Ann heard his voice and came down to him. They walked up the mews. Rita was in a delirium. She kept reproaching Joe over and over again for not buying a fire-screen he had promised her. And then she seemed to be living over again in some scene of jealousy. Joe must not come near her. It might not be safe. René told her his news. Ann said: "She guessed that. It's that's broken her up so. She thinks she isn't a respectable woman any longer. I don't know that it wouldn't be best to let him be taken." "But doesn't that mean that he's done for? You know better than I." "You don't get much of a chance." "Then we'll do what we can. Tell the policeman he isn't sleeping here to-night." "All right. All right. I don't think I'll be back till the morning, and then I'll have to go to work. So good night, Renny, dear. It is good of you." They parted. He heard her tell the policeman how things were in the house, and that Joe would not be sleeping there that night, but at his mother's off the Fulham Road. The policeman asked for the address, and she gave it him pat, and after a moment or two he rolled away. René gave him three minutes, then returned to Joe and told him what had happened, gave him a shilling for a doss, and asked him to meet him in the morning at the cab-rank in Lancaster Gate. "If I pay your passage to Canada, will you go? You can get a start out there and have your family out after you. We'll look after them." "Will I go?" cried Joe. "I've had enough of this 'ere blasted country. Will I go? D'you know that's been in my mind ever since that there joy ride. I says to myself, I says, moving's that easy. You been stuck still, Joe, my buck, that's what's been the matter with you." René kept _cave_ while the poor devil slunk out of the mews, and then followed him, saw him mount a bus and be borne away eastward, standing up and waving his hand as long as he was in sight. His passing left René stranded. He had been caught up in the eddy of that little drama, and then flung back into his solitude, and, though he was cheered by his activity, he was also depressed by the horrid grubbiness of the life that had been revealed to him; nothing in the world for Joe but the procuring of food, the bare satisfaction of desire; an amused fondness for his children. That horrible capacity for happiness in degradation. He stood below the lighted window of Rita's room. A moaning came out of it. A thin voice almost screaming: "Oh, don't, Joe, don't!" There were appalling silences. Then whisperings. A long silence that chilled him to the heart. At length the cry of the new-born child, a cry of pain. Then again silence, broken only by the sound of water and the clink of metal against crockery. In that moment René became almost unbearably alive to the suffering of the woman, and to all suffering, and to his own. IX TALK For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.