lp you
upstairs. What have you been doing with yourself since I left you? You
don't look nearly so well as when you came down."

"I feel a little faint," Sir William said. "It would be better for me to
go and rest now, perhaps." And leaning on Rendel's arm, and followed
solicitously by Rachel, he went upstairs.

CHAPTER XV

The night passed slowly and restlessly for Sir William Gore, although he
slept from sheer exhaustion, and even when he was not sleeping was in a
state of semi-coma, without any clear perception of what had happened.
But in his dreams he lived through one quarter of an hour of the day
before, over and over and over again, always with the same result,
always with the same sense of some unexpected, horrible, shameful
catastrophe, that was to lead to his utter humiliation. That was the
impression that still remained when at last the morning came, and he
finally awoke to the life of another day. Over and over again he went
over the situation as he lay there, Pateley's words ringing in his ears,
his looks present before him. Again he felt the sensation of absolute
sickness at his heart that had gripped him at the moment he had realised
that the map had been photographed, passing as much out of his own power
as though he had given it to a man in the street. Does any one really
acknowledge in his inmost soul that he has on a given occasion done
"wrong," without an immeasurable qualifying of that word, without a
covert resentment at the way other people may label his action? There is
but one person in the world who even approximates to knowing the history
of any given deed. The very fact of snatching it from its context puts
it into the wrong proportion, the fact of contemplating it as though it
were something deliberate, separate, complete in itself, apart from all
that has led up to it, apart from the complication and pressure of
circumstance. Sir William went over and over again in his mind all that
had happened the day before, trying to realise under what aspect his
actions would appear to others--over and over again, until everything
became blurred and he hardly knew under what aspect they appeared to
himself. He felt helplessly indignant with Fate, with Chance, that had
with such dire results made him the plaything of a passing impulse. Then
with the necessity of finding an object for his anger, his thoughts
turned first to Rendel, who had primarily put him in the position of
gaining the know