end, and by midnight suspense would be over.

The fog still hung over the city; but towards sunset it lifted a
little, and he raised his heavy head from his breast as he lay,
half sitting, half lying, on the tumbled sofa and blankets on
which he had slept, to see the red sunlight on the wall above
him. It was a curious room to a man who had grown accustomed to
modern ways; there was a faded carpet on the floor, paper on the
walls, and the old-fashioned electric globes hung, each on its
wire, from the whitewashed ceiling. He saw that it must be a
survival, or perhaps a deliberate archaicism. . . .

The sunlight crept slowly up the wall. . . .

Then the door was unlocked from the outside, and he turned his
head, to see James Hardy come smiling towards him.



(II)

"Good evening, Monsignor. I am ashamed that I have not paid you a
visit before. But we have been very busy these days."

He sat down without offering to shake hands.

The priest saw, with one of those sudden inexplicable intuitions
more certain than any acquired knowledge, two things: first,
that his having been left alone for three days had been by
deliberation and not carelessness; and second, that this visit