d for the moment from his mind, lost if not their
significance, at least their instancy.

He simply sat face to face with the sheer difficulty of living on
at all. He even concluded in a kind of lethargy that if nothing had
occurred, no 'change,' he might still be sitting here, Arthur Rennet
Lawford, in his best visitor's room, deciding between inscrutable life
and just--death. He supposed he was tired out. His thoughts hadn't even
the energy to complete themselves. None cared but himself and this--this
Silence.

'But what does it all mean?' the insistent voice he was getting to know
so well began tediously inquiring again. And every time he raised
his eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his eyes raised
themselves, they saw this haunting face there--a face he no longer
bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but a face that was
becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was
a face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as is
revered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his own
familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed,
daring, fascinating face, with even--what?--a spice of genius in it.
Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?... 'Brazen
it out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it up; play the
game! give me just one opening. Think--think what I've risked!'

And all these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant only
one thing--insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized him. He
leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched up
the china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, as
if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite pains, he drew back from the
glass and replaced the candlestick on the table; stuffed his paper
packet into his pocket, took off his boots and threw himself on to the
bed. In a little while, in the faint, still light, he opened drowsily
wondering eyes. `Poor old thing!' his voice murmured, 'Poor old Sheila!'

CHAPTER FIVE

It was but little after daybreak when Mrs Lawford, after listening at
his door a while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey
light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the room. She stood
in a bluish dressing-gown, her hand on her bosom, looking down on the
lean impassive face. For the briefest instant her heart had leapt with
an indescribable surmise; to fall d