ightening the communication. "But
_he's_ out safe, sir. You may rely on the yoong lad." He has made
it harder for his wife to tell the rest, and she hesitates. But Dr.
Conrad has stayed for no more. He is going at a run down the sloped
passage that leads to the sea. The boy follows him, and by some
dexterous use of private thoroughfares, known to him, but not to the
doctor, arrives first, and is soon visible ahead, running towards the
scattered groups that line the beach. The man and woman follow more
slowly.

Few of those who read this, we hope, have ever had to face a shock so
appalling as the one that Conrad Vereker sustained when he came to
know what it was that was being carried up the beach from the boat
that had just been driven stern on to the shingle, as he emerged to
a full view of the sea and the running crowd, thickening as its last
stragglers arrived to meet it. But most of us who are not young have
unhappily had some experience of the sort, and many will recognise
(if we can describe it) the feeling that was his in excess when a
chance bystander--not unconcerned, for no one was that--used in his
hearing a phrase that drove the story home to him, and forced him to
understand. "It's the swimming girl from Lobjoit's, and she's
drooned." It was as well, for he had to know. What did it matter how
he became the blank thing standing there, able to say to itself, "Then
Sally is dead," and to attach their meaning to the words, but not to
comprehend why he went on living? One way of learning the thing that
closes over our lives and veils the sun for all time is as good as
another; but how came he to be so colourlessly calm about it?

If we could know how each man feels who hears in the felon's dock the
sentence of penal servitude for life, it may be we should find that
Vereker's sense of being for the moment a cold, unexplained unit in an
infinite unfeeling void, was no unusual experience. But this unit knew
mechanically what had happened perfectly well, and its duty was clear
before it. Just half a second for this sickness to go off, and he
would act.

It was a longer pause than it seemed to him, as all things appeared to
happen quickly in it, somewhat as in a photographic life-picture when
the films are run too quick. At least, that remained his memory of
it. And during that time he stood and wondered why he could not feel.
He thought of her mother and of Fenwick, and said to himself they
were to be pitied mor