thus
spying he drew back and hurried on. So Larry was living there with her!
When the moment came he could still find him.

Before going in, he stood full five minutes leaning on the terrace
parapet before his house, gazing at the star-frosted sky, and the
river cut by the trees into black pools, oiled over by gleams from
the Embankment lamps. And, deep down, behind his mere thoughts, he
ached-somehow, somewhere ached. Beyond the cage of all that he saw and
heard and thought, he had perceived something he could not reach. But
the night was cold, the bells silent, for it had struck twelve. Entering
his house, he stole upstairs.

VII

If for Keith those six weeks before the Glove Lane murder trial came on
were fraught with uneasiness and gloom, they were for Laurence almost
the happiest since his youth. From the moment when he left his rooms
and went to the girl's to live, a kind of peace and exaltation took
possession of him. Not by any effort of will did he throw off the
nightmare hanging over him. Nor was he drugged by love. He was in a sort
of spiritual catalepsy. In face of fate too powerful for his will, his
turmoil, anxiety, and even restlessness had ceased; his life floated in
the ether of "what must come, will." Out of this catalepsy, his spirit
sometimes fell headlong into black waters. In one such whirlpool he was
struggling on the night of Christmas Eve. When the girl rose from her
knees he asked her:

"What did you see?"

Pressing close to him, she drew him down on to the floor before the
fire; and they sat, knees drawn up, hands clasped, like two children
trying to see over the edge of the world.

"It was the Virgin I saw. She stood against the wall and smiled. We
shall be happy soon."

"When we die, Wanda," he said, suddenly, "let it be together. We shall
keep each other warm, out there."

Huddling to him she whispered: "Yes, oh, yes! If you die, I could not go
on living."

It was this utter dependence on him, the feeling that he had rescued
something, which gave him sense of anchorage. That, and his buried life
in the retreat of these two rooms. Just for an hour in the morning, from
nine to ten, the charwoman would come, but not another soul all day.
They never went out together. He would stay in bed late, while Wanda
bought what they needed for the day's meals; lying on his back, hands
clasped behind his head, recalling her face, the movements of her slim,
rounded, supple figure, robin