He had lifted the pistol, pausing for a moment in an uncertainty as to whether head or heart were the surer exit, when a quiet step at the door arrested him. “Shall I bring the lamps, sir?” asked Howson’s quiet voice. Gavan could but admire his own deftness in tossing a newspaper over the pistol. He found himself perfectly prepared to keep up the last appearances. He said that he didn’t want the lamps yet and that Howson could leave the curtains undrawn. “It’s sultry this evening,” he added. “It is, sir; I expect we’ll have thunder in the night,” said Howson, whose voice partook of the day’s decorous gloom. He had brought in the evening mail and laid the letters and newspapers beside Gavan, slightly pushing aside the covered pistol to make room for them, an action that Gavan observed with some intentness. But Howson saw nothing. Left alone again, Gavan, not moving in his chair, glanced at the letters and papers neatly piled beside his elbow. After the rending agony of that moment of hideous realization, when, in every fiber, he had felt his own woeful humanity, an odd sleepiness almost overcame him. He felt much more like going to sleep than killing himself, and, yawning, stretching, he shivered a little from sheer fatigue. The edge of the newspaper that covered the pistol was weighted down by the pile of papers, and in putting out his hand for it, automatically, he pushed the letters aside, then, yawning again, picked them up instead of the pistol. He glanced over the envelops, not opening them,--the last hand at cards, that could hold no trumps for him. It was with as mechanical an interest as that of the condemned criminal who, on the way to the scaffold, turns his head to look at some unfamiliar sight. But at the last letter he paused. The post-mark was Scotch; the writing was Eppie’s. He might have considered at that moment that the shock he felt was a warning that life was by no means done with him, and that his way of safety lay in swift retreat. But after the wrench of agony and the succeeding sliding languor, he did not consider anything. It was like a purely physical sensation, what he felt, as he held the letter and looked at Eppie’s writing. Soft, recurrent thrills went through him, as though a living, vibrating thing were in his hands. Eppie; Kirklands; the heather under a summer sky. Was it desire, or a will-less drifting with a new current that the new vision brought? He could not have told. He opened the letter and read Eppie’s matter-of-fact yet delicate sympathy. He must be worn out. She begged him to remember his promise and to come to them at once. At once, thought Gavan. It must be that, indeed, or not at all. He glanced at the clock. He could really go at once. He could catch the London train, the night express for Scotland, and he could be at Kirklands at noon next day. He rose and rang the bell, looking out at the darker pink of the sky, where the rooks no longer wheeled, until Howson appeared.