Even his clothes seemed to have connived at
this queer illusion. No tailor had for these ten years allowed him so
much latitude. He cautiously at last opened his garden gate and with
soundless agility mounted the six stone steps, his latch-key ready in
his gloveless hand, and softly let himself into the house. Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light the
lamp. Without pausing to take off his greatcoat, he hung up his hat,
ran nimbly upstairs, and knocked with a light knuckle on his bedroom
door. It was closed, but no answer came. He opened it, shut it, locked
it, and sat down on the bedside for a moment, in the darkness, so that
he could scarcely hear any other sound, as he sat erect and still, like
some night animal, wary of danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from
the bed, threw off his coat, which was clammy with dew, and lit a
candle on the dressing-table. Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly. He
glanced around him, unusually contented—at the ruddiness of the low
fire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft silveriness
here and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull dream had withdrawn
out of his mind. He would go again some day, and sit on the little hard
seat beside the crooked tombstone of the friendless old Huguenot. He
opened a drawer, took out his razors, and, faintly whistling, returned
to the table and lit a second candle. And still with this strange
heightened sense of life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently
over his chin and looked unto the glass. For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the least
feeling, or thought, or stir—staring into the looking-glass. Then an
inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A warm surge, like the onset of
a wave, broke in him, flooding neck, face, forehead, even his hands
with colour. He caught himself up and wheeled deliberately and
completely round, his eyes darting to and fro, suddenly to fix
themselves in a prolonged stare, while he took a deep breath, caught
back his self-possession and paused. Then he turned and once more
confronted the changed strange face in the glass. Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was, frigid
and appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this, with a kind of
incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing echoes and images
like straws and bubbles on its surface, could not be called thinking. Some stealthy hand had thrust open the sluice of memory. And words,
voices, faces of mockery streamed through without connection, tendency,
or sense. His hands hung between his knees, a deep and settled frown
darkened the features stooping out of the direct rays of the light, and
his eyes wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over
the floor. If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly recurred
at all, it was the memory of Sheila. He saw her face, lit,
transfigured, distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His lids
narrowed; a vague terror and horror mastered him. He hid his eyes in
his hands and cried without sound, without tears, without hope, like a
desolate child. He ceased crying; and sat without stirring. And it
seemed after an age of vacancy and meaninglessness he heard a door shut
downstairs, a distant voice, and then the rustle of some one slowly
ascending the stairs. Some one turned the handle; in vain; tapped. ‘Is
that you, Arthur?’

For an instant Lawford paused, then like a child listening for an echo,
answered, ‘Yes, Sheila.’ And a sigh broke from him; his voice, except
for a little huskiness, was singularly unchanged. ‘May I come in?’ Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more into the
glass. His lips set tight, and a slight frown settled between the long,
narrow, intensely dark eyes. ‘Just one moment, Sheila,’ he answered slowly, ‘just one moment.’

‘How long will you be?’

He stood erect and raised his voice, gazing the while impassively into
the glass. ‘It’s no use,’ he began, as if repeating a lesson, ‘it’s no use your
asking me, Sheila. Please give me a moment, a...I am not quite myself,
dear,’ he added quite gravely. The faintest hint of vexation was in the answer. ‘What is the matter? Can’t I help? It’s so very absurd—’

‘What is absurd?’ he asked dully. ‘Why, standing like this outside my own bedroom door. Are you ill? I
will send for Dr. Simon.’

‘Please, Sheila, do nothing of the kind. I am not ill. I merely want a
little time to think in.’ There was again a brief pause, and then a
slight rattling at the handle. ‘Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what’s wrong; this does not sound
a bit like yourself. It is not even quite like your own voice.’

‘It is myself,’ he replied stubbornly, staring fixedly into the glass. You must give me a few moments, Sheila. Something has happened. My
face. Come back in an hour.’

‘Don’t be absurd; it’s simply wicked to talk like that. How do I know
what you are doing? As if I can leave you for an hour in uncertainty! Your face! If you don’t open at once I shall believe there’s something
seriously wrong: I shall send Ada for assistance.’

‘If you do that, Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer for the
con—. Go quietly downstairs. Say I am unwell; don’t wait dinner for me;
come back in an hour; oh, half an hour!’

The answer broke out angrily. ‘You must be mad, beside yourself, to ask
such a thing. I shall wait in the next room until you call.’

‘Wait where you please,’ Lawford replied, ‘but tell them downstairs.’

‘Then if I tell them to wait until half-past eight, you will come down? You say you are not ill: the dinner will be ruined. It’s absurd.’

Lawford made no answer. He listened a while, then he deliberately sat
down once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his mind
seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. ‘What is it really? What is
it really?—really?’ He sat there and it seemed to him his body was
transparent as glass. It seemed he had no body at all—only the memory
of an hallucinatory reflection in the glass, and this inward voice
crying, arguing, questioning, threatening out of the silence—‘What is
it really—really—_really_?’ And at last, cold, wearied out, he rose
once more and leaned between the two long candle-flames, and stared
on—on—on, into the glass. He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks to
do—lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible pause
between the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture that
the face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to his
fainter secondary thoughts; as if these unfamiliar features were not
entirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass
before him, tell precisely what that face _was_ expressing. He was
still, it seemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for certain when
Sheila returned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt
ill, or was in pain: he would have rejoiced at it.