‘Nothing could be better,’ said Dr Simon; and Lawford, to his inexpressible relief, heard the fevered throbbing of the doctor’s car reverse, and turned over and shut his eyes, dulled and exhausted in the still unfriendliness of the vacant room. His spirits had sunk, he thought, to their lowest ebb. He scarcely heeded the fragments of dreams—clear, green landscapes, amazing gleams of peace, the sudden broken voices, the rustling and calling shadowiness of subconsciousness—in this quiet sunlight of reality. The clouds had broken, or had been withdrawn like a veil from the October skies. One thought alone was his refuge; one face alone haunted him with its peace; one remembrance soothed him—Alice. Through all his scattered and purposeless arguments he strove to remember her voice, the loving-kindness of her eyes, her untroubled confidence. In the afternoon he got up and dressed himself. He could not bring himself to stand before the glass and deliberately shave. He even smiled at the thought of playing the barber to that lean chin. He dressed by the fireplace. ‘I couldn’t rest,’ he told Sheila, when she presently came in on one of her quiet, cautious, heedful visits; ‘and one tires of reading even Quain in bed.’ ‘Have you found anything?’ she inquired politely. ‘Oh yes,’ said Lawford wearily; ‘I have discovered that infinitely worse things are infinitely commoner. But that there’s nothing quite so picturesque.’ ‘Tell me,’ said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. ‘How does it feel? does it even in the slightest degree affect your mind?’ He turned his back and looked up at his broad gilt portrait for inspiration. ‘Practically, not at all,’ he said hollowly. ‘Of course, one’s nerves—that fellow Danton—when one’s overtired. You have’—his voice, in spite of every effort, faintly quavered—‘_you_ haven’t noticed anything? My mind?’ ‘Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think me unsympathetic—but don’t you think we must sooner or later be thinking of what’s to be done? At present, though I fully agree with Mr Bethany as to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business up as long as possible, at least from the gossiping outside world, still we are only standing still. And your malady, dear, I suppose, isn’t. You _will_ help me, Arthur? You will try and think? Poor Alice!’ ‘What about Alice?’ ‘She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand why she must not see her father, and yet his not being, or, for the matter of that, even if he was, at death’s door.’