almost immediately in the porch. And after a hurried consultation, Lawford in his

stagnant retreat heard the door softly reopened, and the striking of a match. And Mr. Craik, followed closely

by Danton's great body, stole circumspectly across his dim chink, and the first adventurer went stumbling

"I suppose," muttered Lawford, turning his head to the darkness, "they have come back to put out the kitchen

Apparently no answer had been returned to his inquiry; he waited a little longer, with legs apart, and eyeballs

enveloped in brooding darkness. "I'll just go and tell the ladies you're coming," he suddenly bawled down the

hollow. "Do you hear, Craik? They're alone, you know." And with that he resolutely wheeled and rapidly

made his way down the steps into the garden. Some few moments afterwards Mr. Craik shook himself free of

the basement, hastened at a gentle trot to rejoin his companions, and in his absence of mind omitted to shut

LAWFORD sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of their talk would repeat itself in

his memory, in much the same way as one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read here and there a

faded, almost meaningless sentiment. Sometimes a footstep passed echoing along the path under the trees,

then his thoughts would leave him, and he would listen and listen till it had quite died out. It was all so very

far away. And they toothese talkersso very far away; as remote and yet as clear as the characters that

have made their final bow, and have left the curtained stage, and one is standing uncompanioned and nearly

the last of the spectators, and the lights that have summoned back reality again are being extinguished. It was

only by a painful effort of mind that he kept recalling himself to himselfwhy he was here; what it all

Yet, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than

the hospitality of the dark. Here and there, it seemed, a humped or spindled form held against all corners its

passive place. Here and there a tiny faintness of light played. Night after night these chairs and tables kept

their blank vigil. Why, he thought, pleased as an overtired child with the fancy, in a sense they were always

alone, shut up in a kind of senselessnessjust like us all. But whatwhat, he had suddenly risen from his

chair to ask himselfwhat on earth are they alone with? No precise answer had been forthcoming to that

question. But as in turning in the doorway, he looked out into the night, flashing here and there in dark spaces

of the sky above the withering apple leaves, the long dark wall, and quiet, untrodden road, with the

tumultuous beating of the starsone thing at least he was conscious of having learned in these last few days:

It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he had lost all remembrance of since childhood.

And that queer homesickness, at any rate, was all Sabathier's doing, he thought, smiling in his rather

careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together, that made

life the endless, changing and yet changeless thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were only

Just with one's lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering unknown, and a reiterated going back out of the

solitude into the light and warmth, to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say goodbye:that after all was this

life on earth for those who watched as well as acted. What if one's earthly home were empty?still the

restless fretted traveller must tarry; "for the horrible worst of it is, my friend," he said, as if to some silent

companion listening behind him, "the worst of it is, your way was just simply, solely suicide." What was it

Herbert had called it? Yes, a culdesacblack, lofty, immensely still and old and picturesque, but none the

less merely a contemptible culdesac; no abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its flagstones for a

groan from the fugitive and deluded refugees. There was no peace for the wicked. The question of course

He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old aunt whom he used to stay with as a child.

"Children should be seen and not heard," she would say, peering at him over his favourite pudding.

His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again into reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes

only imagination dimly conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind astir with a shadowy and ceaseless traffic

which it wasn't at least this life's business to hearken after, or regard. And as he stood there in a mysteriously,

yet thronging peaceful solitude such as he had never known before, faintly out of the silence broke the sound

of approaching hoofs. His heart seemed to gather itself close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes, so

wildly had his blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained, caught up, with head slightly inclined,

listening, as with an interminable tardiness, measureless, anguished hope died down into nothingness. Cold

and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up those laggard moments. He turned with an infinite

revulsion of feeling to look out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up at his gate.

He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight, pause, and look up at his darkened windows,

and after a momentary hesitation, and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and fumble at the iron

latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering aversion, still scarcely tinged with curiosity. She had

succeeded in lifting the latch and in pushing her way through, and was even now steadily advancing towards

him along the tiled path. And a minute after he recognised with the warmest of reactions the quiet old figure

that had shared a sunset with him ages and ages agohis mother's old schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.

