g itself before his gaze; feeling again the
kiss she had left on his lips, the gleam of her soft eyes, so strangely
dark in so fair a face. In a sort of trance he would lie till she came
back. Then get up to breakfast about noon off things which she had
cooked, drinking coffee. In the afternoon he would go out alone and
walk for hours, any where, so long as it was East. To the East there
was always suffering to be seen, always that which soothed him with the
feeling that he and his troubles were only a tiny part of trouble; that
while so many other sorrowing and shadowy creatures lived he was not
cut off. To go West was to encourage dejection. In the West all was like
Keith, successful, immaculate, ordered, resolute. He would come back
tired out, and sit watching her cook their little dinner. The evenings
were given up to love. Queer trance of an existence, which both were
afraid to break. No sign from her of wanting those excitements which
girls who have lived her life, even for a few months, are supposed to
need. She never asked him to take her anywhere; never, in word, deed,
look, seemed anything but almost rapturously content. And yet he knew,
and she knew, that they were only waiting to see whether Fate would
turn her thumb down on them. In these days he did not drink. Out of his
quarter's money, when it came in, he had paid his debts--their expenses
were very small. He never went to see Keith, never wrote to him, hardly
thought of him. And from those dread apparitions--Walenn lying with
the breath choked out of him, and the little grey, driven animal in the
dock--he hid, as only a man can who must hide or be destroyed. But daily
he bought a newspaper, and feverishly, furtively scanned its columns.

VIII

Coming out of the Law Courts on the afternoon of January 28th, at the
triumphant end of a desperately fought will case, Keith saw on a poster
the words: "Glove Lane Murder: Trial and Verdict"; and with a rush of
dismay he thought: 'Good God! I never looked at the paper this morning!'
The elation which had filled him a second before, the absorption he had
felt for two days now in the case so hardly won, seemed suddenly quite
sickeningly trivial. What on earth had he been doing to forget that
horrible business even for an instant? He stood quite still on the
crowded pavement, unable, really unable, to buy a paper. But his face
was like a piece of iron when he did step forward and hold his penny
out. There it