compound), he would withdraw out of sight behind a door not quite
closed, in order to avoid meeting his two extraordinary guests; but he
would watch through the crack their contrasted forms pass through the
billiard-room and disappear on their way to bed. Then he would hear
doors being slammed upstairs; and a profound silence would fall upon the
whole house, upon his hotel appropriated, haunted by those insolently
outspoken men provided with a whole armoury of weapons in their trunks.
A profound silence. Schomberg sometimes could not resist the notion that
he must be dreaming. Shuddering, he would pull himself together,
and creep out, with movements strangely inappropriate to the
Lieutenant-of-the-Reserve bearing by which he tried to keep up his
self-respect before the world.

A great loneliness oppressed him. One after another he would extinguish
the lamps, and move softly towards his bedroom, where Mrs. Schomberg
waited for him--no fit companion for a man of his ability and "in the
prime of life." But that life, alas, was blighted. He felt it; and never
with such force as when on opening the door he perceived that woman
sitting patiently in a chair, her toes peeping out under the edge of her
night-dress, an amazingly small amount of hair on her head drooping
on the long stalk of scraggy neck, with that everlasting scared grin
showing a blue tooth and meaning nothing--not even real fear. For she
was used to him.

Sometimes he was tempted to screw the head off the stalk. He imagined
himself doing it--with one hand, a twisting movement. Not seriously, of
course. Just a simple indulgence for his exasperated feelings. He wasn't
capable of murder. He was certain of that. And, remembering suddenly the
plain speeches of Mr. Jones, he would think: "I suppose I am too tame
for that"--quite unaware that he had murdered the poor woman morally
years ago. He was too unintelligent to have the notion of such a crime.
Her bodily presence was bitterly offensive, because of its contrast with
a very different feminine image. And it was no use getting rid of her.
She was a habit of years, and there would be nothing to put in her
place. At any rate, he could talk to that idiot half the night if he
chose.

That night he had been vapouring before her as to his intention to face
his two guests and, instead of that inspiration he needed, had merely
received the usual warning: "Be careful, Wilhelm." He did not want to be
told to be careful