hout even a sigh. The dead don't sigh, and for all
practical purposes I was that, except for the final consummation, the
growing cold, the _rigor mortis_--that blessed state! With measured
steps I crossed the landing to my sitting-room.

CHAPTER II

The windows of that room gave out on the street of the Consuls which as
usual was silent. And the house itself below me and above me was
soundless, perfectly still. In general the house was quiet, dumbly
quiet, without resonances of any sort, something like what one would
imagine the interior of a convent would be. I suppose it was very
solidly built. Yet that morning I missed in the stillness that feeling
of security and peace which ought to have been associated with it. It
is, I believe, generally admitted that the dead are glad to be at rest.
But I wasn't at rest. What was wrong with that silence? There was
something incongruous in that peace. What was it that had got into that
stillness? Suddenly I remembered: the mother of Captain Blunt.

Why had she come all the way from Paris? And why should I bother my head
about it? H'm--the Blunt atmosphere, the reinforced Blunt vibration
stealing through the walls, through the thick walls and the almost more
solid stillness. Nothing to me, of course--the movements of Mme. Blunt,
_mere_. It was maternal affection which had brought her south by either
the evening or morning Rapide, to take anxious stock of the ravages of
that insomnia. Very good thing, insomnia, for a cavalry officer
perpetually on outpost duty, a real godsend, so to speak; but on leave a
truly devilish condition to be in.

The above sequence of thoughts was entirely unsympathetic and it was
followed by a feeling of satisfaction that I, at any rate, was not
suffering from insomnia. I could always sleep in the end. In the end.
Escape into a nightmare. Wouldn't he revel in that if he could! But
that wasn't for him. He had to toss about open-eyed all night and get up
weary, weary. But oh, wasn't I weary, too, waiting for a sleep without
dreams.

I heard the door behind me open. I had been standing with my face to the
window and, I declare, not knowing what I was looking at across the
road--the Desert of Sahara or a wall of bricks, a landscape of rivers and
forests or only the Consulate of Paraguay. But I had been thinking,
apparently, of Mr. Blunt with such intensity that when I saw him enter
the room it didn't really make much differ