ing the doctor's attention, the appearance of Mrs.
Iggulden's shuttered parlour-window would have discouraged him. It
told a tale of a household still asleep, and quite truly as far as she
herself was concerned. For Dr. Conrad, as might have been expected,
was very late in coming home the night before; and his mother's
peculiarity of not being able to sleep if kept up till eleven,
combined with the need of a statement of her position, a declaration
of policy, and almost a budget, if not quite, on the subject of her
son's future housekeeping, having resulted in what threatened to
become an all-night sitting, the good woman's dozes and repentances,
with jerks, on the stairs overnight, had produced their consequences
in the morning. Fenwick passed the house, and walked on as far as
where the path rose to the cliffs; then turned back, and, pausing
a moment, as we have seen, under Sally's window, failed in his dreamy
state to see her as she looked over the cross-bar at him, and then
went on towards the old town. It may be she was not very visible; the
double glasses of an open sash-window are almost equal to opacity. But
even with that, the extreme aberration of Fenwick's mind at the moment
is the only way to account for his not seeing her.

In fact, his mental perturbation came and went by gusts, as his memory
caught at or relinquished agitating points of reminiscence, always
dwelling on that parting from Rosalind at Umballa. His brain and
nervous system were in a state that involved a climax and reaction;
and, unhappily, this climax, during which his identification of his
present self with his memory of its past was intensified to the point
of absolute hallucination, came at an inopportune moment. If he could
only have kept the phantoms of his imagination at bay until he met
Sally! But, really, speculation on so strange a frame of mind is
useless; we can only accept the facts as they stand.

He had no recollection afterwards of what followed when he passed the
house and failed to see Sally or hear her call out to him. For the
time being he was back again in his life of twenty years ago. Those
who find this hard to believe may see no way of accounting for what
came about but by ascribing to Fenwick an intention of suicide. For
our part we believe him to have been absolutely incapable of such an
act from a selfish impulse; and, moreover, it is absurd to impute to
him such a motive, at this time, however strongly he might ha