He was already ransacking the still faintlyperfumed diningroom for matches, and had just succeeded in

relighting the stillwarm lamp, when he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her peering in, in the

gloom, with all her years' trickling customariness behind her, a little dubious of knocking on a wideopen

But the lamp lit, Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor. "I am alone," he was explaining gravely,

The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of the steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed

his outstretched hand. None the less she followed him in, and when she was well advanced into the lighted

room, she sighed deeply, raised her veil over the front of her bonnet, and leisurely took out her spectacles.

"I suppose," she was explaining in a little quiet voice, "you are Mr. Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch

sight of a light in any of the windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me down at the wrong

She raised her head, and first through, and then over her spectacles she deliberately and steadfastly regarded

"Yes," she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely with satisfaction, to look for a chair. He

"I have been visiting my old friend Miss TuckerRev. W. Tucker's daughtershe, I knew, could give me

your address; and sure enough she did. Your road, d'ye see, was on my way home. And I determined in spite

of the hour, just to inquire. You must understand, Mr. Lawford, there was something that I rather particularly

wanted to say to you. But there!you're looking sadly, sadly ill; and," she glanced round a little

inquisitively, "I think my story had better wait for a more convenient occasion."

"Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not," Lawford assured her, "really. I have been ill, but I'm not practically quite

myself again. My wife and daughter have gone away for a few days; and I follow tomorrow, so if you'll

forgive such a very poor welcome, it may be mymy only chance. Do please let me hear."

The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on the arms and softly panted, while out of the rather

broad serenity of her face she sat blinking up at her companion as if, after a long talk instead of at the

beginning of one. "No," she repeated reflectively, "I don't like your looks at all; yet here we are now,

Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. "And does your business permit of much walking, sir?"

"Well, I've been malingering these last few daysidling at home; but I am always more or less my own man,

"All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I oftenoften think of you; and especially just lately."

"Well, now," she wriggled round her head to get a better view of him wheeling up his chair, "that's very

peculiar; because, Mr. Lawford, I've been thinking lately a very great deal of you. And yetI fancy I shall

"You do mystify mehorribly," he replied gallantly. "And that is the story, I suppose?"

"That's the story," repeated Miss Sinnet with some little triumph. "Now let me see; it was on Saturday

"Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It is a beautiful walk, and if fine, I generally take mine there too. It's near; there's

shade; it's very little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed. And that I think is pretty well all

that an old woman like me is fit for, Mr. Lawford. 'Nearly sixteen!' Is it possible? Dear, dear me? But let me

get on. On my way home from the Heath, you may be aware, before one reaches the road again, there's a

somewhat steep ascent. I haven't the strength I had, and whether I'm fatigued of not, I have always made it a

rule to rest awhile on a most convenient little seat at the summit, admire the viewwhat I can see of itand

then make my way quietly, quietly home. On Saturday, however, and it most rarely occursonce, I

remember, when a very civil nursemaid was sitting with two charmingly behaved little children in the

sunshine, and I heard they were my old friend Major Loder's own childrenon Saturday, as I was saying,

my own particular little haunt was already occupied." She glanced back to him from out of her thoughts, as it

were. "By a gentleman. I say, gentleman; though I must confess that his conduct, perhaps, too, a little

something even in his appearance, somewhat belied the term. Anyhow, gentleman let us call him."

"I'm not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr. Lawford, who distrust all strangers. I have never once

been molested; and I have enjoyed many and many a most interesting, and sometimes instructive, talk with

an individual whom I've never seen in my life before, and this side of the grave perhaps, am never likely to

see again." She lifted her head with pursed lips, and gravely yet still flickeringly regarded him once more.

"Well, I made some trifling remarkthe weather, the view, whatever," she explained with a little jerk of her

shoulder"and to my extreme astonishment he turned and addressed me by nameMiss Sinnet.

UnmistakablySinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won't consider that a very peculiar thing to do?

But you will recollect, Mr. Lawford, that I had been sitting there a considerable time. Surely, now, if you had

"Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The next thing my gentleman does is more

mysterious still. His whole manner was a little peculiar, perhapsa certain restlessness, what, in fact, one

might be almost tempted to call a certain furtiveness of behaviour. Never mind. What he does next is to ask

"Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised, by some very faint resemblance in his

face to his mother, who was, he assured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at Brighton. I thought and thought. I

confess the adventure was beginning to be extremely entertaining. But of course, very, very few of my old

schoolfellows remain distinctly in my memory now; and I fear that grows more treacherous the longer I live.

