Don’t ask me—a dream.’

Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. ‘Don’t think; don’t even
try. Why should you? We can’t; we _mustn’t_ go back.’

Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face towards the
steep of the hill. ‘I think, you know,’ he said, stooping and
whispering, ‘_he_ would know—the window and the sun and the singing. And oh, of course it was too late. You understand—too late. And once...
you can’t go back; oh no. You won’t leave me? You see, if you go, it
would only be all. I could not be quite so alone. But Detcham—Detcham? perhaps you will not trust me—tell me? That was not the name.’ He
shuddered violently and turned dog-like beseeching eyes. ‘To-morrow—yes, to-morrow,’ he said, ‘I will promise anything if you
will not leave me now. Once—’ But again the thread running so faintly
through that inextricable maze of memory eluded him. ‘So long as you
won’t leave me now!’ he implored her. She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer
him at once.... In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big
wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the playing flames,
he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he
seemed merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She
opened the little piano at the far end of the room and played on and on
as fancy led—Chopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely
forlorn old English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice
persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about itself the
hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the
thoughts of a solitary child. Ever and again a log burnt through its
strength, and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the
stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance towards
his visitor, and to turn another page. At last the music, too, fell
silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his hand and eyed with
a strange fixity brother and sister. His glance wandered slowly round
the quiet flame-lit room. ‘You won’t,’ he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme
confidence, ‘you won’t much notice? They come and go. I try not to—to
speak. It’s the only way through. It is not that I don’t know they’re
only dreams. But if once the—the others thought there had been any
tampering’—he tapped his forehead meaningly—‘here: if once they thought
_that_, it would, you know, be quite over then. How could I prove...?’
He turned cautiously towards the door, and with laborious significance
nodded his head at them. Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire. ‘Tampering,
my dear chap: That’s what the lump said to the leaven.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Lawford, putting out his hand, ‘but you know what I
mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then would be quite, quite
hopeless. That would be poisoning the wells.’

They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite distinctly in
the still night-shaded house they heard his door gently close. Then, as
if by consent, they turned and looked long and questioningly into each
other’s faces. ‘Then you are not afraid?’ Herbert said quietly. Grisel gazed steadily on, and almost imperceptibly shook her head. ‘You mean?’ he questioned her; but still he had again to read her
answer in her eyes. ‘Oh, very well, Grisel,’ he said quietly, ‘you know best,’ and returned
once more to his writing. For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a little
after midnight he awoke, with his face towards the uncurtained window,
though for many minutes he lay brightly confronting all Orion, that
from blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering
square, he could not lift or stir his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at
last and threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as
if freed from the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so
clear was his mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body
that sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost
all the remainder of the lagging darkness pacing softly to and fro; one
face only before his eyes, the one sure thing, the one thing
unattainable in a world of phantoms. Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after
wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the back of the house, went off
cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned Lawford was in
his place at the breakfast-table. He sat on, moody and constrained,
until even Herbert’s haphazard talk trickled low. ‘I fancy my sister is nursing a headache,’ he said at last, ‘but she’ll
be down soon. And I’m afraid from the looks of you, Lawford, your night
was not particularly restful.’ He felt his way very heedfully. ‘Perhaps
we walked you a little too far yesterday. We are so used to tramping
that—’ Lawford kept thoughtful eyes fixed on the deprecating face. ‘I see what it is, Herbert—you are humouring me again. I have been
wracking my brains in vain to remember what exactly _did_ happen
yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in sleep. I get so
far—and then I’m done. It won’t give up a hint. But you really mustn’t
think I’m an invalid, or—or in my second childhood. The truth is,’ he
added, ‘it’s only my _first_, come back again. But now that I’ve got so
far, now that I’m really better, I—’ He broke off rather vacantly, as
if afraid of his own confidence. ‘I must be getting on,’ he summed up
with an effort, ‘and that’s the solemn fact. I keep on forgetting
I’m—I’m a ratepayer!’

Herbert sat round in his chair. ‘You see, Lawford, the very term is
little else than Double-Dutch to me. As a matter of fact Grisel sends
all my hush-money to the horrible people that do the cleaning up, as it
were. I can’t catch their drift. Government to me is merely the
spectacle of the clever, or the specious, managing the dull. It deals
merely with the physical, and just the fringe of consciousness. I am
not joking. I think I follow you. All I mean is that the
obligations—mainly tepid, I take it—that are luring you back to the
fold would be the very ones that would scare me quickest off. The
imagination, the appeal faded: we’re dead.’

Lawford opened his mouth; ‘_Temporarily_ tepid,’ he at last all but
coughed out. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Herbert intelligently. ‘Only temporarily. It’s this beastly gregariousness that’s the devil. The very thought of
it undoes me—with an absolute shock of sheepishness. I suddenly realise
my human nakedness: that here we are, little better than naked animals,
bleating behind our illusory wattles on the slopes of—of infinity. And
nakedness, after all, is a wholesome thing to realize only when one
thinks too much of one’s clothes.