ordinary belief. Reality and hallucination, jostled one another in his
thought, a giant note of interrogation written against each. For which
was the true and which the false? Of necessity he distrusted the evidence
of his own senses, finding sight and hearing in direct conflict thus.

The two or three minutes that followed were among the most profoundly
disagreeable Tom ever had spent. But at last, a door opened below,
letting forth a shaft of mellow lamp-light. It touched the flower-beds on
the left edging the lawn, giving the geraniums form and colour, laying
down a delicate carpet of green, transmuting black into glowing scarlet.
Tall and spare in his grey and white sleeping-suit, Sir Charles Verity
sauntered out, and stood, smoking, looking out to sea.

Earlier that night, downstairs in the sitting-room, he seemed a storm
centre, generating much perplexity and disquiet. But now Tom welcomed his
advent with a sense of almost absurd satisfaction. To see what was
solidly, incontrovertibly, human could not but be, in itself, a mighty
relief.--Things began to swing into their natural relation, man, living
man, the centre, the dominant factor once more. He, Tom, could now shift
all responsibility, moreover. If the master of the house was on guard,
he might wash his hands of these hateful ghostly goings on--if ghostly
they were--leaving the whole matter to one far stronger and more
competent than himself.

Whereupon he went back to bed; and slept profoundly, royally, until
Hordle the man-servant, moving about the bright chintz bedecked room,
preparing his bath and laying out his clothes, awoke him to the sweetness
of another summer day.