looking-glass. Then an inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A
warm surge, like the onset of a wave, broke in him, flooding
neck, face, forehead, even his hands with colour. He caught
himself up and wheeled deliberately and completely round, his eyes
darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves in a prolonged stare,
while he took a deep breath, caught back his self-possession and
paused. Then he turned and once more confronted the changed
strange face in the glass.

Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was,
frigid and appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this,
with a kind of incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing
echoes and images like straws and bubbles on its surface, could
not be called thinking. Some stealthy hand had thrust open the
sluice of memory. And words, voices, faces of mockery streamed
through without connection, tendency, or sense. His hands hung
between his knees, a deep and settled frown darkened the features
stooping out of the direct rays of the light, and his eyes
wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over the
floor.

If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly
recurred at all, it was the memory of Sheila. He saw her face,
lit, transfigured, distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His
lids narrowed; a vague terror and horror mastered him. He hid his
eyes in his hands and cried without sound, without tears, without
hope, like a desolate child. He ceased crying; and sat without
stirring. And it seemed after an age of vacancy and
meaninglessness he heard a door shut downstairs, a distant voice,
and then the rustle of some one slowly ascending the stairs. Some