he surface
again. He struggled against its possibilities. No! That was not it!
That was her affair.

He felt inexorably kept to the path he had chosen, for all the waning
of his rage. He had put his hand to the plough. "If you condone this,"
he told himself, "you might condone anything. There are things one
_must_ not stand." He tried to keep to that point of view--assuming
for the most part out of his imagination what it was he was not
standing. A dim sense came to him of how much he was assuming. At any
rate she must have flirted!... He resisted this reviving perception of
justice as though it was some unspeakably disgraceful craving. He
tried to imagine her with Baynes.

He determined he would go to sleep.

But his was a waking weariness. He tried counting. He tried to
distract his thoughts from her by going over the atomic weights of the
elements....

He shivered, and realised that he was cold and sitting cramped on an
uncomfortable horsehair chair. He had dozed. He glanced for the yellow
line between the folding doors. It was still there, but it seemed to
quiver. He judged the candle must be flaring. He wondered why
everything was so still.

Now why should he suddenly feel afraid?

He sat for a long time trying to hear some movement, his head craning
forward in the darkness.

A grotesque idea came into his head that all that had happened a very
long time ago. He dismissed that. He contested an unreasonable
persuasion that some irrevocable thing had passed. But why was
everything so still?

He was invaded by a prevision of unendurable calamity.

Presently he rose and crept very slowly, and with infinite precautions
against noise, towards the folding doors. He stood listening with his
ear near the yellow chink.

He could hear nothing, not even the measured breathing of a sleeper.

He perceived that the doors were not shut, but slightly ajar. He
pushed against the inner one very gently and opened it silently. Still
there was no sound of Ethel. He opened the door still wider and
peered into the room. The candle had burnt down and was flaring in
its socket. Ethel was lying half undressed upon the bed, and in her
hand and close to her face was a rose.

He stood watching her, fearing to move. He listened hard and his face
was very white. Even now he could not hear her breathing.

After all, it was probably all right. She was just asleep. He would
slip back before she woke. If she found him--

He looked