laughed at you," said Paul.

Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.

"I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed," said
Morel.

"It was that as did me," Dawes said, very low.

Paul took another sweet.

"I never laughed," he said, "except as I'm always laughing."

They finished the game.

That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have something
to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black
clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of
highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black
levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room.
If he walked and walked for ever, there was only that place to come to.

He was not tired when he got near home, or He did not know it. Across
the field he could see the red firelight leaping in her bedroom window.

"When she's dead," he said to himself, "that fire will go out."

He took off his boots quietly and crept upstairs. His mothers door was
wide open, because she slept alone still. The red firelight dashed its
glow on the landing. Soft as a shadow, he peeped in her doorway.

"Paul!" she murmured.

His heart seemed to break again. He went in and sat by the bed.

"How late you are!" she murmured.

"Not very," he said.

"Why, what time is it?" The murmur came plaintive and helpless.

"It's only just gone eleven."

That was not true; it was nearly one o'clock.

"Oh!" she said; "I thought it was later."

And he knew the unutterable misery of her nights that would not go.

"Can't you sleep, my pigeon?" he said.

"No, I can't," she wailed.

"Never mind, Little!" He said crooning. "Never mind, my love. I'll stop
with you half an hour, my pigeon; then perhaps it will be better."

And he sat by the bedside, slowly, rhythmically stroking her brows
with his finger-tips, stroking her eyes shut, soothing her, holding her
fingers in his free hand. They could hear the sleepers' breathing in the
other rooms.

"Now go to bed," she murmured, lying quite still under his fingers and
his love.

"Will you sleep?" he asked.

"Yes, I think so."

"You feel better, my Little, don't you?"

"Yes," she said, like a fretful, half-soothed child.

Still the days and the weeks went by. He hardly ever went to see Clara
now. But he wandered restlessly from one person to another for some
help, and there was none anywhere. Miriam had written to him tenderly.