Their faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life most of them drifted out of sightmany alas! are dead;

and, well, at last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose that was?"

"No, no," said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. "I said so. He asked me to guess. And I

"Yes, yes. But was he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very, very extraordinary. Did you see any

Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case again. "Now, see here, sir; this is being

practical, isn't it? I'm just going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn't let me forget the time.

"It's just a quarter to ten," said Lawford, having glanced first at the stopped clock on the chimneypiece and

then at his watch; and then sat quite still, and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady lifted her bonneted

"H'm," she said at last. "There's no mistaking you. It's Mary's chin, and Mary's browwith just a little

something, perhaps, of her dreamy eye. But you haven't all her looks, Mr. Lawford, by any manner of means.

She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, and so fancifulit was, I suppose the foreign strain showing

"The foreign strain?" Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at the quiet old figure; "the foreign

"Your mother's maiden name, my dear Mr. Lawford, surely memory does not deceive me in that, was Van

"Ah, yes," said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest again. "Van der Gucht, of course. How

"As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there," she flung out little finlike

sleeves, "if you don't let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn't," she added

Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying. "It's a few minutes to ten," he said

"Dear me! And I'm keeping the cabman! I must hurry on. Well, now, I put it to you, you shall be my father

confessorthough I detest the idea in real lifewas I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor

"My dear, good Mr. Lawford," she expostulated, patting her lap, "there's very little more than a trace of my

dear beautiful Mary in you, her own son. How could there behow could you expect it in him, a complete

stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might have been Mary's son for all that I could

recollect. I haven't for years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from you. I am firmly of

the opinion that I was justified. My motive was entirely benevolent. And thento my positive

amazementwell, I won't say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a 'Thank

you, Miss Bennett.' Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won't agree that I had any justification in being vexed

"I think, Miss Sinnet," said Lawford solemnly, "that you were perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly! I wonder

even you had the patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask you forgiveness forfor the

"Well, candidly, sir," said Miss Sinnet severely, "I was very much scandalised; and I shouldn't be here now

The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. "Yes, Mr. Lawford, your mother. I don't know

whysomething in his manner, something in his faceso dejected, so unhappy, soif it is not uncharitable

to say itso wild: it has haunted me: I haven't been able to get the matter out of my head. I have lain awake

in my bed thinking of him. Why did he speak to me? I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very

aimless a trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary and so dejected? And

worse even than that, what has become of him? A little more patience, perhaps, a little more charity, perhaps!

What might I not have done for him! The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more than I can say.

Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one occasion, three times in a day made my way to the

seathoping to see him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown all, I had a most

remarkable dream about your mother. But that's my own affair. Elderly people like me are usedwell,

perhaps I won't say usedwe're not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have gone before. We

live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not have you fancy it's in any way a morbid or unhappy life

to lead. We don't talk about itcertainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their Eden while they can;

She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:"We don't even discuss it much among

ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer to the wicketgate there's other company around one than you'll

find inin the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight. Very, very likely my errand

may seem to have no meaning for you. You look ill, sir, but you don't appear to be in any great trouble or

adversity, as I feared in mywell, thereas I feared you might be. I must say, though, it seems a terribly

She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned her head and glanced quietly but

unflinchingly out of the halfopen door. "But that's not my affair." And again she looked at him for a little

Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the knee. "Trouble or no trouble," she

said, "it's never too late to remind a man of his mother. And I'm sure, Mr. Lawford, I'm very glad to hear you

are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may

be: 'While the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them,'

though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of my heart, not to you."

She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a

moment in that brief, fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a dumb masked

"And now that I've eased my conscience," said the old lady, pulling down her veil, "I must beg pardon for

intruding at such an hour of the evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr.

Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must have a very peculiar notion of mankind.

Is the fly still there? I expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if!"

"He's there," Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow progress to catch a peep into the quiet

road. And like a flock of birds scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a whirring

cloud of memories swept softly up in his mindmemories whose import he made no effort to discover.

