She gazed at him steadily; and a hard, incredulous, almost cunning glint came into her wide blue eyes. She took up the key carelessly, glanced at it; glanced at him. ‘It has made me—I mean the first shock, you know—it has made me a little faint.’ She walked slowly, deliberately to the door, and unlocked it. ‘I’ll get a little sal volatile.’ She softly drew out the key, and without once removing her eyes from his face, opened the door and pushed the key noiselessly in on the other side. ‘Please stay there; I won’t be a minute.’ Lawford’s face smiled—a rather desperate, yet for all that a patient, resolute smile. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ he said, almost to himself, ‘I had not foreseen—at least—you must do precisely what you please, Sheila. You were going to lock me in. You will, however, before taking any final step, please think over what it will entail. I did not think you would, after such proof, in this awful trouble—I did not think you would simply disbelieve me, Sheila. Who else is there to help me? You have the letter in your hand. Isn’t that sufficient proof? It was overwhelming proof to me. And even I doubted too; doubted myself. But never mind; why I should have dreamed you would believe me; or taken this awful thing differently, I don’t know. It’s rather awful to have to go on alone. But there, think it over. I shall not stir until I hear the voices. And then: honestly, Sheila, I couldn’t face quite that. I’d sooner give up altogether. Any proof you can think of—I will... O God, I cannot bear it!’ He covered his face with his hands; but in a moment looked up, unmoved once more. ‘Why, for that matter,’ he added slowly, and, as it were, with infinite pains, a faint thin smile again stealing into his face, ‘I think,’ he turned wearily to the glass, ‘I think, it’s almost an improvement!’ Something deep in those dark clear pupils, out of that lean adventurous face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a heliograph, as it were, height to height, flashing ‘Courage!’ He shuddered, and shut his eyes. ‘But I would really rather,’ he added in a quiet childlike way, ‘I would really rather, Sheila, you left me alone now.’ His wife stood irresolute. ‘I understand you to explain,’ she said, ‘that you went out of this house, just your usual self, this afternoon, for a walk; that for some reason you went to Widderstone—“to read the tombstones,” that you had a heart attack, or, as you said at first, a fit, that you fell into a stupor, and came home like—like this. Am I likely to believe all that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that? Whoever you are, whoever you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I thought that at first.’ She paused, but no answer came. ‘Well, I suppose in a civilised country there is a remedy even for a joke as wicked as that.’