His face was drawn and tired, and his eyes were heavy; he noticed this as he glanced into his glass, but after all it did not matter.  His social importance was small, and for to-night he was nothing more than an adjunct of Hartley, a mere postscript put in out of formal politeness.  He was not going in order to please Mrs. Wilder—­though, as she appeared on his mental list of names, she had her place in the structure that filled his mind—­but to please Hartley.  Any time would have done for Mrs. Wilder, she was but a cypher in the total, but if he had begged off to-night he would have had to hurt Hartley.  Coryndon could never get away from the other man’s point of view; it dogged him in great things and in small, and he was obliged to realize Hartley’s pleasure in seeing him, and his further pleasure in carrying him off to a house where he himself enjoyed life thoroughly.  Coryndon could as easily have disappointed a child, or been cruel to a small, wagging puppy as to Hartley in his present mood.

He knew that he would have to shut the door upon his dominating thought, unless something occurred to open it during the evening.  Women liked to play with fire, and he wondered if Mrs. Wilder would show any inclination to fiddle with gunpowder, but he hardly expected that she would, though she had played some part in the extensive drama that reached from Heath’s bungalow to the Colonnade in the Chinese quarter, leaving a gap between that his brain struggled with in vain.

It was like the imaginable space between life and death, where both conditions existed, and one was the key to the other.  Something was lacking.  One small master touch wanting to lay the whole thing bare of mystery.  Coryndon’s weary eyes reflected the state of his mind.  He felt like an inventor who is baffled for the lack of a tiny clue that makes the impossible natural and easy, or a composer who hears a refrain and cannot call it into birth in clear defiant chords.  To think too much when thought cannot carry the mind over the limiting barrier is to spend substance on fruitless effort, and Coryndon deliberately shut the door of his mind and put the key away before he started out with Hartley.

The night was clear as the two men went off together hatless through the soft moonlight.  Neither Coryndon nor Hartley talked much as they walked by a short cut across the park to the Wilders’ bungalow, a servant carrying a lantern going before them like a dim will-o’-the-wisp; the yellow lamplight paling into an ineffectual blur against the clear moonlight.

“I think it is only ourselves,” said Hartley after a long pause.  “You are looking a bit done, Coryndon, so you’ll be glad if it isn’t a late night.”

Coryndon agreed, and conversation flagged again.  They crossed the road, turned up the avenue and were lost in the shadows of the trees, coming out again into a white bay of light outside the door.