“Wouldn’t daytime be better, Lazaroff?” I suggested, and I did not know what was the cause of the vaguely felt distrust that prompted my words. Certainly I had no fears of any sort, or reason for any. Yet, looking at Lazaroff’s face, now flushed and somehow sinister, I remembered Sir Spofforth’s words again. “Let us go tonight,” said Esther, and it seemed to me that there was a note of penitence in her voice, as if she wished to make Lazaroff amends. She came slowly across the room toward us. She looked at Lazaroff—I thought remorsefully, and at me with an expression of understanding that I never had seen in her eyes before. My heart leaped up to meet that message. But that was the instant signal-flash of souls, and the next moment I detected in her glance the same sense of foreboding that mine must have shown her. It is strange how instantaneously such complexities present themselves with convincing power. Though the knowledge lay latent in my mind, I am sure now I was aware that I should never set eyes upon Sir Spofforth, in life or death, again. He rose up slowly. “Don’t be long, my dear,” he said to Esther. “I shall not wait up for you. Good night, Herman. Good night, Arnold.” He passed the door and began to ascend the stairs. He turned. “Arnold!” he began. “No, never mind. I will tell you tomorrow.” He never told me. He was gone, and we three went downstairs, out of the house, and crossed the garden toward the Institute, whose squat form blocked the view of the road. Croydon, in the distance, hummed like a huge dynamo. The Bear dipped slantingly above; the wind was shaking down the fading petals of the rambler roses. I remember the picture more vividly than I perceived it then; the intense darkness, the white lights of the distant town, the yellow lamp glow on the short grass, cut off squarely by the window-sash and trisected by the window-bars. Lazaroff led the way, walking a little distance in front of us, toward the annex, a building just completed, in which was the new freezing-plant, with our few guinea-pigs, and the monkeys that had been bought recently, out of our own money, for the great experiment. He drew a key from his pocket and began fumbling with the lock. Esther stopped in the shadows at my side. “He asked me to marry him,” she said. “I told him never—never! That was the word I used. I used to think that I could care for him, Arnold, but in that instant I knew—yes, I knew my heart.” I knew mine too, and I took her in my arms in the shadow of the Institute. She lifted her mouth to mine. All the while Lazaroff was fumbling with the lock. Yet I am sure he was aware, by virtue of that intuition which tells us all vital things. When he had opened the door he turned a switch, and the interior leaped into view round twenty points of light that pierced the shadows.