He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it. Not the echo of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his mind. He knew vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the last few days was gone. But the thought had no power to move him now. Sheila’s good sense, and Mr Bethany’s stubborn loyalty were alike old stories that had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that portentous family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy during these last few days around his dining-room table, discussing with futile decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him down. Half dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly open and, like the timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before the stricken and astonished company. His eyes opened half-fearfully, and glanced up in the morning twilight. Their perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands twitched awhile in sleep. Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the unfamiliar long S’s, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched, or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, or else was only the meaningless ramblings of an idle pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the spruce clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called Life. ‘Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?’ he asked at last, taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room. ‘Bless me, no; not a bit—not a bit,’ said Herbert amiably, laying down his pen. ‘I’m afraid the old leatherjackets have been boring you. It’s a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at second-hand—purely a bad habit, like morphia, like laudanum. But once in, you know there’s no recovery. Anyhow, I’m neck-deep, and to struggle would be simply to drown.’ ‘I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier at home.’ ‘My dear fellow—’ began Herbert reassuringly. ‘It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I get muddled up with other things groping through the dictionary.’ Herbert surveyed him critically. ‘What exactly is your interest now, Lawford? You don’t mean that my old “theory” has left any sting now?’ ‘No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still think it really, don’t you?’ Herbert turned for a moment to the open window.