It was the third night after his interview with his former wife. He reached the hut after dark, by various by-paths over the wide commons stretching between it and X--the station at which he now generally alighted. He carried in his pocket some evening newspapers, a new anthology, and a novel. Owing to an injection of morphia--a habit to which he had only lately taken--he felt unusually fit, and his brain was unusually alert. At the same time he had had a disagreeable interview with a doctor that morning who had been insisting on Sanatorium treatment if the remaining lung was to be preserved and his life prolonged. He did not want to prolong his life, but only to avoid the beastliness of pain. It seemed to him that morphia--good stuff!--was going to do that for him. Why hadn't he begun it before? But his brain was queer--he was conscious of that. He had asked the doctor about some curious mental symptoms. The reply was that phthisis was often accompanied by them. Obsession--fixed ideas--in the medical sense: half of him, psychologically, was quite conscious that the other half was under their influence. The sound self was observing the unsound self, but apparently with no power over it. Otherwise how was it that he was here again, hiding like a wild beast in a lair, less than a mile from Great End Farm, and Rachel Henderson? He had found his way to London in the small hours of the day following his scene with Rachel, intending to keep his promise, and let his former wife alone. The cashing of Rachel's cheque had given him and Anita some agreeable moments; though Anita was growing disturbed that he would not tell her where the money came from. They had found fresh lodgings in a really respectable Bloomsbury street; they had both bought clothes, and little Netta had been rigged out. Delane had magnificently compounded with his most pressing creditors, and had taken Anita to a theatre. But he had been discontented with her appearance there. She had really lost all her good looks. If it hadn't been for the kid--