“Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable.” He slurred awkwardly over the difficult syllables. “Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd come in.” Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind. She seemed to have been through all this before. Then she remembered. This was simply Mr. Reginald Cracknell over again. “I think you had better go to bed, Gerald,” she said steadily. Nothing about him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor his shameless misery. “What's the use? Can't sleep. No good. Couldn't sleep. Sally, you don't know how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been.” Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was about to develop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment of herself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizing with tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemed that it was not this that was weighing upon his soul. “I was a fool ever to try writing plays,” he went on. “Got a winner first time, but can't repeat. It's no good. Ought to have stuck to newspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Had another frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go back to the old grind, damn it.” He wept softly, full of pity for his hard case. “Very miserable,” he murmured. He came forward a step into the room, lurched, and retreated to the safe support of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm was shot through by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was back again in her armour of indifference. “Go to bed, Gerald,” she said. “You'll feel better in the morning.” Perhaps some inkling of how he was going to feel in the morning worked through to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his manner took on a deeper melancholy. “May not be alive in the morning,” he said solemnly. “Good mind to end it all. End it all!” he repeated with the beginning of a sweeping gesture which was cut off abruptly as he clutched at the friendly door. Sally was not in the mood for melodrama. “Oh, go to bed,” she said impatiently. The strange frozen indifference which had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place a growing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degrading himself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in the man. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed his personality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation she felt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change had come over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing in distress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourning over the prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal to her--a fact which the sufferer noted and commented upon. “You're very unsymp... unsympathetic,” he complained.