Chapter 2

‘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 pupils, out of that lean adventurous
face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a heliograph, as it
were, 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 now.’

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 Widderstone—“to 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 like—like 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 remedy even for a joke as
wicked as that.’

Lawford listened patiently. ‘She is pretending; she is trying me; she
is feeling her way,’ he kept repeating to himself. ‘She knows I _am_ I,
but hasn’t the courage... Let her talk!’

‘I shall leave the door open,’ Sheila continued. ‘I am not, as you no
doubt very naturally assumed—I am not going to do anything either
senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask your brother Cecil to
come in, if he is at home, and if not, no doubt our old friend Mr.
Montgomery would—would help us.’ Her scrutiny was still and
concentrated, like that of a cat above a mouse’s hole.

Lawford sat crouched together in the candle-light. ‘By all means,
Sheila,’ he said slowly choosing his words, ‘if you think poor old
Cecil, who next January will have been three years in his grave, will
be of any use in our difficulty. Who Mr. Montgomery is...’ His voice
dropped in utter weariness. ‘You did it very well, my dear,’ he added
softly.

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 candle-flames 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 to-night. 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 some—some medical book, or
other; and some more candles. Don’t think, Sheila; don’t even think!’

Sheila paid him no attention for a while. ‘You tell me not to think,’
she began, in a low, almost listless voice; ‘why—I 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 _realize_ what you say. You seem to
have lost all—all consciousness. I quite agree, it is useless for me to
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 deliberately towards the door, ‘What, what
have I done to deserve all this?’

From behind her 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 the 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
relief in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the
landing and rustled downstairs.

She speedily returned. ‘I have brought the book.’ she said hastily. ‘I
could only find the one volume. I have said you have taken a fresh
chill. No one will disturb you.’

Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes stonily
averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of the face in
the glass.

When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers 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 America—that 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 the bell. Then
suddenly recollecting himself, he paused and listened. There came a tap
on the door. ‘Is that you, Sheila?’ he called, doubtfully.

‘No, sir, it’s me,’ came the answer.

‘Oh, don’t trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It’s all
right.’

‘Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,’ replied the voice.

‘Gone out?’

‘Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you asked—’

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

‘Can I do anything, sir?’ came the faint, nervous question after a long
pause.

‘One moment, Ada,’ he called in a loud voice. He took out his
pocket-book, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly noticed
how changed his handwriting was—the clear round letters crabbed and
irregular.

‘Are you there, Ada?’ he called. ‘I am slipping a 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 heaped-up
evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome
ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It was—

Suddenly, with a kind of ape-like cunning, he deliberately raised a
long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of the
looking-glass. 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 that—the least symptom, and it’s all up!’
And the fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one
volume!

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 do—to do—to 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 programmes—all higgledy-piggledy. And in the
midst of this childish strategem he heard a faint 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
quiet—absolutely. 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 door.

‘What does this mean?’ she began swiftly, ‘I understand that—Ada 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 indiscreet? You sent Ada to
the chemist’s. What for? What for? I say.’

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 doctor—Dr Simon’s new
partner. You are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said
our patient must be kept quiet—I 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 have—time. And next—where is the
second volume of Quain? I want that. And next—why 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 discreet—if 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 husband—if you are? The sooner I get the
vicar on my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the
parish—I ask you—and you must have the sense left to see that—who 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 facing them. She
realised fully only 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 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 distantly.

‘One moment, Sheila,’ Lawford began miserably. ‘Before we take this
irrevocable step, a step I implore you to postpone awhile—for what
comes, I suppose, may go—what precisely have you told the vicar? I must
in fairness know that.’

‘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 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 murmured a little
bitterly. ‘I have simply told him the truth.’

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

CHAPTER THREE

Mr Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large,
heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the
mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with 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
gold-spectacled 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 Lawford into the chair upon the other side. But
he himself remained standing.

‘Mrs Lawford has, I declare, been telling family secrets,’ he began,
and paused, peering. ‘But there, you will forgive an old friend’s
intrusion—this little confidence about a change, my dear fellow—about 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 to this cautious advance without raising his head.

‘You do not wish me to repeat all that my wife tells me she has told
you?’

‘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 dispute!

‘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 turn—eh, 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 twenty-five 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. ‘And and you were taken ill there?’ His voice had
fallen flat and faint.

‘I fell asleep—or something of that sort,’ came the stubborn reply.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Bethany, brightly, ‘so your wife was saying. “Fell
asleep,” so have I too—scores of times’; he beamed, with beads of sweat
glistening on his forehead. ‘And then? I’m not, I’m not persisting?’

‘Then I woke; refreshed, I think, as it seemed—I 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 Lawford raised his face and
again looked firmly at his friend.

Mr Bethany was now a shrunken old man; he sat perfectly still, his head
craned a little forward, and his veined hands clutching his bent, spare
knees.

There wasn’t the least sign of devilry, or out-facingness, or insolence
in that lean shadowy steady head; and yet he himself 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 groping hand from Mrs
Lawford.

