at them: as though the silence of the place had gradually
benumbed their busy inquisitive natures. And this strange
passivity, this almost human lassitude, seemed to me sadder than
the misery of starved and beaten animals. I should have liked to
rouse them for a minute, to coax them into a game or a scamper;
but the longer I looked into their fixed and weary eyes the more
preposterous the idea became. With the windows of that house
looking down on us, how could I have imagined such a thing? The
dogs knew better: THEY knew what the house would tolerate and
what it would not. I even fancied that they knew what was
passing through my mind, and pitied me for my frivolity. But
even that feeling probably reached them through a thick fog of
listlessness. I had an idea that their distance from me was as
nothing to my remoteness from them. In the last analysis, the
impression they produced was that of having in common one memory
so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth
either a growl or a wag.

"I say," I broke out abruptly, addressing myself to the dumb
circle, "do you know what you look like, the whole lot of you?
You look as if you'd seen a ghost--that's how you look! I wonder
if there IS a ghost here, and nobody but you left for it to
appear to?" The dogs continued to gaze at me without moving. . .


It was dark when I saw Lanrivain's motor lamps at the cross-
roads--and I wasn't exactly sorry to see them. I had the sense
of having escaped from the loneliest place in the whole world,
and of not liking loneliness--to that degree--as much as I had
imagined I should. My friend had brought his solicitor back from