“Oh, touch of liver,” I said. “I shouldn’t drink that if I were you. Give it me instead.” “I was never better in my life,” he said. I was opening letters, as we talked, and came across one from the house agent, which, with trembling eagerness I read. “Hurrah,” I cried, “offer of five guᵃˢ--why can’t he write it in proper English--five guineas a week till Easter for number 31. We shall roll in guineas!” “Oh, but I can’t stop here till Easter,” he said. “I don’t see why not. Nor by the way does Daisy. I heard from her this morning, and she told me to persuade you to stop. That’s to say, if you like. It really is more cheerful for you here. I forgot, you were telling me something.” The glorious news about the weekly guineas did not cheer him up in the least. “Thanks awfully. Of course I’ll stop.” He moved up and down the room once or twice. “No, it’s not me that is wrong,” he said, “it’s It, whatever It is. The terror by night.” “Which you are commanded not to be afraid of,” I remarked. “I know: it’s easy commanding. I’m frightened: something’s coming.” “Five guineas a week are coming,” I said. “I shan’t sit up and be infected by your fears. All that matters, Davos, is going as well as it can. What was the last report? Incredibly better. Take that to bed with you.” The infection--if infection it was--did not take hold of me then, for I remember going to sleep feeling quite cheerful, but I awoke in some dark still hour and It, the terror by night, had come while I slept. Fear and misgiving, blind, unreasonable, and paralysing, had taken and gripped me. What was it? Just as by an aneroid we can foretell the approach of storm, so by this sinking of the spirit, unlike anything I had ever felt before, I felt sure that disaster of some sort was presaged. Jack saw it at once when we met at breakfast next morning, in the brown haggard light of a foggy day, not dark enough for candles, but dismal beyond all telling. “So it has come to you too,” he said. And I had not even the fighting-power left to tell him that I was merely slightly unwell. Besides, never in my life had I felt better.