How could he have wasted his time in thinking of
anything else while that central difficulty existed?

"But I can't ... I can't ... it's gone ... and even if it weren't...."
He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. He had
forgotten what he wanted the money for. He made a great effort to regain
hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly
ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight
into darkness.... The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said
he would go down to the dining-room. "If I don't she'll come up--" He
raised his head and sat listening for the sound of the old woman's step:
it seemed to him perfectly intolerable that any one should cross the
threshold of the room again.

"Why can't they leave me alone?" he groaned.... At length through the
silence of the empty house, he fancied he heard a door opening and
closing far below; and he said to himself: "She's coming."

He got to his feet and went to the door. He didn't feel anything now
except the insane dread of hearing the woman's steps come nearer. He
bolted the door and stood looking about the room. For a moment he was
conscious of seeing it in every detail with a distinctness he had never
before known; then everything in it vanished but the single narrow panel
of a drawer under one of the bookcases. He went up to the drawer, knelt
down and slipped his hand into it.

As he raised himself he listened again, and this time he distinctly
heard the old servant's steps on the stairs. He passed his left hand
over the side of his head, and down the curve of the skull behind the
ear. He said to himself: "My wife ... this will make it all right for
her...." and a last flash of irony twitched through him. Then he felt
again, more deliberately, for the spot he wanted, and put the muzzle of
his revolver against it.

XXXVII

In a drawing-room hung with portraits of high-nosed personages in
perukes and orders, a circle of ladies and gentlemen, looking not unlike
every-day versions of the official figures above their heads, sat
examining with friendly interest a little boy in mourning.

The boy was slim, fair and shy, and his small black figure, islanded
in the middle of the wide lustrous floor, looked curiously lonely
and remote. This effect of remoteness seemed to strike his mother as
something intentional, and almost naughty, for after having launched him
from the door, and waite