ed and melted away into the
wood behind him. His voice sounded far across the trees, very weak, and
ever rising.

"Or if you can rise to the level of a great forgiveness--"

The voice became inaudible.... The wind came crying out of the wood
again.

* * * * *

Jones shivered and stared about him. He shook himself violently and
rubbed his eyes. The room was dark, the fire was out; he felt cold and
stiff. He got up out of his armchair, still trembling, and lit the gas.
Outside the wind was howling, and when he looked at his watch he saw
that it was very late and he must go to bed.

He had not even changed his office coat; he must have fallen asleep in
the chair as soon as he came in, and he had slept for several hours.
Certainly he had eaten no dinner, for he felt ravenous.

III

Next day, and for several weeks thereafter, the business of the office
went on as usual, and Jones did his work well and behaved outwardly with
perfect propriety. No more visions troubled him, and his relations with
the Manager became, if anything, somewhat smoother and easier.

True, the man _looked_ a little different, because the clerk kept seeing
him with his inner and outer eye promiscuously, so that one moment he
was broad and red-faced, and the next he was tall, thin, and dark,
enveloped, as it were, in a sort of black atmosphere tinged with red.
While at times a confusion of the two sights took place, and Jones saw
the two faces mingled in a composite countenance that was very horrible
indeed to contemplate. But, beyond this occasional change in the outward
appearance of the Manager, there was nothing that the secretary noticed
as the result of his vision, and business went on more or less as
before, and perhaps even with a little less friction.

But in the rooms under the roof in Bloomsbury it was different, for
there it was perfectly clear to Jones that Thorpe had come to take up
his abode with him. He never saw him, but he knew all the time he was
there. Every night on returning from his work he was greeted by the
well-known whisper, "Be ready when I give the sign!" and often in the
night he woke up suddenly out of deep sleep and was aware that Thorpe
had that minute moved away from his bed and was standing waiting and
watching somewhere in the darkness of the room. Often he followed him
down the stairs, though the dim gas jet on the landings never revealed
his outline; and sometimes he