now he
must admit that mere austerity unless supported by a spiritual
encouragement to endure was liable at any moment to break up pitiably
into suicide. The word itself began to strike him with all the force of
its squalid associations. The fresh dust of the Hampshire lanes became a
gray miasma. Loneliness looped itself slowly round his progress so that
he hurried on with backward glances. The hazel-hedges were somber and
monotonous and defiled here and there by the rejected rags of a tramp.
The names of familiar villages upon the signposts lost their intimations
of sane humanity, and turned to horrible abstractions of the dead life
of the misshapen boot or empty matchbox at their foot. The comfortable
assurance of a prosperous and unvexed country rolling away to right and
left forsook him, and only the pallid road writhed along through the
twilight. "My nerves are in a rotten state," he told himself, and he was
very glad to see Basingstead Manor twinkling in the night below, while
himself was still walking shadowless in a sickly dusk.

In the drawing-room of Cobble Place all was calm, as indeed, Michael
thought, why on earth should it not be? Mrs. Carthew's serene old age
drove out the last memory of the coroner's court, and here was Mrs. Ross
coming out of a circle of lamplight to greet him, and here in Cobble
Place was her small son sleeping.

"You look tired and pale, Michael," said Mrs. Ross. "Why didn't you wire
which train you were coming by? I would have met you with the chaise."

"Poor fellow, of course he's tired!" said Mrs. Carthew. "A most
disturbing experience. Come along. Dinner will do him good."

The notion of suicide began to grow more remote from reality in this
room, which had always been to Michael soft and fragrant like a great
rose in whose heart, for very despair of being able ever to express in
words the perfection of it, one swoons to be buried. The evening went
the calm course of countless evenings at Cobble Place. Michael played at
backgammon with Mrs. Carthew: Joan Carthew worked at the accounts of a
parochial charity: May Carthew knitted: Mrs. Ross, reading in the
lamplight, met from time to time Michael's glances with a concern that
never displayed itself beyond the pitch of an unexacting sympathy. He
was glad, as the others rustled to greet the ten strokes of the clock,
to hear Mrs. Ross say she would stay up for a while and keep him
company.

"Unless you want to work?" she added.