“The baby’s dead too, of course,” Marguerite added.  “She ought never to have had a baby.  It seems she had had two miscarriages.”

There were tears in Marguerite’s eyes and in her voice.  Nevertheless her tone was rather matter-of-fact as she related these recondite and sinister things.  George thought that women were very strange.  Imagine Marguerite quietly talking to him in this strain!  Then the sense of the formidable secrets that lie hidden in the history of families, and the sense of the continuity of individual destinies, overwhelmed him.  There was silence.

“And your exam. begins to-morrow,” whispered the astonishing Marguerite.

“Where’s the old gentleman?”

“He’s sitting in the parlour in the dark.”

It was a terrible house:  they two intimidated and mournful in the basement; the widower solitary on the ground floor; the dead bodies, the wastage and futility of conception and long bearing, up in the bedroom.  And in all the house the light of one candle!  George suddenly noticed, then, that Marguerite was not wearing the thin, delicate ring which he had long ago given her.  Had she removed it because of her manual duties?  He wanted to ask the question, but, even unspoken, it seemed too trivial for the hour....

There was a shuffling sound beyond the door, and a groping on the outer face of the door.  Marguerite jumped up.  Mr. Haim stumbled into the room.  He had incredibly aged; he looked incredibly feeble.  But as he pointed a finger at George he was in a fury of anger, and his anger was senile, ridiculous, awful.

“I thought I heard voices,” he said, half squeaking.  “How did you get in?  You didn’t come in by the door.  Out of my house!  My wife lying dead upstairs, and you choose this night to break in!” He was implacable against George, absolutely; and George recoiled.

The opening of the door had created a draught in which the candle-flame trembled, and the shadow of the old man trembled on the door.

“You’d better go.  I’ll write.  I’ll write,” Marguerite murmured to George very calmly, very gently, very persuasively.  She stood between the two men.  Her manner was perfect.  It eternally impressed itself on George.  “Father, come and sit down.”

The old man obeyed her.  So did George.  He snatched his hat and stick.  By the familiar stone steps of the basement, and along the familiar hall, he felt his way to the door, turned the familiar knob, and departed.

II

The examination began the next day.  Despite his preoccupation about Marguerite, George’s performances during the first days were quite satisfactory to himself.  Indeed, after a few minutes in the examination-room, after the preliminary critical assessing of the difficulty of the problems in design, and the questions, and of his ability to deal with them, George successfully forgot everything except the great seven-day duel