ificance.
In a few hours now arrangements would have been made for a deadly
encounter. His anger was gone, his whisky was gone, and in particular
his courage was gone. He expressed all this compendiously by moaning
"Oh, God!"

He struggled to a sitting position, and lit a match at which he kindled
his candle. He looked for his watch beside it, but it was not there.
What could have happened--then he remembered that it was in its
accustomed place in his waistcoat pocket. A consultation of it followed
by holding it to his ear only revealed the fact that it had stopped at
half-past five. With the lucidity that was growing brighter in his
brain, he concluded that this stoppage was due to the fact that he had
not wound it up.... It was after half-past five then, but how much later
only the Lords of Time knew--Time which bordered so closely on Eternity.

He felt that he had no use whatever for Eternity but that he must not
waste Time. Just now, that was far more precious.

* * * * *

From somewhere in the Cosmic Consciousness there came to him a thought,
namely, that the first train to London started at half-past six in the
morning. It was a slow train, but it got there, and in any case it went
away from Tilling. He did not trouble to consider how that thought came
to him: the important point was that it had come. Coupled with that was
the knowledge that it was now an undiscoverable number of minutes after
half-past five.

There was a Gladstone bag under his bed. He had brought it back from the
Club-house only yesterday, after that game of golf which had been so
full of disturbances and wet stockings, but which now wore the
shimmering security of peaceful, tranquil days long past. How little, so
he thought to himself, as he began swiftly storing shirts, ties, collars
and other useful things into his bag, had he appreciated the sweet
amenities of life, its pleasant conversations and companionships, its
topped drives, and mushrooms and incalculable incidents. Now they wore a
glamour and a preciousness that was bound up with life itself. He
starved for more of them, not knowing while they were his how sweet they
were.

The house was not yet astir, when ten minutes later he came downstairs
with his bag. He left on his sitting-room table, where it would catch
the eye of his housemaid, a sheet of paper on which he wrote "Called
away" (he shuddered as he traced the words). "Forward no letters. Wi