He had
never been wilier nor more alert. His small bedroom fireplace was opposite the chest of drawers on which
the mirror stood, and his bed and the window occupied the remaining
sides of the room. Oleron drew down his blind, took off his coat, and
then stooped to get his slippers from under the bed. He could have given no reason for the conviction, but that the
manifestation that for two days had been withheld was close at hand he
never for an instant doubted. Nor, though he could not form the faintest
guess of the shape it might take, did he experience fear. Startling or
surprising it might be; he was prepared for that; but that was all; his
scale of sensation had become depressed. His hand moved this way and that
under the bed in search of his slippers.... But for all his caution and method and preparedness, his heart all at
once gave a leap and a pause that was almost horrid. His hand had found
the slippers, but he was still on his knees; save for this circumstance
he would have fallen. The bed was a low one; the groping for the slippers
accounted for the turn of his head to one side; and he was careful to
keep the attitude until he had partly recovered his self-possession. When
presently he rose there was a drop of blood on his lower lip where he had
caught at it with his teeth, and his watch had jerked out of the pocket
of his waistcoat and was dangling at the end of its short leather
guard....

Then, before the watch had ceased its little oscillation, he was himself
again. In the middle of his mantelpiece there stood a picture, a portrait of his
grandmother; he placed himself before this picture, so that he could see
in the glass of it the steady flame of the candle that burned behind him
on the chest of drawers. He could see also in the picture-glass the
little glancings of light from the bevels and facets of the objects about
the mirror and candle. But he could see more. These twinklings and
reflections and re-reflections did not change their position; but there
was one gleam that had motion. It was fainter than the rest, and it moved
up and down through the air. It was the reflection of the candle on
Oleron's black vulcanite comb, and each of its downward movements was
accompanied by a silky and crackling rustle. Oleron, watching what went on in the glass of his grandmother's portrait,
continued to play his part. He felt for his dangling watch and began
slowly to wind it up. Then, for a moment ceasing to watch, he began to
empty his trousers pockets and to place methodically in a little row on
the mantelpiece the pennies and halfpennies he took from them. The
sweeping, minutely electric noise filled the whole bedroom, and had
Oleron altered his point of observation he could have brought the dim
gleam of the moving comb so into position that it would almost have
outlined his grandmother's head. Any other head of which it might have been following the outline was
invisible. Oleron finished the emptying of his pockets; then, under cover of another
simulated yawn, not so much summoning his resolution as overmastered by
an exhorbitant curiosity, he swung suddenly round. That which was being
combed was still not to be seen, but the comb did not stop. It had
altered its angle a little, and had moved a little to the left. It was
passing, in fairly regular sweeps, from a point rather more than five
feet from the ground, in a direction roughly vertical, to another point a
few inches below the level of the chest of drawers. Oleron continued to act to admiration. He walked to his little washstand
in the corner, poured out water, and began to wash his hands. He removed
his waistcoat, and continued his preparations for bed. The combing did
not cease, and he stood for a moment in thought. Again his eyes twinkled. The next was very cunning--

"Hm!... _I think I'll read for a quarter of an hour_," he said aloud.... He passed out of the room. He was away a couple of minutes; when he returned again the room was
suddenly quiet. He glanced at the chest of drawers; the comb lay still,
between the collar he had removed and a pair of gloves. Without
hesitation Oleron put out his hand and picked it up. It was an ordinary
eighteenpenny comb, taken from a card in a chemist's shop, of a substance
of a definite specific gravity, and no more capable of rebellion against
the Laws by which it existed than are the worlds that keep their orbits
through the void. Oleron put it down again; then he glanced at the bundle
of papers he held in his hand. What he had gone to fetch had been the
fifteen chapters of the original _Romilly_. "Hm!" he muttered as he threw the manuscript into a chair.... "As I
thought.... She's just blindly, ragingly, murderously jealous." *       *       *       *       *

On the night after that, and on the following night, and for many nights
and days, so many that he began to be uncertain about the count of them,
Oleron, courting, cajoling, neglecting, threatening, beseeching, eaten
out with unappeased curiosity and regardless that his life was becoming
one consuming passion and desire, continued his search for the unknown
co-numerator of his abode. X

As time went on, it came to pass that few except the postman mounted
Oleron's stairs; and since men who do not write letters receive few, even
the postman's tread became so infrequent that it was not heard more than
once or twice a week. There came a letter from Oleron's publishers,
asking when they might expect to receive the manuscript of his new book;
he delayed for some days to answer it, and finally forgot it. A second
letter came, which also he failed to answer. He received no third. The weather grew bright and warm. The privet bushes among the
chopper-like notice-boards flowered, and in the streets where Oleron did
his shopping the baskets of flower-women lined the kerbs. Oleron
purchased flowers daily; his room clamoured for flowers, fresh and
continually renewed; and Oleron did not stint its demands. Nevertheless,
the necessity for going out to buy them began to irk him more and more,
and it was with a greater and ever greater sense of relief that he
returned home again. He began to be conscious that again his scale of
sensation had suffered a subtle change--a change that was not restoration
to its former capacity, but an extension and enlarging that once more
included terror. It admitted it in an entirely new form. _Lux orco,
tenebrae Jovi_. The name of this terror was agoraphobia. Oleron had begun
to dread air and space and the horror that might pounce upon the
unguarded back. Presently he so contrived it that his food and flowers were delivered
daily at his door. He rubbed his hands when he had hit upon this
expedient. That was better! Now he could please himself whether he went
out or not....

Quickly he was confirmed in his choice. It became his pleasure to remain
immured. But he was not happy--or, if he was, his happiness took an extraordinary
turn.