Safe! The word wrote itself in the cracks of the dingy ceiling, in the pattern of the grimy wall-paper, in the ashes of the dead fire, in the scrolls of iron-work upon the range, in the patchwork hearthrug, in the knots and lines of the kitchen table. Safe! The word acquired such a force and power of its own that Edward almost worshiped it by repeating aloud the mere sound of it in apostrophe after apostrophe of awful contemplation. Safe! He clutched at the S as he would have clutched at a rope to drag himself up from the abyss below. He climbed up the A, up the F, up the E to stand on the high ground above with Elizabeth clasped in his arms ... with her ... with his darling ... safe.... Edward fell asleep. At four o'clock Mrs. Gallagher came down to tell him that things were going on as well as could be expected upstairs, recommending him to be off and lie down on his bed like a Christian. The only place where Edward wanted to lie down was on the landing outside the door of Elizabeth's room; but there was still enough left of the younger son of Sir Richard Flower to keep him from making such a proposal to the landlady. It was like Edward to insist on staying in the kitchen. There was about it the kind of ineffective Quixotry to which he had been addicted all his life. At seven Dr. Harrison came in and made him comparatively happy by asking him to go round to his house, wait for the postal delivery, and bring back any package that might by good luck be left. The doctor wanted to add that Edward would do well to ask his servant to give him some breakfast, there being little likelihood of his eating any breakfast in Pomona Terrace. On second thoughts, he did not think the suggestion worth making. He felt too much fatigued by his own all-night vigil to argue with an unbalanced fool like this husband. Such was the young doctor's mood on this drear January morning. Edward hurried through the wet twilight, pale, unshaven, his hair and whiskers unkempt, his collar dirty, his clothes frowsy from the kitchen where he had spent the night. At such an hour Manning Crescent looked more dilapidated than on the night before, and the broken slat in the Venetian blinds of the drunken doctor next door gave the last touch of raffish squalor to the row of houses. No sooner was Edward seated in the doctor's neat consulting-room than he fell into a despair, because he had not seen Elizabeth before he came out. Suppose she were dead when he arrived back? He could hardly stay in the room; the smell of disinfectants here was stifling him with an aroma of death. It was only by clutching the arms of the chair covered with red rep and dinning into his brain the need to wait for that blessed instrument which was so anxiously awaited by the doctor that he was able not to desert his post. He rang for the maid to ask when the parcel delivery might be expected, and upon her telling him "ten o'clock at the earliest" he groaned aloud.