Hollyer, rigid, pouring out sweat, still stared at the place where it had stood. His heart-beats came together in a running tremor: it was as if all the blood in his body was gathered into his distended heart, dragging it down to meet his heaving belly. Then he turned and went headlong towards the door, stumbling and lurching. He threw out his hands to clutch at a support and found himself in Effie’s arms. “Wilfrid—darling—what is it?” “Nothing. I’m giddy. I—I think I’m going to be sick.” He broke from her and dragged himself upstairs and shut himself into his study. That night his old single bed was brought back and made up there. He was afraid to sleep in the room that had been his mother’s. V He had run through all the physical sensations of his terror. What he felt now was the sharp, abominable torture of the mind. If the dead knew— The dead _did_ know. She had come back to tell him that she knew. She knew that he thought of her with unkindness. She had been there when he talked about her to Effie. She knew the thought he had hidden even from himself. She knew that she had died because, secretly, he had wished her dead. That was the meaning of her look and of her tears. No fleshly eyes could have expressed such an intensity of suffering, of unfathomable grief. He thought: the pain of a discarnate spirit might be infinitely sharper than any earthly pain. It might be inexhaustible. Who was to say that it was not? Yet could it—could even an immortal suffering—be sharper than the anguish he felt now? If only he had known what he was doing to her— If he had known. If he had known— But, he thought, we know nothing, and we care less. We say we believe in immortality, but we do not believe in it. We treat the dead as if they _were_ dead, as if they were not there. If he had really believed that she was there, he would have died rather than say the things he had said to Effie. Nobody, he told himself, could have accused him of unkindness to his mother while she lived. He had really loved her up to the moment, the moment of supreme temptation, when he wanted Effie. He had not willed her to die. He had been barely conscious of his wish. How, then, could he be held accountable? How could he have destroyed the thing whose essence was the hidden, unknown darkness? Yet, if men are accountable at all, he was accountable. There had been a moment when he was conscious of it. He could have destroyed it then. He should have faced it; he should have dragged it out into the light and fought it. Instead, he had let it sink back into its darkness, to work there unseen. And if he had really loved his mother, he would have wished, not willed her to live. He would have wanted her as he wanted her now.