He gazed into the empty fireplace before which he was sitting in a huge chair of green leather. The remembered words had struck some chords of memory. He frowned and puzzled over it in his drowsy numbed state, and then it came to him suddenly. Of course! The barmaid at Wordingham, Molly what's-her-name whom all the local bloods were after, had said just the same thing about Ingworth. Little fools! They were all alike, fluffy little duffers. . . . He looked up at the clock. It was twenty minutes to one. He had to meet Rita at the library as the hour struck. He started. The door leading into the outside world shut with a clang. His chains fell into their place once more upon the limbs of his body and soul. He called a waiter, gulped down another peg, and got into a cab for the Podley Institute. The pleasant numbness had gone from him now. Once more he was upon the rack. What he saw with his mental vision was as the wild phantasmagoria of a dream . . . a dark room in which a magic lantern is being worked, and fantastic, unexpected pictures flit across the screen. Pictures as disconnected as a pack of cards. Rita was waiting upon the steps of the Institute. She wore a simple coat and skirt of dark brown tweed with a green line in it. Her face was pale. Her eyes were without sparkle--she also was exhausted by pleasure, come to the end of the Arabian Nights. She got into the taxi-cab which was trembling with the power of the unemployed engines below it. Tzim, tzim, tzim! "Where shall we go, Gilbert?" she said, in a languid, uninterested voice. He answered her in tones more cold and bloodless than her own. "I don't know, Rita, and I don't care. Ce que vous voulez, Mademoiselle des livres sans reproche!" She turned her white face on him for a moment, almost savage with impotent petulance. Then she thrust her head out of the window and coiled round to the waiting driver. "Go to Madame Tussaud's," she cried. Tzim, tzim, bang-bang-bang, and then a long melancholy drone as the rows of houses slid backwards. Gilbert turned on her. "Why did you say that?" he asked bitterly. "What difference _does_ it make?" she replied. "You didn't seem to care where we went for this last hour or two. I said the first thing that came into my mind. I suppose we can get lunch at Madame Tussaud's. I've never been there before. At any rate, I expect they can manage a sponge cake for us. I don't want anything more." --"Yes, it's better for us both. It's a relief to me to think that the end has come. No, Rita dear, I don't want your hand. Let us make an end now--a diminuendo. It must be. Let it be. You've said it often yourself." She bit her lips for a second. Then her eyes flashed. She put her arms round his neck and drew him to her. "You shan't!" she said. "You shan't glide away from me like this." Every nerve in his body began to tremble. His skin pricked and grew hot. "What will you give?" he asked in a muffled voice.