y roar of voices, soft and woolly, punctuated by cries. From
here and there ascended the smoke of burning; and once, as he flitted
over one of the great squares to the south of Battersea, he had seen as
it were a scattered squadron of ants running as if in fear or
pursuit.... He knew what was happening.... Well, after all, man was not
yet perfectly civilised.

He did not like to think of what awaited him at home. Once, about five
hours earlier, he had listened to his wife's voice through the
telephone, and what he had heard had nearly caused him to leave all and
go to her. Yet he was scarcely prepared for what he found.

As he came into the sitting-room, there was no sound, except that
far-away hum from the seething streets below. The room seemed strangely
dark and cold; the only light that entered was through one of the
windows from which the curtains were withdrawn, and, silhouetted against
the luminous sky beyond, was the upright figure of a woman, looking and
listening....

He pressed the knob of the electric light; and Mabel turned slowly
towards him. She was in her day-dress, with a cloak thrown over her
shoulders, and her face was almost as that of a stranger. It was
perfectly colourless, her lips were compressed and her eyes full of an
emotion which he could not interpret. It might equally have been anger,
terror or misery.

She stood there in the steady light, motionless, looking at him.

For a moment he did not trust himself to speak. He passed across to the
window, closed it and drew the curtains. Then he took that rigid figure
gently by the arm.

"Mabel," he said, "Mabel."

She submitted to be drawn towards the sofa, but there was no response to
his touch. He sat down and looked up at her with a kind of despairing
apprehension.

"My dear, I am tired out," he said.

Still she looked at him. There was in her pose that rigidity that actors
simulate; yet he knew it for the real thing. He had seen that silence
once or twice before in the presence of a horror--once at any rate, at
the sight of a splash of blood on her shoe.

"Well, my darling, sit down, at least," he said.

She obeyed him mechanically--sat, and still stared at him. In the
silence once more that soft roar rose and died from the invisible world
of tumult outside the windows. Within here all was quiet. He knew
perfectly that two things strove within her, her loyalty to her faith
and her hatred of those crimes in the name of justice. As