indows, and on a
card he saw the words "To Let." Gone! Had he after all cleared out for
good? But how-without money? And the girl? Bells were ringing now in
the silent frostiness. Christmas Eve! And Keith thought: 'If only this
wretched business were off my mind! Monstrous that one should suffer for
the faults of others!' He took a route which led him past Borrow Street.
Solitude brooded there, and he walked resolutely down on the far side,
looking hard at the girl's window. There was a light. The curtains just
failed to meet, so that a thin gleam shone through. He crossed; and
after glancing swiftly up and down, deliberately peered in.

He only stood there perhaps twenty seconds, but visual records gleaned
in a moment sometimes outlast the visions of hours and days. The
electric light was not burning; but, in the centre of the room the girl
was kneeling in her nightgown before a little table on which were four
lighted candles. Her arms were crossed on her breast; the candle-light
shone on her fair cropped hair, on the profile of cheek and chin, on her
bowed white neck. For a moment he thought her alone; then behind her
saw his brother in a sleeping suit, leaning against the wall, with arms
crossed, watching. It was the expression on his face which burned the
whole thing in, so that always afterwards he was able to see that little
scene--such an expression as could never have been on the face of one
even faintly conscious that he was watched by any living thing on earth.
The whole of Larry's heart and feeling seemed to have come up out of
him. Yearning, mockery, love, despair! The depth of his feeling for this
girl, his stress of mind, fears, hopes; the flotsam good and evil of
his soul, all transfigured there, exposed and unforgettable. The
candle-light shone upward on to his face, twisted by the strangest
smile; his eyes, darker and more wistful than mortal eyes should be,
seemed to beseech and mock the white-clad girl, who, all unconscious,
knelt without movement, like a carved figure of devotion. The words
seemed coming from his lips: "Pray for us! Bravo! Yes! Pray for us!" And
suddenly Keith saw her stretch out her arms, and lift her face with a
look of ecstasy, and Laurence starting forward. What had she seen beyond
the candle flames? It is the unexpected which invests visions with
poignancy. Nothing more strange could Keith have seen in this nest of
the murky and illicit. But in sheer panic lest he might be caught