None the less, the leisurely descent became in their company something of a real experience even in such a

"I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?" he said, pushing the old lady's silk skirts in after her

"Ah, my dear man, when you're my age," she called back to him, groping her way into the rather musty

gloom, "you'll dream such dreams for yourself. Life's not what's just the fashion. And there are queerer things

to be seen and heard just quietly in one's solitude than this busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my

"Was he," said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white face that with its plumes filled nearly

She raised a gloved hand. "It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr. Lawford; itsits conflict! Poor fellow; I

He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. "I bet, Miss Sinnet," he said earnestly, "even your having

thought kindly of the poor beggar eases his mindwhoever he may be. It would have eased mine."

"Ay, but I did more than think," replied the old lady with a chuckle, that might have seemed even a little

He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling at Miss Sinnet's inscrutable finesse went back

into the house. "And now, my friend," he said, addressing peacefully the thronging darkness, "the time's

He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the unregarded silences of this last long talk his mind

had made up itself. Only among impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice. In this old haunted house,

amid this shallow turmoil no practicable clue could shew itself of a way out. He would go away for a while.

He left the door ajar bind him for the moments still left, and stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand,

he descended into the breakfastroom for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that underground calm,

"MY DEAR SHEILA,I must tell you to begin with that the change has now all passed away. I am

completely myself again. And next: that I overheard all that was said tonight in the diningroom. I'm sorry

for listening; but it's no good going over all that now. Here I am, and, as you said, for Alice's sake we must

make the best of it. I am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a chance to quiet down. I suppose every one

comes sooner or later to a time in life when there is nothing else to be done but just to shut one's eyes and

He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a revulsion of feelingshame and hatred of

himself surged up, and he tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, "My dear Sheila," dropped his

pen, and sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing. . . .

He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his eyelids. And clearer than those which myriadhued

reality can ever present, pictures of the imagination swam up before his eyes. It seemed, indeed, that even

now some ghost, some revenant of himself was sitting there, in the old green churchyard, roofed only with a

thousand thousand stars. The breath of darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little scampering shape

slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly, over the globe. He shuddered faintly, and looked out

again into the small lamplit room. Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly was

walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait of one that has outlived his hour and most of his

Mice were scampering and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all about him, in the viewless air, the

phantoms of another life passed by, unmindful of his motionless body. He fell into a lethargy of the senses,

and only gradually became aware, after a while, of the strange, longdrawn sigh of rain at the window. He

rose and opened it. The nightair flowed in, chilled with the rain and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed

away all thought for a while. He turned back to his chair. He would wait until the rain had a little lulled

A little before twelve the door was softly, and with extreme care, pushed open, and Mr. Bethany's old face,

with an intense and sharpened scrutiny, looked in on the lamplit room. And as if still intent on the least sound

within the empty walls around him, he came near, and stooping across the table, stared through his spectacles

at the sidelong face of his friend, so still, with hands so lightly laid on the arms of his chair that he had need

to watch closely to detect in his heavy slumber the slow, measured rise and fall of his breast.

He turned wearily away muttering a little, between an immeasurable relief and a now almost intolerable

medley of vexations. What was this monstrous web of Craik's? What had the creature been nodding and

ducketing about?those whisperings, that tattling? And what in the end, when you were old and sour and

He sat quietly down and drew his hands over his face, pushed his lean, knotted fingers up under his

spectacles, then sat blinking softly, slowly deciphering the solitary "My dear Sheila" on Lawford's

notepaper. "H'm," he muttered, and looked up again at the dark, still eyelids that in the strange torpor of

sleep might yet be dimly conveying to the dreaming brain behind them some hint of his presence. "I wish to

goodness, you wonderful old creature," he muttered, wagging his head, "I wish to goodness you'd wake up."

For some time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the fading leaves. "They don't come to me!"

he said softly again; with a tiny smile on his old face. "It's that old mediaeval Craik: with a face like last

year's rookery!" And again he sat, with head a little sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life

without, now to the thoughts within, and ever and again gazed steadfastly on Lawford.

At last it seemed in the haunted quietness other thoughts came to him. A cloud, as it were of youth, drew over

the wrinkled skin, composed the birdlike keenness; his head nodded. Once, like Lawford in the darkness at

Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard

the steady surge of multitudinous raindrops, like the roar of Time's winged chariot hurrying near; then he

too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friends denuded