e house, withal, seemed immense, the scale of space again inordinate;
the open rooms, to no one of which his eyes deflected, gloomed in their
shuttered state like mouths of caverns; only the high skylight that
formed the crown of the deep well created for him a medium in which he
could advance, but which might have been, for queerness of colour, some
watery under-world. He tried to think of something noble, as that his
property was really grand, a splendid possession; but this nobleness took
the form too of the clear delight with which he was finally to sacrifice
it. They might come in now, the builders, the destroyers--they might
come as soon as they would. At the end of two flights he had dropped to
another zone, and from the middle of the third, with only one more left,
he recognised the influence of the lower windows, of half-drawn blinds,
of the occasional gleam of street-lamps, of the glazed spaces of the
vestibule. This was the bottom of the sea, which showed an illumination
of its own and which he even saw paved--when at a given moment he drew up
to sink a long look over the banisters--with the marble squares of his
childhood. By that time indubitably he felt, as he might have said in a
commoner cause, better; it had allowed him to stop and draw breath, and
the case increased with the sight of the old black-and-white slabs. But
what he most felt was that now surely, with the element of impunity
pulling him as by hard firm hands, the case was settled for what he might
have seen above had he dared that last look. The closed door, blessedly
remote now, was still closed--and he had only in short to reach that of
the house.

He came down further, he crossed the passage forming the access to the
last flight and if here again he stopped an instant it was almost for the
sharpness of the thrill of assured escape. It made him shut his
eyes--which opened again to the straight slope of the remainder of the
stairs. Here was impunity still, but impunity almost excessive; inasmuch
as the side-lights and the high fantracery of the entrance were
glimmering straight into the hall; an appearance produced, he the next
instant saw, by the fact that the vestibule gaped wide, that the hinged
halves of the inner door had been thrown far back. Out of that again the
_question_ sprang at him, making his eyes, as he felt, half-start from
his head, as they had done, at the top of the house, before the sign of
the other door. If he