responsibility. He was
satisfied that he had struck the right note, and convinced of his power
of sustaining it. The whole incident had somehow seemed, in spite of its
vulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities, to be enacting
itself in some unmapped region outside the pale of the usual. It was not
like anything that had ever happened to him before, or in which he had
ever pictured himself as likely to be involved; but that, at first, had
seemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it.

Perhaps but for the three days' rain he might have got away without a
doubt as to his adequacy. The rain had made all the difference. It had
thrown the whole picture out of perspective, blotted out the mystery
of the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance, and
thrust into prominence every commonplace fact of the foreground. It was
the kind of situation that was not helped by being thought over; and
by the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwilling
contemplation of its every aspect...

His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fire and vaguely
meditated getting up to find another. But the mere act of leaving his
chair seemed to call for a greater exertion of the will than he was
capable of, and he leaned his head back with closed eyes and listened to
the drumming of the rain.

A different noise aroused him. It was the opening and closing of
the door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room. He sat
motionless, without opening his eyes; but now another sight forced
itself under his lowered lids. It was the precise photographic picture
of that other room. Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself
upon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the objects
surrounding him. A step sounded on the floor, and he knew which way the
step was directed, what pieces of furniture it had to skirt, where it
would probably pause, and what was likely to arrest it. He heard another
sound, and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the black
marble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth. He caught the
creak of a hinge, and instantly differentiated it as that of the
wardrobe against the opposite wall. Then he heard the mouse-like squeal
of a reluctant drawer, and knew it was the upper one in the chest of
drawers beside the bed: the clatter which followed was caused by the
mahogany toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots...

The step