ts windows, guarding
its secrets well, all but two windows on the second floor, which were
open to the night. That was Audrey's room, he knew. Little fool! Ill
with a feverish cold, and sleeping with open windows! For about half an
hour he walked up and down on the Embankment opposite, like a sentry on
duty, his long shadow blackening and fading as he passed from light to
light.

When he got back to his rooms, he felt a sensation that had sometimes
come upon him after a long day's hunting, a feeling of deadly fatigue
and stifling emptiness, as if the rest of his body were drained of the
blood that choked his heart. He opened his travelling-bag, took out a
large silver flask, looked at it, sighed, shuddered slightly, poured
about two tablespoonfuls of brandy down his throat; and then, with a
gesture of indescribable disgust, emptied the remainder out of the
window into the yard below. He undressed and got into bed quickly,
turned over on his right side for greater ease, and was soon asleep and
dreaming of to-morrow.

CHAPTER XVI

There was no sleep for Ted that night. Towards morning he fell into a
doze, broken by unpleasant dreams, and woke with a confused
consciousness of trouble. It had been connected in his dreams with
Hardy's return, and, once awake, the knowledge that he was in the same
house with him was insupportable. Not that he had yet guessed how
Vincent stood to Audrey; he had simply a nervous dread of hearing him
talk about her. The casual utterance of her name went through him like a
sword, and in his present mood Vincent's boisterous spirit disturbed and
irritated him. More to get away from him than with any definite idea of
work, he spent his morning at the National Gallery, touching up the copy
of the Botticelli Madonna which Katherine had begun long ago for Audrey.
He had set to work almost mechanically, with a sense that whatever he
did at the present moment was only provisional,--only a staving off of
the intolerable future; but soon the technical difficulties of his task
absorbed him, and he became interested in spite of himself. He was so
passive to the spiritual influences of line and colour, that perhaps the
beauty of the grey-eyed girl Madonna may have given him something of its
own tranquillity.

Unfortunately the good effects of his morning's industry were undone
when he got home, by finding Hardy alone in the studio, sitting before
Audrey's portrait. He had dragged the easel to th