Meantime I rolled bread pills and remembered my sins; M'Leod considered his own reflection in a spoon; his wife seemed to be praying, and the girl fidgetted desperately with hands and feet, till the darkness passed on--as though the malignant rays of a burning-glass had been shifted from us. “There,” said Miss M'Leod, half rising. “Now you see what makes a happy home. Oh, sell it--sell it, father mine, and let us go away!” “But I've spent thousands on it. You shall go to Harrogate next week, Thea dear.” “I'm only just back from hotels. I am so tired of packing.” “Cheer up, Thea. It is over. You know it does not often come here twice in the same night. I think we shall dare now to be comfortable.” He lifted a dish-cover, and helped his wife and daughter. His face was lined and fallen like an old man's after debauch, but his hand did not shake, and his voice was clear. As he worked to restore us by speech and action, he reminded me of a grey-muzzled collie herding demoralised sheep. After dinner we sat round the dining-room fire--the drawing-room might have been under the Shadow for aught we knew--talking with the intimacy of gipsies by the wayside, or of wounded comparing notes after a skirmish. By eleven o'clock the three between them had given me every name and detail they could recall that in any way bore on the house, and what they knew of its history. We went to bed in a fortifying blaze of electric light. My one fear was that the blasting gust of depression would return--the surest way, of course, to bring it. I lay awake till dawn, breathing quickly and sweating lightly, beneath what De Quincey inadequately describes as “the oppression of inexpiable guilt.” Now as soon as the lovely day was broken, I fell into the most terrible of all dreams--that joyous one in which all past evil has not only been wiped out of our lives, but has never been committed; and in the very bliss of our assured innocence, before our loves shriek and change countenance, we wake to the day we have earned. It was a coolish morning, but we preferred to breakfast in the south verandah. The forenoon we spent in the garden, pretending to play games that come out of boxes, such as croquet and clock golf. But most of the time we drew together and talked. The young man who knew all about South American railways took Miss M'Leod for a walk in the afternoon, and at five M'Leod thoughtfully whirled us all up to dine in town. “Now, don't say you will tell the Psychological Society, and that you will come again,” said Miss M'Leod, as we parted. “Because I know you will not.” “You should not say that,” said her mother. “You should say, 'Goodbye, Mr. Perseus. Come again.'” “Not him!” the girl cried. “He has seen the Medusa's head!”