ing for it, he grunted
obstinately to himself, shout he would with the loudest.

He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep
it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it. Not the echo
of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his mind. He
knew vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the last few
days was gone. But the thought had no power to move him now. Sheila's
good sense, and Mr Bethany's stubborn loyalty were alike old stories
that had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that
portentous family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy during
these last few days around his dining-room table, discussing with futile
decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him down. Half
dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly open and, like the
timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before the stricken
and astonished company. His eyes opened half-fearfully, and glanced up
in the morning twilight. Their perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost
vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands
twitched awhile in sleep.

Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly
here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat
writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the
unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old
books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched,
or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same
texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him
with its nearness, or else was only the meaningless ramblings of an idle
pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the spruce
clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called Life.

'Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?' he asked at last,
taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room.

'Bless me, no; not a bit--not a bit,' said Herbert amiably, laying down
his pen. 'I'm afraid the old leatherjackets have been boring you. It's
a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at
second-hand--purely a bad habit, like morphia, like laudanum. But once
in, you know there's no recovery Anyhow, I'm neck-deep, and to struggle
would be simply to drown.'

'I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier at