certain rich positivity, bordering sometimes on rapture. Life seemed to
move in him like a tide lapping, and advancing, enveloping all things
darkly. It was a pleasure to stretch forth the hand and meet the unseen
object, clasp it, and possess it in pure contact. He did not try to
remember, to visualize. He did not want to. The new way of consciousness
substituted itself in him.

The rich suffusion of this state generally kept him happy, reaching its
culmination in the consuming passion for his wife. But at times the flow
would seem to be checked and thrown back. Then it would beat inside him
like a tangled sea, and he was tortured in the shattered chaos of his own
blood. He grew to dread this arrest, this throw-back, this chaos inside
himself, when he seemed merely at the mercy of his own powerful and
conflicting elements. How to get some measure of control or surety, this
was the question. And when the question rose maddening in him, he would
clench his fists as if he would _compel_ the whole universe to submit to
him. But it was in vain. He could not even compel himself.

Tonight, however, he was still serene, though little tremors of
unreasonable exasperation ran through him. He had to handle the razor
very carefully, as he shaved, for it was not at one with him, he was
afraid of it. His hearing also was too much sharpened. He heard the woman
lighting the lamps on the corridor, and attending to the fire in the
visitor's room. And then, as he went to his room he heard the trap
arrive. Then came Isabel's voice, lifted and calling, like a bell
ringing:

'Is it you, Bertie? Have you come?'

And a man's voice answered out of the wind: