Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep, with
none to watch or spy—what then? However ridiculous that idea, it was
not more ridiculous, more incredible than the actual fact. If he had
remained there, he might, it was just possible that he would by now,
have actually awakened just his own familiar every-day self again. And
the thought of that—though he hardly realised its full import—actually
did send him on tip-toe for a glance that more or less effectually set
the question at rest. And there looked out at him, it seemed, the same
dark sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nights
ago—expressionless, cadaverous, with shadowy hollows beneath the
glittering eyes. And even as he watched it, its lips, of their own
volition, drew together and questioned him—‘Whose?’

He was not to be given much leisure, however, for fantastic reveries
like this. As he leaned his head on his hands, gladly conscious that he
could not possibly bear this incessant strain for long, Sheila opened
the door. He started up. ‘I wish you would knock,’ he said angrily; ‘you talk of quiet; you tell
me to rest, and think; and here you come creeping and spying on me as
if I was a child in a nursery. I refuse to be watched and guarded and
peeped on like this.’ He knew that his hands were trembling, that he
could not keep his eyes fixed, that his voice was nearly inarticulate. Sheila drew in her lips. ‘I have merely come to tell you, Arthur, that
Mr Bethany has brought Mr Danton in to supper. He agrees with me it
really would be advisable to take such a very old and prudent and
practical friend into our confidence. You do nothing I ask of you. I
simply cannot bear the burden of this incessant anxiety. Look, now,
what your night walk has done for you! You look positively at death’s
door.’

‘What—what an instinct you have for the right word,’ said Lawford
softly. ‘And Danton, of all people in the world! It was surely rather a
curious, a thoughtless choice. Has he had supper?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He won’t believe: too—bloated.’

‘I think,’ said Sheila indignantly, ‘it is hardly fair to speak of a
very old and a very true friend of mine in such—well, vulgar terms as
that. Besides, Arthur, as for believing—without in the least desiring
to hurt your feelings—I must candidly warn you, some people won’t.’

‘Come along,’ said Lawford, with a faint gust of laughter; ‘let’s see.’

They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps, than
she had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer girlhood
behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing together
on the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain of
conflicting glances, for her husband had followed instantly, and stood
now behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contempt
and defiance confronting an old fat friend, whom that one brief
challenging instant had congealed into a condition of passive and
immovable hostility. Mr Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberately turned
himself towards his companion. His small eyes wandered, and
instantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs Lawford. ‘Arthur thought he would prefer to come down and see you himself.’

‘You take such formidable risks, Lawford,’ said Mr Bethany in a dry,
difficult voice. ‘Am I really to believe,’ Danton began huskily. ‘I am sure, Bethany,
you will—My dear Mrs Lawford!’ said he, stirring vaguely, glancing
restlessly. ‘It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all,’ said a voice from the
doorway. ‘To tell you the truth, I am too tired to care a jot either
way. And’—he lifted a long arm—‘I must positively refuse to produce the
least, the remotest proof that I am not, so far as I am personally
aware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart was always an
incorrigible sceptic. Aren’t you, T. D.? You pride your dear old brawn
on it in secret?’

‘I really—’ began Danton in a rich still voice. ‘Oh, but you know you are,’ drawled on the slightly hesitating
long-drawn syllables; ‘it’s your parochial métier_. Firm, unctuous,
subtle, scepticism; and to that end your body flourishes. You were born
fat; you became fat; and fat, my dear Danton, has been deliberately
thrust on you—in layers! Lampreys! You’ll perish of surfeit some day,
of sheer Dantonism. And fat, postmortem, Danton. Oh, what a basting’s
there!’

Mr Bethany, with a convulsive effort, woke. He turned swiftly on Mrs
Lawford. ‘Why, why, could you not have seen?’ he cried. ‘It’s no good, Vicar. She’s all sheer Laodicean. Blow hot, blow cold. North, south, east, west—to have a weathercock for a wife is to marry
the wind. There’s nothing to be got from poor Sheila but...’

‘Lawford!’ the little man’s voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip;
‘I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. Some self-command; my dear
good fellow, remember, remember it’s only the will, the will that keeps
us breathing.’

Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened and
flickered with shadows before his eyes. ‘What’s he mean, then,’ he
muttered huskily, ‘coming here with his black, still carcase—peeping,
peeping—what’s he mean, I say?’ There was a moment’s silence. Then with
lifted brows and wide eyes that to every one of his three witnesses
left an indelible memory of clear and wolfish light within their glassy
pupils, he turned heavily, and climbed back to his solitude. ‘I suppose,’ began Danton, with an obvious effort to disentangle
himself from the humiliation of the moment, ‘I suppose he
was—wandering?’

‘Bless me, yes,’ said Mr Bethany cordially—‘fever. We all know what
that means.’

‘Yes,’ said Danton, taking refuge in Mrs Lawford’s white and intent
gaze. ‘Just think, think, Danton—the awful, incessant strain of such an
ordeal. Think for an instant what such a thing _means_!’

Danton inserted a plump, white finger between collar and chin. ‘Oh yes. But—eh?—needlessly abusive? I never _said_ I disbelieved him.’

‘Do you?’ said Mrs Lawford’s voice. He poised himself, as if it were, on the monolithic stability of his
legs. ‘Eh?’ he said. Mr Bethany sat down at the table. ‘I rather feared some such temporary
breakdown as this, Danton. I think I foresaw it. And now, just while we
are all three alone here together in friendly conclave, wouldn’t it be
as well, don’t you think, to confront ourselves with the difficulties? I know—we all know, that that poor half-demented creature _is_ Arthur
Lawford. This morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. An
awful calamity has suddenly fallen upon him—this change. I own frankly
at the first sheer shock it staggered me as I think for the moment it
has staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow face to face,
heard him talk, and watched him there upstairs in the silence stir and
awake and come up again to his trouble out of his sleep. I had no more
doubt in my own mind and heart that he was he than I have in my mind
that I—am I.