e, his face was still shadowed and
overclouded. Overclouded too was the sky, and as he stepped out into the
street from his garden-room the hot air struck him like a buffet; and in
his troubled and apprehensive mood it felt as if some hot hand warned him
by a blow not to venture out of his house. But the house, somehow, in the
last hour had become terrible to him, any movement or action, even on a
day like this, when only madmen and the English go abroad, was better
than the nervous waiting in his darkened room. Dreadful forces, forces of
ruin and murder and disgrace, were abroad in the world of men; the menace
of the low black clouds and stifling heat was more bearable. He wanted to
get away from his house, which was permeated and soaked in association
with the other two actors, who in company with himself, had surely some
tragedy for which the curtain was already rung up. Some dreadful scene
was already prepared for them; the setting and stage were ready, the
prompter, and who was he? was in the box ready to tell them the next line
if any of them faltered. The prompter, surely he was destiny, fate, the
irresistible course of events, with which no man can struggle, any more
than the actor can struggle with or alter the lines that are set down for
him. He may mumble them, he may act dispiritedly and tamely, but he has
undertaken a certain part; he has to go through with it.

Though it was a populous hour of the day, there were but few people
abroad when Mr. Taynton came out to the sea front; a few cabs stood by
the railings that bounded the broad asphalt path which faced the sea, but
the drivers of these, despairing of fares, were for the most part dozing
on the boxes, or with a more set purpose were frankly slumbering in the
interior. The dismal little wooden shelters that punctuated the parade
were deserted, the pier stretched an untenanted length of boards over the
still, lead-coloured sea, and it seemed as if nature herself was waiting
for some elemental catastrophe.

And though the afternoon was of such hideous and sultry heat, Mr.
Taynton, though he walked somewhat more briskly than his wont, was
conscious of no genial heat that produced perspiration, and the natural
reaction and cooling of the skin. Some internal excitement and fever of
the brain cut off all external things; the loneliness, the want of
correspondence that fever brings between external and internal
conditions, was on him. At one moment, in spite o