_That_ appalling flash was not his--not his
_that_ open rift of bright and searing Hell--not his, not his! His had
been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was _this
other_ horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place? Had
_he_ set that in motion? Had _he_ provided the spark that had touched off
the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place? He
did not know. He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself
was blown out, that--Oh, impossible!--a clinging kiss (how else to
express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal,
and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against
whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....

"_Look out!_" he shrieked aloud....

       *       *       *       *       *

The revulsion was instant. As if a cold slow billow had broken over him,
he came to to find that he was lying in his bed, that the mist and horror
that had for so long enwrapped him had departed, that he was Paul Oleron,
and that he was sick, naked, helpless, and unutterably abandoned and
alone. His faculties, though weak, answered at last to his calls upon
them; and he knew that it must have been a hideous nightmare that had
left him sweating and shaking thus. Yes, he was himself, Paul Oleron, a tired novelist, already past the
summit of his best work, and slipping downhill again empty-handed from it
all. He had struck short in his life's aim. He had tried too much, had
over-estimated his strength, and was a failure, a failure.... It all came to him in the single word, enwrapped and complete; it needed
no sequential thought; he was a failure. He had missed....

And he had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of
this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining
prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant
bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer
who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no
morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done,
unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow
after that, and as many morrows as there might be.... He lay there, weakly yet sanely considering it....

And since the whole attempt had failed, it was hardly worth while to
consider whether a little might not be saved from the general wreck. No
good would ever come of that half-finished novel. He had intended that it
should appear in the autumn; was under contract that it should appear; no
matter; it was better to pay forfeit to his publishers than to waste what
days were left. He was spent; age was not far off; and paths of wisdom
and sadness were the properest for the remainder of the journey.... If only he had chosen the wife, the child the faithful friend at the
fireside, and let them follow an _ignis fatuus_ that list!... In the meantime it began to puzzle him exceedingly what he should be so
weak, that his room should smell so overpoweringly of decaying vegetable
matter, and that his hand, chancing to stray to his face in the darkness,
should encounter a beard. "Most extraordinary!" he began to mutter to himself. "Have I been ill? Am
I ill now? And if so, why have they left me alone?... Extraordinary!..." He thought he heard a sound from the kitchen or bathroom. He rose a
little on his pillow, and listened.... Ah! He was not alone, then! It
certainly would have been extraordinary if they had left him ill and
alone--Alone? Oh no. He would be looked after. He wouldn't be left, ill,
to shift for himself. If everybody else had forsaken him, he could trust
Elsie Bengough, the dearest chum he had, for that ... bless her faithful
heart! But suddenly a short, stifled, spluttering cry rang sharply out:

"_Paul!_"

It came from the kitchen. And in the same moment it flashed upon Oleron, he knew not how, that two,
three, five, he knew not how many minutes before, another sound, unmarked
at the time but suddenly transfixing his attention now, had striven to
reach his intelligence. This sound had been the slight touch of metal on
metal--just such a sound as Oleron made when he put his key into the
lock. "Hallo!... Who's that?" he called sharply from his bed. He had no answer. He called again. "Hallo!... Who's there?... Who is it?" This time he was sure he heard noises, soft and heavy, in the kitchen. "This is a queer thing altogether," he muttered. "By Jove, I'm as weak as
a kitten too.... Hallo, there! Somebody called, didn't they?... Elsie! Is
that you?..." Then he began to knock with his hand on the wall at the side of his bed. "Elsie!... Elsie!... You called, didn't you?... Please come here, whoever
it is!..." There was a sound as of a closing door, and then silence. Oleron began to
get rather alarmed. "It may be a nurse," he muttered; "Elsie'd have to get me a nurse, of
course. She'd sit with me as long as she could spare the time, brave
lass, and she'd get a nurse for the rest.... But it was awfully like her
voice.... Elsie, or whoever it is!... I can't make this out at all. I
must go and see what's the matter...."

He put one leg out of bed. Feeling its feebleness, he reached with his
hand for the additional support of the wall....

       *       *       *       *       *

But before putting out the other leg he stopped and considered, picking
at his new-found beard. He was suddenly wondering whether he _dared_ go
into the kitchen. It was such a frightfully long way; no man knew what
horror might not leap and huddle on his shoulders if he went so far;
when a man has an overmastering impulse to get back into bed he ought to
take heed of the warning and obey it. Besides, why should he go? What
was there to go for? If it was that Bengough creature again, let her look
after herself; Oleron was not going to have things cramp themselves on
his defenceless back for the sake of such a spoilsport as _she_!... If
she was in, let her let herself out again, and the sooner the better for
her! Oleron simply couldn't be bothered. He had his work to do. On the
morrow, he must set about the writing of a novel with a heroine so
winsome, capricious, adorable, jealous, wicked, beautiful, inflaming, and
altogether evil, that men should stand amazed. She was coming over him
now; he knew by the alteration of the very air of the room when she was
near him; and that soft thrill of bliss that had begun to stir in him
never came unless she was beckoning, beckoning.... He let go the wall and fell back into bed again as--oh, unthinkable!--the
other half of that kiss that a gnash had interrupted was placed (how else
convey it?) on his lips, robbing him of very breath....


XII

In the bright June sunlight a crowd filled the square, and looked up at
the windows of the old house with the antique insurance marks in its
walls of red brick and the agents' notice-boards hanging like wooden
choppers over the paling.