since all the savage
youthful strength of shoulder and loose elbow directed them. Then he
withdrew his left hand from the throttled throat of the victim who had
ceased to struggle, and like a log he fell back on to the grass, and
Morris for the first time looked on his face. It was not Mills at all; it
was Mr. Taynton.

* * * * *

The terror plucked him from his sleep; for a moment he wrestled and
struggled to raise his head from the pillow and loosen the clutch of the
night-hag who had suddenly seized him, and with choking throat and
streaming brow he sat up in bed. Even then his dream was more real to him
than the sight of his own familiar room, more real than the touch of
sheet and blanket or the dew of anguish which his own hand wiped from his
forehead and throat. Yet, what was his dream? Was it merely some
subconscious stringing together of suggestions and desires and events
vivified in sleep to a coherent story (all but that recognition of Mr.
Taynton, which was nightmare pure and simple), or _had it happened_?

With waking, anyhow, the public life, the life that concerned other
living folk as well as himself, became predominant again. He had
certainly seen Sir Richard the day before, and Sir Richard had given him
the name of the man who had slandered him. He had gone to meet that man,
but he had not kept his appointment, nor had he come back to his flat in
Brighton. So to-day he, Morris, was going to call there once more, and if
he did not find him, was going to drive up to London, and seek him there.

But he had been effectually plucked from further sleep, sleep had been
strangled, and he got out of bed and went to the window. Nature, in any
case, had swept her trouble away, and the pure sweet morning was
beginning to dawn in lines of yellow and fleeces of rosy cloud on the
eastern horizon.

All that riot and hurly-burly of thunder, the bull's eye flashing of
lightning, the perpendicular rain were things of the past, and this
morning a sky of pale limpid blue, flecked only by the thinnest clouds,
stretched from horizon to horizon. Below the mirror of the sea seemed as
deep and as placid as the sky above it, and the inimitable freshness of
the dawn spoke of a world rejuvenated and renewed.

It was, by his watch, scarcely five; in an hour it would be reasonable to
call at Mills's flat, and see if he had come by the midnight train. If
not his motor could be round by soon after s