at
sheer joy. He desired to rush off instantly into the universe at large
and discover Camilla, wherever she might be.

Of course, he had dreamed of Camilla, but the telephone-bell had drowned
the remembered accents of her voice. The telephone-bell had silenced
everything. The telephone-bell had grown from a dream into a nightmare;
and at last he had said to himself in the nightmare: 'I might just as
well be up and working as lying throttled here by this confounded
nightmare.' And by an effort of will he had wakened. And even after he
was roused, and had switched on the light, which showed the hands of the
clock at a quarter to ten, he could still hear the telephone-bell of his
nightmare. And then the truth occurred to him, as the truth does occur
surprisingly to people whose sleep has been disturbed, that the
telephone-bell was a real telephone-bell, and not in the least the
telephone-bell of a dream, and it was ringing, ringing, ringing in the
dome. There were fifteen lines of telephone in the Hugo building, and
one of them ran to the dome. Few persons called him up on it, because
few persons knew its precise number, but he used it considerably
himself.

'Anyhow,' he murmured, 'I've had over seven and a half hours' sleep, and
that's something.'

And as he got out of bed to go across to the telephone, his great joy
resumed possession of him, and he was rather glad than otherwise that
the telephone had forced him to wake.

'Well, well, well?' he cried comically, lifting the ear-piece off the
hook and stopping the bell.

'Are you there?' the still small voice of the telephone whispered in his
ear.

'I should think I was here!' he cried. 'Who are you?'

'Are you Mr. Hugo?' asked the voice.

'I'm what's left of Mr. Hugo,' he answered in a sort of drunken tone.
The power of the sedative was still upon him. 'Who are you? You've
pretty nearly rung my head off.'

'I just want to say good-bye to you,' said the voice.

'What!'

Hugo started, glancing round the vast room, which was in shadow except
where a solitary light threw its yellow glare on the dial of the clock.

'Are you there?' asked the voice patiently once again.

'It isn't'--something prompted him to use a Christian name--'it isn't
Louis?'

'Yes.'

'Where are you, then?' Hugo demanded.

'Not far off,' replied the mysterious voice in the telephone.

It was unmistakably the voice of Louis Ravengar, but apparently touched
with some new quality, so