binets, and mounted the stairs side by side. At the end of
the gallery, a lamp brought out turbid gleams in the smoky battle-piece
above it.

On the landing Darrow stopped; his room was the nearest to the stairs.
"Good night," he said, holding out his hand.

As Anna gave him hers the springs of grief broke loose in her. She
struggled with her sobs, and subdued them; but her breath came unevenly,
and to hide her agitation she leaned on him and pressed her face against
his arm.

"Don't--don't," he whispered, soothing her.

Her troubled breathing sounded loudly in the silence of the sleeping
house. She pressed her lips tight, but could not stop the nervous
pulsations in her throat, and he put an arm about her and, opening his
door, drew her across the threshold of his room. The door shut
behind her and she sat down on the lounge at the foot of the bed. The
pulsations in her throat had ceased, but she knew they would begin again
if she tried to speak.

Darrow walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece. The red-veiled
lamp shone on his books and papers, on the arm-chair by the fire, and
the scattered objects on his dressing-table. A log glimmered on the
hearth, and the room was warm and faintly smoke-scented. It was the
first time she had ever been in a room he lived in, among his personal
possessions and the traces of his daily usage. Every object about her
seemed to contain a particle of himself: the whole air breathed of him,
steeping her in the sense of his intimate presence.

Suddenly she thought: "This is what Sophy Viner knew"...and with a
torturing precision she pictured them alone in such a scene...Had he
taken the girl to an hotel...where did people go in such cases? Wherever
they were, the silence of night had been around them, and the things he
used had been strewn about the room...Anna, ashamed of dwelling on the
detested vision, stood up with a confused impulse of flight; then a wave
of contrary feeling arrested her and she paused with lowered head.

Darrow had come forward as she rose, and she perceived that he was
waiting for her to bid him good night. It was clear that no other
possibility had even brushed his mind; and the fact, for some dim
reason, humiliated her. "Why not...why not?" something whispered in her,
as though his forbearance, his tacit recognition of her pride, were a
slight on other qualities she wanted him to feel in her.

"In the morning, then?" she heard him say.

"Yes, in t