“It is very kind of you to come with me,” she said suddenly, seriously. We were very still on that landing, and I drew back my arm where it touched her cloak. It was very soft, that cloak. “I have thought of you, and decided that if you ever thought of me you had a right to think with dislike....” She was talking smoothly, calmly, when suddenly her voice completely broke, into little bits. “Oh!” she whispered. I was silent. She said quickly: “To me there’s something terribly indecent about humanity, all humanity. It’s as though, in the whole lovely universe, humanity was cooped in this musty little house, talking vaguely of dislike, eternally talking of like and dislike, love and unlove, of doings and undoings, purposeless yet striving and savage. The other night I was motoring alone from Paris to Calais, and it seemed to me that no law was strong enough, no crime was big enough, not even disloyalty, to stop us, when we had the chance of rising above the beastly limitation of living as we were born to live. Because we humans are not born to live, we are born to die....” “Something has happened to you to-night,” I said. She was a faint white shape in the darkness, and it seemed to me that that was as much of her as I should ever see; and I was right. “No, nothing at all. Just a dream. But, oh, failing the dream, how I would like a child!” “A dream-child!” “Ah, I’ve had those, a many! No, a real one. To be playmates with....” I said: “I will go up first to-night and see how Gerald is. Will you wait here?” “I’m tired and frightened,” she said faintly. “Don’t be long.” I don’t think I stayed up there more than a few seconds. I don’t know. I switched out the light, and as I went down the dark narrow stairs I did not strike a match. “Well?” she whispered from the darkness. I don’t know what I said. I suppose I must have said that he was in the same state as when she had seen him before. Then I pretended I had no matches left, and said I had better go down first while she held on to my shoulder. “Then if you fall, I’ll fall,” she complained, but I said I would not fall. Stair by stair we slowly descended in the darkness. I wanted particularly to see Guy. There were certain things to be done, I supposed. My mind was vacant as a plate on which was drawn a confused picture that would, on looking closely, mean something horrible. There had been a stain on the wall, a great jagged dripping stain, and bits of hair sticking to it. “Oh, God, this drink!” she said frantically; then almost sobbed: “What’s that!” But it was only the telephone-bell from the hall downstairs, queerly strident and unrestrained in that still, musty little house. Brrr! Brrr! Brrr!... “I never knew a telephone could be so shrill! Will it be some one for Gerald?” “It will ring for ever if I don’t answer it,” I said, opening the door into the lane. “I’ll follow you to the car.” I hoped it was Guy ringing up on the chance of catching us.