‘Is it,’ came a voice from somewhere, ‘is it a great change, sir? I
thought perhaps I may have exaggerated—candle-light, you know.’

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 Wine’s flowers, the new
offertory-bags, and all that. For God’s sake, Vicar, it is not as bad
as—as they make out?’

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
believe, we believe.’

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 later—we must have advice—medical advice; unless, as I
very much suspect, 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
before—without being burned alive for it. What’s in a name? Nerves,
especially, Lawford.’

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 half-blind eyes, and lips
tight shut. ‘I think,’ he said, with a hind 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 rose.

‘Perhaps if I were to leave you together awhile? I shall not be far
off. It is,’ she explained, as if into a huge vacuum, ‘it is a terrible
visitation.’ She moved gravely round the table and very softly and
firmly closed the door after her.

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 imposter. Goodness knows what she does
think. I can’t think much myself—for long!’

The vicar rubbed busily on. ‘I have found, Lawford,’ he said smoothly,
‘that in all real difficulties the only feasible plan is—is to face the
main issue. The others right themselves. Now, to take a plunge into
your generosity. You have let me in far enough to make it impossible
for me to get out—may I hear then exactly 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. Credo_—not quia impossible 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, re-told the whole story from the beginning.

‘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—’

‘Ah, yes, your thoughts?’

‘I hardly know—oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It was just
like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.’

Mr Bethany gazed without stirring. ‘And yet, you know,’ he said, ‘I can
hardly believe, I mean conceive, how—You have been taking no drugs, no
quackery, Lawford?’

‘I never dose myself,’ said Lawford, with sombre pride.

‘God bless me, that’s Lawford to the echo,’ thought his visitor. ‘And
before—?’ he went on gently; ‘I really cannot conceive, you see, how a
mere fit could... Before you sat down you were quite alone?’ He stuck
out his head. ‘There was nobody with you?’

‘With me? Oh no,’ came the soft answer.

‘What had you been thinking of? In these days of faith-cures, and
hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities—why, the simple old world
grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel. You were thinking,
you say; do you remember, perhaps, just the drift?’

‘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 seat—no 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
then, I suppose, came the sleep—stupid, sluggish: and then; well, here
I am.’

‘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 supernatural. Saul, and so on. We are all convinced of
that. No one?’

‘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 queer—my wandering about like that, I mean.
Facing me there were some cypress-trees, and beyond, a low sunken
fence, and then, just open country. Up above there were the gravestones
toppling down the hill, where I had just strolled down, and sunshine!’
He suddenly threw up his hand. ‘Oh, marvellous! streaming in
gold—flaming, like God’s own ante-chamber.’

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

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. And then very quietly he stole one mole-like look
into his sidesman’s face.

‘What is Dr Simon’s number?’ he said. Lawford was gazing gloomily into
the fire. ‘Oh, Annandale,’ he replied absently. ‘I don’t know the
number.’

‘Do you believe in him? Your wife mentioned him. Is he clever?’

‘Oh, he’s new,’ said Lawford; ‘old James was our doctor. He—he killed
my father.’ He laughed out shamefacedly.

‘A sound, lovable man,’ said Mr Bethany, ‘one of the kindest men I ever
knew; and a very old friend of mine.’

And suddenly the dark face turned with a shudder from the fire, and
spoke in a low trembling voice. ‘Only one thing—only one thing—my
sanity, my sanity. If once I forget, who will believe me?’ He thrust
his long lean fingers beneath his coat. ‘And mad,’ he added; ‘I would
sooner die.’

Mr Bethany deliberately adjusted his spectacles. ‘May I, may I
experiment?’ he said boldly. There came a tap on the door.

‘Bless me,’ said the vicar, taking out his watch, ‘it is a quarter to
twelve. ‘Yes, yes, Mrs Lawford,’ he trotted round to the door. ‘We are
beginning to see light—a ray!’

‘But I—_I_ can see in the dark,’ whispered Lawford, as if at a cue,
turning with an inscrutable smile to the fire.

The vicar came again, wrapped up in a little tight grey great-coat, 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 to-morrow. And till then,’ he
turned to Mrs Lawford, where she stood looking in at the doorway, ‘oh
yes, complete quiet; and caution!’

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 something—something has happened.
Don’t fret him now. Have patience. Oh yes, it is incredible... the
change! But there, the very first thing to-morrow.’ She closed the door
gently after him, and stepping softly back to the dining-room, peered
in. Her husband’s back was turned, but he could see her in the
looking-glass, stooping a little, with set face watching him, in the
silvery stillness.

‘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 round. ‘It’s
useless talking now, Sheila. No more questions. I cannot tell you how
tired I am. And my head—’

‘What is wrong with your head?’ inquired his wife discreetly.

The haggard face turned gravely and patiently. ‘Only one of my old
headaches,’ he smiled, ‘my old bilious headaches—the 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, hastened over to a closed work-table 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 as she
stooped 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 the—the little red box key.’

Lawford’s cheek turned more sallow than ever.