He was tired, exhausted. He had come a long, long way and the rain hurt his bare flesh. At last a candle shone dimly behind the dark window. Some one was there, and instantly at the moment of his realising that aid had come he was conscious also that he must, on all accounts, refuse it. He knew that if he entered the house Stephen would die. It depended on him to save Stephen. He turned to flee but his father had unbarred the door and was drawing him in. He struggled, he cried out, he fought, but his father was stronger than he. He was on the threshold--he could see through the dark ill-smelling hall to the door beyond. His father's hand fastened on his arm like a vice. His body was bathed in sweat, he screamed ... and woke to find the room dim in the morning light and Mitchell shaking him by the arm. IV He was still dreaming. Now he was in the nursery. Clare was kneeling by Stephen's bed. One doctor was bending down--the nurse was crying very softly. He looked down on his son. As he looked the little face was, for an instant, puckered with pain. The mouth, the eyes, the throat struggled. The tiny hands lifted for a moment, hung, and then like fluttering leaves, fell down on to the counterpane. Then the body was suddenly quiet, the face was peaceful and the head had fallen gently, sideways against the pillow. At that moment of time, throughout the house, the Presences departed. The passages, the rooms were freed, the air was no longer cold. At that moment also Peter awoke. Mitchell said: “The boy's gone, Westcott.” Peter, turning his back upon them all, drove from him, so softly that they could scarcely hear, but in a voice of agony that Mitchell never afterwards forgot:-- “I wanted him so--I wanted him so.” CHAPTER XII A WOMAN CALLED ROSE BENNETT I The days that followed were dead--dead in more than any ordinary sense of the word. But perhaps it was Peter who was dead. He moved, ate, drank, even wrote his reviews, slept--he thanked gravely all those who offered him condolences--wrote letters in answer to kind friends.... “Dear S---- It was just like you to write so kindly and sympathetically....” And all this time he was without any kind of emotion. He was aware that there was something in the back of his brain that, were it once called upon to awake, might stir him into life again. What it would tell him he did not know, something about love, something intensely sorrowful, something that had occurred very probably to himself. He did not want to live--to think, to feel. Thinking meant pain, meant a sudden penetrating into that room shrouded now by heavy, black curtains but containing, were those curtains drawn, some great, phantasmal horror.