“The deuce! the deuce!” he murmured, rejecting the tie and trying another one; “and all the things I’ve got to do this blessed night!...  Console the afflicted—­three of them; dine with one, get to “The Breakers” and spoon with another—­get to the Club and sup with another!—­the deuce! the deuce! the—­”

He hummed a bar or two of a new waltz, took a puff at his cigarette, winked affably at the idol, put on his coat, and without a second glance at the glass went out whistling a lively tune.

Hamil, dressed for dinner, but looking rather worn and fatigued, passed him in the hall.

“You’ve evidently had a hard day,” said Malcourt; “you resemble the last run of sea-weed.  Is everybody dining at this hour?”

“I dined early with Mrs. Cardross.  Mrs. Carrick has taken Shiela and Cecile to that dinner dance at the O’Haras’.  It’s the last of the season.  I thought you might be going later.”

“Are you?”

“No; I’m rather tired.”

“I’m tired, too.  Hang it!  I’m always tired—­but only of Bibi.  Quand meme!  Good night....  I’ll probably reappear with the dicky-birds.  Leave your key under that yellow rose-bush, will you?  I can’t stop to hunt up mine.  And tell them not to bar and chain the door; that’s a good fellow.”

Hamil nodded and resumed his journey to his bedroom.  There he transferred a disorderly heap of letters, plans, contracts, and blue-prints from his bed to a table, threw a travelling rug over the bed, lay down on it, and lighted a cigar, closing his eyes for a moment.  Then he opened them wearily.

He did not intend to sleep; there was work waiting for him; that was why he left the electric bulbs burning as safeguard against slumber.

For a while he smoked, flat on his back; his cigar went out twice and he relighted it.  The third time he was deciding whether or not to set fire to it again—­he remembered that—­and remembered nothing more, except the haunted dreams in which he followed her, through sad and endless forests, gray in deepening twilight, where he could neither see her face nor reach her side, nor utter the cry which strained in his throat....  On, on, endlessly struggling onward in the thickening darkness, year after year, the sky a lowering horror, the forest, no longer silent, a twisting, stupefying confusion of sound, growing, increasing, breaking into a hellish clamour!—­

Upright on his bed he realised that somebody was knocking; and he slid to the floor, still stupid and scarcely convinced.

“Mrs. Carrick’s compliments, and is Mr. Hamil quite well bein’ as the lights is burnin’ an’ past two o’clock, sir?” said the maid at the door.

“Past two!  O Lord!  Please thank Mrs. Carrick, and say that I am going to do a little work, and that I am perfectly well.”

He closed the door and looked around him in despair:  “All that stuff to verify and O.K.!  What an infernal ass I am!  By the nineteen little josses in Malcourt’s bedroom I’m so many kinds of a fool that I hate to count up beyond the dozen!”