rf. Stretched on his couch in a
warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his
collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which
were laid out on his tray: sparks of light winked between his
fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge. His
face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the
expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of
normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.

"Hullo, Bernard."

"Good evening, Lawrence. Oh, you've brought Val and--
Selincourt, is it? What years since we've met, Selincourt! Very
good of you to come down, and I'm delighted to see you, one can't
have too many witnesses. Mild evening, isn't it? Leave the
doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough
for January. Now sit down all of you, will you? I shan't keep
you long."

Propped high on cushions, he lay like a statue, his huge
shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the
saddle. Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with
his back to the hearth: Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey
hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed
knees: Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator,
interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy. They
were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the
cripple.

"It's with you, Lawrence, that I have to do business. You passed
last night with my wife."

The heavy voice was deadened out of all heat except grossness.
How had Clowes spent the last twelve hours? In reliving over and
over again his wife's fall: defiling her image and poisoning his
own soul with emanations of a diseased mind, from which
Selincourt, a straightforward sinner, would have turned in
disgust. Men of strong passions like Bernard need greater
control than Bernard possessed to curb what they cannot indulge:
and a mind full of gross imagery was nature's revenge on him for
a love that had been to him "hungry, and barren, and sharp as the
sea." But for the friend, the brother, and the lover it was
difficult to grant him such allowances as would have been made by
a physician.

"That'll do," said Lawrence, raising his hand. "Your wife is
innocent. Send any one you like to the hotel--private detective
if you like--and find out what rooms Miss Stafford and Laura
had, or whether Selincourt and I stayed five minutes in the place
after