ad passed through a dozen
moods: furious anger at the senseless crime, at the hopeless, miserable
waste of a life, an overwhelming compassion and a wholly unreasonable
self-reproach for not having foreseen danger more clearly the night
before. There were other thoughts that had come to him too--doubts as to
whether the internal significance of all these things were in the least
analogous to the external happenings; whether, perhaps, after all, the
whole affair were not on the inner side a complete and perfect event--in
fact, a startling success of a nature which he could not understand.
Certainly, exteriorly, a more lamentable failure and waste could not be
conceived; there had been sacrificed such an array of advantages--birth,
money, education, gifts, position--and for such an exceedingly small and
doubtful good, that no additional data, it would appear, could possibly
explain the situation. Yet was it possible that such data did exist
somewhere, and that another golden and perfect deed had been done--that
there was no waste, no failure, after all?

But at present these thoughts only came to him in glimpses; he was
exhausted now of emotion and speculation. He regarded the pitiless
facts with a sunken, unenergetic attention, and wondered when he would
be called again upstairs.

There came a footstep outside; it hesitated, then the street door was
pushed open and the step came in, up to the room door, and a small face,
pinched with cold, its eyes all burning, looked at him.

"Come in, Jimmie," he whispered.

* * * * *

And so the two sat, huddled one against the other, and the man felt
again and again a shudder, though not of cold, shake the little body at
his side.

(V)

Ten minutes later a step came down the stairs, a little hurriedly,
though on tip-toe; and Mrs. Partington, her own thin face lined with
sleeplessness and emotion, and her lips set, nodded at him emphatically.
He understood, and went quickly past her, followed closely by the child,
and up the narrow stairs.... He heard the street-door close behind him
as the woman left the house.

It seemed to him as he came into the room as if he had stepped clean out
of one world into another. And the sense of it was so sudden and abrupt
that he stood for an instant on the threshold amazed at the transition.

First, it was the absolute stillness and motionlessness of the room that
impressed him, so far as any one element pre