ay somewhere.
Napoleon did at last. All through the Waterloo campaign, his stomach--it
wasn't a stomach! Worse than mine, no end."

The mood of depression passed as the drug worked within him. His eyes
brightened. He began to talk big. He began to dress up the situation for
my eyes, to recover what he had admitted to me. He put it as a retreat
from Russia. There were still the chances of Leipzig.

"It's a battle, George--a big fight. We're fighting for millions.
I've still chances. There's still a card or so. I can't tell all my
plans--like speaking on the stroke."

"You might," I began.

"I can't, George. It's like asking to look at some embryo. You got to
wait. I know. In a sort of way, I know. But to tell it--No! You been
away so long. And everything's got complicated."

My perception of disastrous entanglements deepened with the rise of his
spirits. It was evident that I could only help to tie him up in whatever
net was weaving round his mind by forcing questions and explanations
upon him. My thoughts flew off at another angle. "How's Aunt Susan?"
said I.

I had to repeat the question. His busy whispering lips stopped for a
moment, and he answered in the note of one who repeats a formula.

"She'd like to be in the battle with me. She'd like to be here in
London. But there's corners I got to turn alone." His eye rested for a
moment on the little bottle beside him. "And things have happened.

"You might go down now and talk to her," he said, in a directer voice.
"I shall be down to-morrow night, I think."

He looked up as though he hoped that would end our talk.

"For the week-end?" I asked.

"For the week-end. Thank God for week-ends, George!"

II

My return home to Lady Grove was a very different thing from what I had
anticipated when I had got out to sea with my load of quap and fancied
the Perfect-Filament was safe within my grasp. As I walked through the
evening light along the downs, the summer stillness seemed like the
stillness of something newly dead. There were no lurking workmen any
more, no cyclists on the high road.

Cessation was manifest everywhere. There had been, I learnt from my
aunt, a touching and quite voluntary demonstration when the Crest Hill
work had come to an end and the men had drawn their last pay; they had
cheered my uncle and hooted the contractors and Lord Boom.

I cannot now recall the manner in which my aunt and I greeted one
another. I must have been very tired the