r night was hot, so hot and still that through every opened
window came in but hotter air. For long hours he lay listening to her
breathing.

She could sleep, but he must lie awake. And, lying awake, he hardened
himself to play the part of the serene and trusting husband.

In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
dressing-room, leaned by the open window.

He could hardly breathe.

A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before his
marriage; as hot and stifling as this.

He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window of his
sitting-room off Victoria Street. Down below in a side street a man had
banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it
were now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead
silence that followed. And then the early water-cart, cleansing the
reek of the streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless
lamp-light; he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till
it passed and slowly died away.

He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
below, and saw the first light spread. The outlines of dark walls and
roofs were blurred for a moment, then came out sharper than before.

He remembered how that other night he had watched the lamps paling all
the length of Victoria Street; how he had hurried on his clothes and
gone down into the street, down past houses and squares, to the street
where she was staying, and there had stood and looked at the front of
the little house, as still and grey as the face of a dead man.

And suddenly it shot through his mind; like a sick man's fancy: What's
he doing?--that fellow who haunts me, who was here this evening, who's
in love with my wife--prowling out there, perhaps, looking for her as I
know he was looking for her this afternoon; watching my house now, for
all I can tell!

He stole across the landing to the front of the house, stealthily drew
aside a blind, and raised a window.

The grey light clung about the trees of the square, as though Night,
like a great downy moth, had brushed them with her wings. The lamps
were still alight, all pale, but not a soul stirred--no living thing in
sight.

Yet suddenly, very faint, far off in the deathly stillness, he heard
a cry writhing, like the voice of some wandering soul barred out of
heaven, and crying for its happiness. There it was again--again! Soames
shut the window, sh