[He reads on silently, in horror; finishes, letting the paper
drop, and recoils from the couch on to a chair at the
dishevelled supper table. Aghast, he sits there. Suddenly he
mutters:]

If I leave that there--my name--my whole future!

[He springs up, takes up the paper again, and again reads.]

My God! It's ruin!

[He makes as if to tear it across, stops, and looks down at
those two; covers his eyes with his hand; drops the paper and
rushes to the door. But he stops there and comes back,
magnetised, as it were, by that paper. He takes it up once more
and thrusts it into his pocket.]

[The footsteps of a Policeman pass, slow and regular, outside.
His face crisps and quivers; he stands listening till they die
away. Then he snatches the paper from his pocket, and goes past
the foot of the couch to the fore.]

All my----No! Let him hang!

[He thrusts the paper into the fire, stamps it down with his
foot, watches it writhe and blacken. Then suddenly clutching
his head, he turns to the bodies on the couch. Panting and like
a man demented, he recoils past the head of the couch, and
rushing to the window, draws the curtains and throws the window
up for air. Out in the darkness rises the witch-like skeleton
tree, where a dark shape seems hanging. KEITH starts back.]

What's that? What----!

[He shuts the window and draws the dark curtains across it
again.]

Fool! Nothing!

[Clenching his fists, he draws himself up, steadying himself
with all his might. Then slowly he moves to the door, stands a
second like a carved figure, his face hard as stone.]

[Deliberately he turns out the light, opens the door, and goes.]

[The still bodies lie there before the fire which is licking at
the last blackened wafer.]

CURTAIN

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The First and The Last (Six Short
Plays), by John Galsworthy

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