They had come into the lighted Strand. A monstrous hotel rose before
them, its masonry pale, insubstantial in the twilight, a delicate
framework for its piled and serried squares of light. It showed like a
hollow bastion, filled with insurgent fire, flung up to heaven. The
buildings on either side of it were mere extensions of its dominion.

"Your sense is a sense I haven't got," said she.

"I lose it sometimes. But it always comes back."

"Isn't it--horrible?"

"No," he said. "It isn't."

They plunged down a steep side-street off the Strand, and turned on to
their terrace. He let her in with his latchkey and followed her
up-stairs. He stopped at her landing.

"May I come in?" he said. "Or is it too late?"

"It isn't late at all," said she. And he followed her into the room.

He did not see the seat she offered him, but stood leaning his shoulders
against the chimney-piece. She knew that he had something to say to her
that must be said instantly or not at all. And yet he kept silence.
Whatever it was that he had to say it was not an easy thing.

"You'd like some coffee?" she said curtly, by way of breaking his dumb
and dangerous mood.

He roused himself almost irritably.

"Thanks, no. Don't bother about it."

She left him and went into the inner room to make it. She was afraid of
him; afraid of what she might have to hear. She had the sense of things
approaching, of separation, of the snapping of the tense thread of time
that bound them for her moment. It was as if she could spin it out by
interposing between the moment and its end a series of insignificant
acts.

Through the open doors she saw him as he turned and wandered to the
bookcase and stood there, apparently absorbed. You would have said that
he had come in to look for a book, and that when he had found what he
wanted he would go. She saw him take her book, "Tales of the Marches,"
from its shelf and open it.

She became aware of this as she was about to lift the kettle from the
gas-ring burning on the hearth. Her thin sleeve swept the ring. She was
stooping, but her face was still raised; her eyes were fixed on
Prothero, held by what they saw. The small blue jets of the ring
flickered and ran together and soared as her sleeve caught them. Nina
made no sound. Prothero turned and saw her standing there by the hearth,
motionless, her right arm wrapped in flame.

He leaped to her, and held her tight with her arm against his breast,
and beat o