logs, but they give out no greater heat. He draws his chair
right in front of them, and sits leaning over them with his feet on the
hearth and his hands outstretched towards the blaze; yet he still
shivers.

Twilight fills the room and deepens into dusk. He wonders listlessly how
it is that Time seems to be moving with such swift strides. After a
while he hears a voice close to him, speaking in a slow, monotonous
tone--a voice curiously familiar to him, though he cannot tell to whom it
belongs. He does not turn his head, but sits listening to it drowsily.
It is talking about tallow: one hundred and ninety-four casks of tallow,
and they must all stand one inside the other. It cannot be done, the
voice complains pathetically. They will not go inside each other. It is
no good pushing them. See! they only roll out again.

The voice grows wearily fretful. Oh! why do they persist when they see
it is impossible? What fools they all are!

Suddenly he recollects the voice, and starts up and stares wildly about
him, trying to remember where he is. With a fierce straining of his will
he grips the brain that is slipping away from him, and holds it. As soon
as he feels sure of himself he steals out of the room and down the
stairs.

In the hall he stands listening; the house is very silent. He goes to
the head of the stairs leading to the kitchen and calls softly to the old
housekeeper, and she comes up to him, panting and grunting as she climbs
each step. Keeping some distance from her, he asks in a whisper where
Anne is. The woman answers that she is in the hospital.

"Tell her I have been called away suddenly on business," he says,
speaking in quick, low tones: "I shall be away for some days. Tell her
to leave here and return home immediately. They can do without her here
now. Tell her to go back home at once. I will join her there."

He moves toward the door but stops and faces round again.

"Tell her I beg and entreat her not to stop in this place an hour longer.
There is nothing to keep her now. It is all over: there is nothing that
cannot be done by any one. Tell her she must go home--this very night.
Tell her if she loves me to leave this place at once."

The woman, a little bewildered by his vehemence, promises, and disappears
down the stairs. He takes his hat and cloak from the chair on which he
had thrown them, and turns once more to cross the hall. As he does so,
the door opens and Anne ent