ack into Sally's face, and her heart, which
had leaped madly for an instant at the sound of his voice, resumed its
normal beat. The suddenness of the shock over, she was surprised to
find herself perfectly calm. Always when she had imagined this meeting,
knowing that it would have to take place sooner or later, she had felt
something akin to panic: but now that it had actually occurred it hardly
seemed to stir her. The events of the night had left her incapable of
any violent emotion.

"Hullo, Sally!" said Gerald.

He spoke thickly, and there was a foolish smile on his face as he
stood swaying with one hand on the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves,
collarless: and it was plain that he had been drinking heavily. His face
was white and puffy, and about him there hung like a nimbus a sodden
disreputableness.

Sally did not speak. Weighed down before by a numbing exhaustion, she
seemed now to have passed into that second phase in which over-tired
nerves enter upon a sort of Indian summer of abnormal alertness. She
looked at him quietly, coolly and altogether dispassionately, as if he
had been a stranger.

"Hullo!" said Gerald again.

"What do you want?" said Sally.

"Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd come in."

"What do you want?"

The weak smile which had seemed pinned on Gerald's face vanished. A tear
rolled down his cheek. His intoxication had reached the maudlin stage.

"Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable." He slurred awkwardly over the
difficult syllables. "Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd
come in."

Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind. She seemed to have
been through all this before. Then she remembered. This was simply Mr.
Reginald Cracknell over again.

"I think you had better go to bed, Gerald," she said steadily. Nothing
about him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor his
shameless misery.

"What's the use? Can't sleep. No good. Couldn't sleep. Sally, you don't
know how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been."

Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was about
to develop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment of
herself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizing
with tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemed
that it was not this that was weighing upon his soul.

"I was a fool ever to try writing plays," he went on. "Got a winner
first time, but can't repeat. I