moon above
him--and yet--also some feeling softer than interest so that he was
suddenly touched as he thought of her and spoke out aloud: "I'll be
good to her--whatever happens, by God I'll be good to her," so that a
chauffeur near him turned and looked with hard scornful eyes, and a
girl somewhere laughed. With all his conventional dislike of being in
any way "odd" he walked hurriedly on, confused and wondering more than
ever what it was that had happened to him. Always before he had known
his own mind--now, in everything, he seemed to be pulled two ways. It
was as though some spell had been thrown over him.

It was a lovely evening and he walked slowly, not wishing to enter his
house too quickly. He realised that he had, during the last weeks,
found nothing there but trouble. And if Maggie wished, in spite of what
he had told her, to go on with him? And if his father, impatient at
last, definitely asked him to stay at home altogether and insisted on
an answer? And if his gradually increasing estrangement with his sister
broke into open quarrel? And if, strangest of all, this religious
business, that in such manifestations as the Chapel service of last
night he hated with all his soul, held him after all?

He was in Garrick Street, outside the curiosity shop, his latchkey in
his hand. He stopped and stared down the street as he had done once
before, weeks ago. Was not the root of all his trouble simply this,
that he was becoming against his will interested, drawn in? That there
were things going on that his common sense rejected as nonsense, but
that nevertheless were throwing out feelers like the twisting threats
of an octopus, touching him now, only faintly, here for a second, there
for a second, but fascinating, holding him so that he could not run
away? Granted that Thurston was a charlatan, Miss Avies a humbug, his
sister a fool, his father a dreamer, Crashaw a fanatic, did that mean
that the power behind them all was sham? Was that force that he had
felt when he was a child simply eager superstition? What was behind
this street, this moon, these hurrying figures, his own daily life and
thoughts? Was there really a vast conspiracy, a huge involving plot
moving under the cardboard surface of the world, a plot that he had by
an accident of birth spied upon and discovered?

Always, every day now, thoughts, suspicions, speculations were coming
upon him, uninvited, undesired, from somewhere, from some one. He did
n