out! The front door is straight ahead. My man will let you in
and look after you. Excuse me a moment while I take the car round!"

He was gone with the words, leaving Carey to ascend a flight of steps to
the hall door. It opened at once to admit him, and he found himself in a
great hall dimly illumined by firelight. A servant helped him to divest
himself of his overcoat, and silently led the way.

The room he entered was furnished as a library. He glanced round it as
he stood on the hearth-rug, awaiting his host, and was chiefly struck by
the general atmosphere of dreariness that pervaded it. Its sombre oak
furniture seemed to absorb instead of reflecting the light. There was a
large oil-painting above the fireplace, and after a few seconds he
turned his head and saw it. It was the portrait of a woman.

Young, beautiful, queenly, the painted face looked down into his own,
and the man's heart gave a sudden, curious throb that was half rapture
and half pain. In a moment the room he had just entered, with all the
circumstances that had taken him there, was blotted from his brain. He
was standing once more on the rocking deck of a steamer, in a tempest of
wind and rain and furious sea, facing the storm, exultant, with a
woman's hand fast gripped in his.

"Are you looking at that picture?" said a voice. "It's my wife--dead
now--lost--five years ago--at sea!"

Carey wheeled sharply at the jerky utterance. Coningsby was standing by
his side. He was staring upwards at the portrait, a strange gleam
darting in his eyes--a gleam not wholly sane.

"It doesn't do her justice," he went on in the same abrupt, headlong
fashion. "But it's better than nothing. She was the only woman who ever
satisfied me. Her loss damaged me badly. I've never been the same since.
There've been others, of course, but she was always first--an easy
first. I shall want her--I shall go on wanting her--till I'm in my
grave." His voice was suddenly husky, as the voice of a man in pain.
"It's like a fiery thirst," he said. "I try to quench it--Heaven knows I
try! But it comes back--it comes back."

He swung round on his heel and went to the table. There followed the
clink of glasses, but Carey did not turn. His eyes had left the picture,
and were fixed, stern and unwinking, upon the fire that glowed at his
feet.

Again he seemed to feel the clasp of a woman's hand, free and confiding,
within his own. Again his heart stirred responsively in the quick warm