'Tell me,' said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it
feel? does it even in the slightest degree affect your mind?'

He turned his back and looked up at his broad gilt portrait for
inspiration. 'Practically, not at all,' he said hollowly. 'Of
course, one's nerves--that fellow Danton--when one's overtired.
You have'--his voice, in spite of every effort, faintly
quavered--'YOU haven't noticed anything? My mind?'

'Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know
that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think
me unsympathetic--but don't you think we must sooner or later be
thinking of what's to be done? At present, though I fully agree
with Mr Bethany as to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business
up as long as possible, at least from the gossiping outside
world, still we are only standing still. And your malady, dear,
I suppose, isn't. You WILL help me, Arthur? You will try and
think? Poor Alice!'

'What about Alice?'

'She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand
why she must not see her father, and yet his not being, or, for
the matter of that, even if he was, at death's door.'

'At death's door,' murmured Lawford under his breath; 'who was it
was saying that? Have you ever, Sheila, in a dream, or just as
one's thoughts go sometimes, seen that door?...its ruinous stone
lintel carved into lichenous stone heads...stonily silent in the
last thin sunlight, hanging in peace unlatched. Heated, hunted,