ll
only catch a cold"; and, without speaking, he left the seat, and went
along towards his rooms.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE END

He reached his rooms at midnight so exhausted that, without waiting
to light up, he dropped into a chair. The curtains and blinds had been
removed for cleaning, and the tall windows admitted the night's staring
gaze. Shelton fixed his eyes on that outside darkness, as one lost man
might fix his eyes upon another.

An unaired, dusty odour clung about the room, but, like some God-sent
whiff of grass or flowers wafted to one sometimes in the streets, a
perfume came to him, the spice from the withered clove carnation still
clinging, to his button-hole; and he suddenly awoke from his queer
trance. There was a decision to be made. He rose to light a candle;
the dust was thick on everything he touched. "Ugh!" he thought, "how
wretched!" and the loneliness that had seized him on the stone seat at
Holm Oaks the day before returned with fearful force.

On his table, heaped without order, were a pile of bills and circulars.
He opened them, tearing at their covers with the random haste of men
back from their holidays. A single long envelope was placed apart.

MY DEAR DICK [he read],

I enclose you herewith the revised draft of your marriage settlement. It
is now shipshape. Return it before the end of the week, and I will have
it engrossed for signature. I go to Scotland next Wednesday for a month;
shall be back in good time for your wedding. My love to your mother when
you see her.

Your-affectionate uncle,

EDMUND PARAMOR.

Shelton smiled and took out the draft.

"This Indenture made the -- day of 190-, between Richard Paramor
Shelton--"

He put it down and sank back in his chair, the chair in which the
foreign vagrant had been wont to sit on mornings when he came to preach
philosophy.

He did not stay there long, but in sheer unhappiness got up, and, taking
his candle, roamed about the room, fingering things, and gazing in the
mirror at his face, which seemed to him repulsive in its wretchedness.
He went at last into the hall and opened the door, to go downstairs
again into the street; but the sudden certainty that, in street or
house, in town or country, he would have to take his trouble with him,
made him shut it to. He felt in the letterbox, drew forth a letter, and
with this he went back to the sitting-room.

It was from Antonia. And such was his excitement that he was force