thoughts so bitter and so deadly
overwhelm him, eating into the substance of his brain, where they could
breed and batten on the finest tissues and breed again.

He was looking at his desk and saw that one letter had tumbled from it
on to the floor by his chair. He went across and picked it up. It was
addressed in a big straggling hand--and had not come by post. He tore it
open. It was from Gwendolen Scott. This was why she had come into the
library. Without moving from the position where he stood he read it
through.

CHAPTER XIII

THE EFFECT OF SUGGESTION

The clock struck midnight, and yet the Warden had not done what he had
intended to do before he picked up that letter and read it. He had not
gone to bed. He was still in his library, not at his desk, but in a
great shabby easy-chair by the fire. He had put the lights out and was
smoking in the half-dark.

So deeply absorbed was the Warden in his own thoughts that he did not
hear the first knock on the door. But he heard the second knock, which
was louder.

"Come in," he called, and he leaned forward in his chair. Who wanted him
at such an hour? It would not be any one from the college?

The door opened and Lady Dashwood came in. She was in a dressing-gown.

"You haven't gone to bed," she said.

It was obvious that he hadn't gone to bed.

"No, not yet," said the Warden. And he added, "Do you want me?"

"I ought not to want you, dear," she said, "for I know you must be very
tired."

Then she came up to the fireplace and stood looking down at her brother.
She saw that the spring and the hope had gone out of his face. He looked
older.

"I have put Gwen to bed in my room, but even that has not quieted her,"
said Lady Dashwood, speaking slowly.

The Warden's face in the twilight looked set. He did not glance at his
sister now.

"She has lost her self-control. Do you know what the silly child thinks
she saw?"

Here Lady Dashwood paused, and waited for his reply.

"I hadn't thought. She fancied she saw something--a man!" he answered,
in his deep voice.

He hadn't thought! There had been no room in his mind for anything but
the doom that was awaiting him. One of his most bitter thoughts in the
twilight of that room had been that a woman he could have loved was
already under his roof when he took his destiny into his own hands and
wrecked it.

"I don't know," he said, repeating mechanically an answer to his
sister's question.

"She thought