'But what does it all mean?' the insistent voice he was getting
to know so well began tediously inquiring again. And every time
he raised his eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his
eyes raised themselves, they saw this haunting face there--a face
he no longer bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but
a face that was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of
refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of a
rather flashy book; or such as is revered on the stage. 'A rotten
bad face,' he whispered at it in his own familiar slang, after
some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring,
fascinating face, with even--what?--a spice of genius in it.
Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?...
'Brazen it out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it
up; play the game! give me just one opening. Think--think what
I've risked!'

And all these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant
only one thing--insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized
him. He leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist.
He snatched up the china candlestick, and poised it above the
sardonic reflection, as if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite
pains, he drew back from the glass and replaced the candlestick
on the table; stuffed his paper packet into his pocket, took off
his boots and threw himself on to the bed. In a little while, in
the faint, still light, he opened drowsily wondering eyes. `Poor
old thing!' his voice murmured, 'Poor old Sheila!'



CHAPTER FIVE