“Then you’ll come down, sir?”

“Yes.”

The door closed, and he heard her heavy heels along the passage.

“But the money—­where’s the money to come from?” The question sprang out from some denser fold of the fog in his brain.  The money—­how on earth was he to pay it back?  How could he have wasted his time in thinking of anything else while that central difficulty existed?

“But I can’t ...  I can’t ... it’s gone ... and even if it weren’t....”  He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands.  He had forgotten what he wanted the money for.  He made a great effort to regain hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight into darkness....  The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said he would go down to the dining-room.  “If I don’t she’ll come up—­” He raised his head and sat listening for the sound of the old woman’s step:  it seemed to him perfectly intolerable that any one should cross the threshold of the room again.

“Why can’t they leave me alone?” he groaned....  At length through the silence of the empty house, he fancied he heard a door opening and closing far below; and he said to himself:  “She’s coming.”

He got to his feet and went to the door.  He didn’t feel anything now except the insane dread of hearing the woman’s steps come nearer.  He bolted the door and stood looking about the room.  For a moment he was conscious of seeing it in every detail with a distinctness he had never before known; then everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel of a drawer under one of the bookcases.  He went up to the drawer, knelt down and slipped his hand into it.

As he raised himself he listened again, and this time he distinctly heard the old servant’s steps on the stairs.  He passed his left hand over the side of his head, and down the curve of the skull behind the ear.  He said to himself:  “My wife ... this will make it all right for her....” and a last flash of irony twitched through him.  Then he felt again, more deliberately, for the spot he wanted, and put the muzzle of his revolver against it.

XXXVII

In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in perukes and orders, a circle of ladies and gentlemen, looking not unlike every-day versions of the official figures above their heads, sat examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning.

The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure, islanded in the middle of the wide lustrous floor, looked curiously lonely and remote.  This effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as something intentional, and almost naughty, for after having launched him from the door, and waited to judge of the impression he produced, she came forward and, giving him a slight push, said impatiently:  “Paul!  Why don’t you go and kiss your new granny?”