He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into the breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and self-conscious schoolboy. At last he began: ‘MY DEAR SHEILA,—I must tell you, to begin with, that the _change_ has now all passed away. I am—as near as man can be—completely myself again. And next: that I overheard all that was said to-night in the dining-room. ‘I’m sorry for listening; but it’s no good going over all that now. Here I am, and, as you said, for Alice’s sake we must make the best of it. I am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a chance to quiet down. I suppose every one comes sooner or later to a time in life when there is nothing else to be done but just shut one’s eyes and blunder on. And that’s all I can do now—blunder on....’ He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a revulsion of feeling—shame and hatred of himself surged up, and he tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, ‘my dear Sheila,’ dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He would write to Grisel another day. He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his eyelids. And clearer than those which myriad-hued reality can ever present, pictures of the imagination swam up before his eyes. It seemed, indeed, that even now some ghost, some revenant of himself was sitting there, in the old green churchyard, roofed only with a thousand thousand stars. The breath of darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little scampering shape slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly, over the globe. He shuddered faintly, and looked out again into the small lamplit room. Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly was walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait of one that has outlived his hour and most of his companions. Mice were scampering and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all about him, in the viewless air, the phantoms of another life passed by, unmindful of his motionless body. He fell into a lethargy of the senses, and only gradually became aware after a while of the strange long-drawn sigh of rain at the window. He rose and opened it. The night air flowed in, chilled with its waters and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed away all thought for a while. He turned back to his chair. He would wait until the rain had lulled before starting....