year he made a "retreat," which he needed after the labours of the year,
labours which obliged him to be perpetually with people. He fished in
the green lake, sketched in the lovely garden of the almost deserted
hotel, and passed every day some hours in scientific study.

This summer he was reading about the effects of certain little-known
poisons. He spent strange hours with them. He had much imagination, and
they became to him like living things, these agents of destruction.
Sometimes, after long periods passed with them, he would raise his head
from his books, or the paper on which he was taking notes, and, seeing
the still green waters of the lake, the tall and delicate green
mountains lifting their spires into the blue, he would return from his
journey along the ways of terror, and, dazed, like a tired traveller, he
would stare at the face of beauty. Or when he worked by night, after
hours during which the swift action of the brain had rendered him deaf
to the sounds without, suddenly he would become aware of the chime of
bells, of bells in the quiet waters and on the dreaming shores. And he
would lift his head and listen, till the strangeness of night, and of
the world with its frightful crimes and soft enchantments, stirred and
enthralled his soul. And he compared his two lives, this by the quiet
lake, alone, filled with research and dreams, and that in the roar of
London, with people streaming through his room. And he seemed to himself
two men, perhaps more than two.

Soon the four weeks by the lake were gone. Then followed two weeks of
travel--Milan, Munich, Berlin, Paris. And then he was home again.

He had heard nothing of Nigel, nothing of Mrs. Chepstow.

September died away in the brown arms of October, and at last a letter