ad.
The recollection of that moment was horrible to him. He stared at the
door with fascinated eyes. What if he had opened it!

He still had no desire for sleep, but he began slowly to undress. His
clothes, his tie, everything he had been wearing, seemed to him to reek
of accumulated perfumes of the night, and he flung them from him with
feverish disgust. There was a small bath-room opening from his sleeping
chamber, and with a desire for complete cleanliness which was not wholly
physical, he filled the bath and plunged in. The touch of the cold water
was inspiring and he stepped out again into a new world. Much of the
horror of so short a time ago had gone, but with his new self had come
an ever-increasing distaste for any resumption, in any shape or form, of
his associations of the last few days. He must get away. He rummaged
through his things and found a timetable. In less than an hour he was
dressed, his clothes were packed, and the bill was paid. He wrote a
short note to Davenant and a shorter one to Ella. Ignoring the events of
the last night, he spoke of a summons home. He enclosed the receipted
hotel bill, and something with which he begged her to purchase a
souvenir of her visit. Then he drank some coffee, and with a somewhat
stealthy air made his way to the lift, and thence to the courtyard of
the hotel. Already a small victoria was laden with his luggage; the
concierge, the baggage-master, the porters, were all tipped with a
prodigality almost reckless. Shaven, and with a sting of the cold water
still upon his skin, in homely flannel shirt and grey tweed travelling
clothes, he felt like a man restored to sanity and health as his cab
lumbered over the long cobbled street, on its way to the Gare du Nord.
It was only a matter of a few hours, and yet how sweet and fresh the
streets seemed in the early morning sunshine. The shops were all open,
and the busy housewives were hard at work with their bargaining, the
toilers of the city thronged the pavements, everywhere there was
evidence of a real and rational life. The city of those few hours ago
was surely a city of nightmares. The impassable river flowed between.
Macheson leaned back in his carriage and his eyes were fixed upon the
blue sunlit sky. His lips moved; a song of gratitude was in his heart.
He felt like the prisoner before whom the iron gates have been rolled
back, disclosing the smiling world!

CHAPTER VI

THE ECHO OF A CRIME

"Macheson,