ts long window open to the garden
without. More and more thickly clustered the shadows round him as he sat
half-sunk in a corner of the big leather couch. Once an owl hooted in
the tall trees outside the house, and the strange, melancholy note
seemed a fit accompaniment to the eerie stillness of the night.

Worse and ever more hard to bear grew the fierce throbbing in his head
and eyes, but his wretchedness of mind ran a good race with his bodily
suffering; and had he been asked, suddenly, the nature of the pain which
tormented him he would have found it hard to answer immediately.

Only as the quiet hours wore on he began to feel that the limit of his
endurance was almost reached. He told himself that even Iris herself
would not willingly sanction such suffering as his had now become. In
all the world he desired only one boon--oblivion, unconsciousness, rest
from this state of being which was surely unendurable; and as a more
exquisitely painful throb of anguish shot through his head he plunged
his hand into his breast-pocket in search of a certain little case which
was generally to be found there during his day's round.

But he remembered, with a sudden keen disappointment, that he had
changed his coat on returning home to dinner, and the means of
alleviation which he sought were not at hand.

He half rose, intending to go in search of the thing he wanted; but the
effort of moving was too much, and he sank back again with an irritable
groan and prepared to endure still more of this misery.

Next he thought he would try the effect of a cigarette, but the matches
were not on the table before him. That obstacle, however, need not be
insurmountable, for in a drawer at his elbow he kept a supply, and
moving cautiously, for every movement set his nerves jangling, he turned
on the couch and opened the drawer to seek the matches which should be
there.

He found them immediately, and was in the act of taking one from the box
when his eye fell on a small package which somehow roused a strange
feeling of interest in his pain-shrouded mind.

It seemed familiar--at least he thought he remembered handling it
before, and by a queer twist of memory he thought of Mrs. Carstairs as
he took up the mysterious little parcel and turned it about in his
hands.

Yet his throbbing brain would not allow him to feel certain what was
really inside the packet, and with a sudden access of nervous irritation
he broke the seal which held its