lled up after him. "It
makes no difference, none whatever. Life is gay all the same, always,
under whatever circumstances--under whatever circumstances," he added,
raising his voice to a shout. But Denis was already far out of hearing,
and even if he had not been, his mind to-night was proof against all
the consolations of philosophy. Mr. Scogan replaced his pipe between his
teeth and resumed his meditative pacing. "Under any circumstances," he
repeated to himself. It was ungrammatical to begin with; was it true?
And is life really its own reward? He wondered. When his pipe had burned
itself to its stinking conclusion he took a drink of gin and went to
bed. In ten minutes he was deeply, innocently asleep.

Denis had mechanically undressed and, clad in those flowered silk
pyjamas of which he was so justly proud, was lying face downwards on
his bed. Time passed. When at last he looked up, the candle which he
had left alight at his bedside had burned down almost to the socket. He
looked at his watch; it was nearly half-past one. His head ached, his
dry, sleepless eyes felt as though they had been bruised from behind,
and the blood was beating within his ears a loud arterial drum. He got
up, opened the door, tiptoed noiselessly along the passage, and began
to mount the stairs towards the higher floors. Arrived at the servants'
quarters under the roof, he hesitated, then turning to the right he
opened a little door at the end of the corridor. Within was a pitch-dark
cupboard-like boxroom, hot, stuffy, and smelling of dust and old
leather. He advanced cautiously into the blackness, groping with his
hands. It was from this den that the ladder went up to the leads of
the western tower. He found the ladder, and set his feet on the rungs;
noiselessly, he lifted the trap-door above his head; the moonlit sky was
over him, he breathed the fresh, cool air of the night. In a moment
he was standing on the leads, gazing out over the dim, colourless
landscape, looking perpendicularly down at the terrace seventy feet
below.

Why had he climbed up to this high, desolate place? Was it to look at
the moon? Was it to commit suicide? As yet he hardly knew. Death--the
tears came into his eyes when he thought of it. His misery assumed
a certain solemnity; he was lifted up on the wings of a kind of
exaltation. It was a mood in which he might have done almost anything,
however foolish. He advanced towards the farther parapet; the drop was
sheer