Mrs Lawford drew back, struggling with a doubtful heart.

'I think,' she said, `it would be better not to discuss that
now.'

The rest of the morning Lawford remained in solitude.



CHAPTER SIX

There were three books in the room--Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living
and Dying,' a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on
wildflowers. He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar
of his thoughts on which an occasional sound--the droning of a
fly, the cry of a milkman, the noise of a passing van--obtruded
from the workaday world. The pale gold sunlight edged softly over
the bed. He ate up everything on his tray. He even, on the shoals
of nightmare, dreamed awhile. But by and by as the hours wheeled
slowly on he grew less calm, less strenuously resolved on lying
there inactive. Every sparrow that twittered cried reveille
through his brain. He longed with an ardour strange to his
temperament to be up and doing.

What if his misfortune was, as he had in the excitement of the
moment suggested to Sheila, only a morbid delusion of mind;
shared too in part by sheer force of his absurd confession? Even
if he was going mad, who knows how peaceful a release that might
not be? Could his shrewd old vicar have implicitly believed in
him if the change were as complete as he supposed it? He flung