Then the situation developed even more oddly, for Mr. Darnley would hardly let the boy out of his sight. He must be always at his side, always putting up with what clearly failed to interest him, in the persistent hope that as the delay grew longer and more wearisome, so the reappearance of the one interesting topic must be coming nearer and growing surer. He clung to Ivor’s company, although it plainly had no intrinsic value for him, anxious not to lose a moment of it, for fear the moment of true speech should come and pass without his knowledge. Ivor, sweet-natured as he was, showed his resentment at the topsy-turvy situation by talking persistently of things that concerned himself, his daily life, or his employer’s. And it was even amusing, had it not been rather humiliating, to notice how Mr. Darnley chafed beneath the interminable ordeal, yet would not lose an instant of it, lest in that instant the thing he was looking for so passionately should poke its head up and vanish again unnoticed. But Ivor, for sheer pride, would indulge him but seldom. Besides, it happened that the one thing which Kingston wished to hear was also, naturally enough, the one thing that Ivor least wished to tell. For the boy was acutely ashamed of those idiotic instincts of terror with which his premature birth had left him. The one thing worse than those terrors themselves was the humiliation of acknowledging them. So he was doubly reluctant to gratify the morbid curiosity of the older man. Kingston, in fact, was paying very heavily for the indulgence of his long desire. The situation, to him, was one persistent agony of expectation, always straining, always being disappointed. Now at last he understood the punishment that he had earned. For, by his own wish, he was doomed to call, and call for ever, to something that could never hear. The dead was free, but the living was still bound, was more tightly bound than ever in that bond of desire which is at once the pet pleasure and the dreadful agony of all who enter it. And a dreary agony it was; Isabel was there, within his reach almost, but for ever beyond his reach. No cry could rouse her, no appeal restore her personality to life. And yet, mysteriously but certainly, she was there once more; once more clothed in flesh, once more gazing out of human eyes and speaking with a human voice. Nevertheless, for all the good he could have of his prayer’s gratification, she might still have been dead bones and dust of the earth. For she could not hear him, could not recognise him, and the irony of her deaf, blind presence at his side was a torment far more keen than all the long years of her absence. He ravened and battered against the iron wall of her unconsciousness, and for ever was beaten back, sickened, bruised and bleeding from the violence--the eternally fruitless violence--of his effort to stir her recollection. Her memory slept for ever in the dead past; only the