After a few minutes the engine was throbbing again, and they had begun the descent. But no device could conjure away the ruthless night air. Back at the hotel Felix took brandy and hot water, accepted Lilian’s hot water bag in addition to his own, and was in bed and thickly enveloped in no time at all. Lilian kissed him guiltily and left him. He bade her good night kindly but absently, engrossed in himself. VI The Benefactress When Lilian was alone in her room she thought anxiously: "Supposing he should want more brandy in the night--there is none!" The travelling flask was now empty. (In the emergency, hot water from the lavatory-basin tap had been used to dilute the brandy. Felix having said impatiently that any water would do so long as it was hot--hang a few germs!) She had noticed that he would always take a little brandy if he felt unwell from whatever cause, and this habit caused her no uneasiness, for from her father she had acquired a firm belief in the restorative qualities of brandy; even her mother would say how unwise it was to "be without" brandy, and before starting for the annual domestic holiday invariably attended herself to the provision of it. The lack of brandy settled upon Lilian’s mind, intensifying somehow her sense of guilt. She felt deeply the responsibilities of the situation, which became graver and graver to her--the more so as she had no real status to deal with it. She wanted to ring the bell, but the bell was within a few yards of Felix’s door--he often complained on this score--and to ring might be to wake him. Cautiously she stepped into the corridor, hoping to find Jacqueline in the service-room at the end of the shabby little side corridor where the bell and the room-indicator were. She knew the French for brandy. The main corridor stretched away with an effect of endlessness. In its whole length only two electric lights had been left to burn. Solitude and silence made it mysteriously solemn. A pair of boots, or two pairs of boots--one large, one small and dainty--here and there on a door-mat seemed inexplicably to symbolize the forlornness of humanity in the sight of the infinite. The beating of Lilian’s heart attracted her attention. Not without an effort could she cross the magic and formidable corridor. The door of the service-room was locked. No hope! Even Jacqueline had a bed somewhere and was asleep in it; and brandy was as unattainable as on a coral island.