Then, as sometimes happens in moments of great anguish, Stephen could only remember the grotesque. She could only remember a plump-bosomed housemaid in the arms of a coarsely amorous footman, and she laughed and she laughed like a creature demented—laughed and laughed until she must gasp for breath and spit blood from her tongue, which had somehow got bitten in her efforts to stop her hysterical laughing; and some of the blood remained on her chin, jerked there by that agonized laughter. Pale as death, Roger Antrim stared out into the garden, and his tiny moustache looked quite black—like an ink stain smeared above his tremulous mouth by some careless, schoolboy finger. And now Angela’s voice came to Stephen, but faintly. She was saying something—what was she saying? It sounded absurdly as though it were a prayer—‘Christ!’ Then sharply—razor-sharp it sounded as it cut through the air: ‘_You_, Stephen!’ The laughter died abruptly away, as Stephen turned and walked out of the garden and down the short drive that led to the gates of The Grange, where the motor was waiting. Her face was a mask, quite without expression. She moved stiffly, yet with a curious precision; and she swung up the handle and started the powerful engine without any apparent effort. She drove at great speed but with accurate judgment, for now her mind felt as clear as spring water, and yet there were strange little gaps in her mind—she had not the least idea where she was going. Every road for miles around Upton was familiar, yet she had not the least idea where she was going. Nor did she know how long she drove, nor when she stopped to procure fresh petrol. The sun rose high and hot in the heavens; it beat down on her without warming her coldness, for always she had the sense of a dead thing that lay close against her heart and oppressed it. A corpse—she was carrying a corpse about with her. Was it the corpse of her love for Angela? If so that love was more terrible dead—oh, far more terrible dead than living. The first stars were shining, but as yet very faintly, when she found herself driving through the gates of Morton. Heard Puddle’s voice calling: ‘Wait a minute. Stop, Stephen!’ Saw Puddle barring her way in the drive, a tiny yet dauntless figure. She pulled up with a jerk: ‘What’s the matter? What is it?’ ‘Where have you been?’ ‘I—don’t know, Puddle.’ But Puddle had clambered in beside her: ‘Listen, Stephen,’ and now she was talking very fast, ‘listen, Stephen—is it—is it Angela Crossby? It is. I can see the thing in your face. My God, what’s that woman done to you, Stephen?’