next thing, my dear child--we're getting on swimmingly--and it's
astonishing how things are simplified by mere use--the next thing
is to send for Simon.'

Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. 'I am entirely in
your hands,' she replied. '

'So be it,' said he crisply. 'Get to bed, Lawford; it's better
so. And I'll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my
dear fellow, in gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too
early; it fogs old brains. Good-bye, good-bye.'

He squeezed Lawford's hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm,
his hat on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of
the room. Mrs Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat
motionless, with head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning
the door. Then he rose abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was
in bed, alone with his slow thoughts: while a basin of cornflour
stood untasted on a little table at his bedside, and a cheerful
fire burned in the best visitors' room's tiny grate.

At half-past eleven Dr Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He
sat down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he
half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually
dark, un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened
attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story very
much modified and rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon's
attention to the portrait now smiling conventionally above their
heads from the wall over the fireplace.