Chapter FOUR: I

The torture of his soul went on. He lost grip of his House; he was unpopular now, and he knew it. Smallwood and other influential members of the school openly cut him in the street. A great silence (so he often imagined, but it could not have been really so) fell upon the Masters' Common-Room whenever he entered it. Pritchard, so he heard, was in the habit of making cheap jokes against him with his class. Even Clanwell took him aside one evening and asked him why he had dropped the habit of coming up to coffee. "Why don't you come up for a chat sometime?" he asked, and from the queer look in his eyes Speed knew well enough what the chat was likely to be about. "Oh, I'm busy," he excused himself. He added: "Perhaps I'll drop in sometime, though." "Yes, do," said Clanwell encouragingly. But Speed never did.

Then one morning Speed was summoned into the dark study. The Head smiled and invited him to sit down. He even said, with ominous hospitality: "Have a cigarette--um, no?" and pushed the cigarette-box an inch or so away from him. Then he went on, unbuttoning the top button of his clerical coat: "I hope--um--you will not think me--um--impertinent--if I mention a matter which has--um--which has not reached my ears--um--through an official channel. You had, I--um--I believe,--an--um--altercation with one of the house-porters the other day. Am I--am I right?"

"Yes, quite right."

"Well, now, Mr. Speed--such--um--affairs are rather undignified, don't you think? I'm not--um--apportioning blame--oh, no, not in any way, but I do--um, yes--I most certainly do think that a housemaster should avoid such incidents if he can possibly do so. No--um--no personal reflection on you at all, Mr. Speed--merely my advice to you, as a somewhat elderly man to an--um, yes--to a friend. Yes, a friend. Perhaps I might add more--um--significantly--to an--um--son-in-law."

He smiled a wide, sly smile. Speed clenched his hands on his knees. The dark study grew almost intolerable. He felt he would like to take Ervine's mottled neck in his hands and wring it--carefully and calculatingly....

When he was outside the room, in the darkness between the inner and the outer doors, his resentment rose to fever-pitch. He stopped, battling with it, half inclined to re-enter the study and make a scene, yet realising with the sane part of him that he could not better his position by so doing. Merely as an outlet for tempestuous indignation, however, the idea of returning to the fray attracted him, and he paused in the darkness, arguing with himself. Then all at once his attention was rivetted by the sound, sharp and clear, of Mrs. Ervine's voice. She had entered the study from the other door, and he heard soft steps treading across the carpet. "Did you tell him?" he heard her say. And the Head's voice boomed back: "Yes, my dear. Um yes--I told him."

A grim, cautious smile crept over Speed's mouth. He put his ear to the hinge of the inner door and listened desperately.

He heard again the voice of Mrs. Ervine. "Did you tell him he might have to quit Lavery's at the end of the term?"

"I--um--well--I didn't exactly put it to him--so--um--so definitely. It seemed to me there was no--um--no necessity. He may be all right, even yet, you know.

"He won't. He's too young. And he's lost too much ground already."

"I always thought he was too--um--too youthful, my dear. But you overruled my----"

"Well, and you know why I did, don't you? Oh, I've no patience with you. Nothing's done unless I do it."

"My dear, I--um--I assure you----"

He heard footsteps approaching along the outside corridor and feared that it might be people coming to see the Head. In that case they would pull open the outer door and find him eavesdropping. That would never do. He quietly pushed the outer door and emerged into the corridor. A small boy, seeing him, asked timidly: "Is the Head in, sir?" Speed replied grimly: "Yes, he's in, but he's busy at present."

After all, he had heard enough. Behind the Head, ponderous and archaic, stood now the sinister figure of Mrs. Ervine, mistress of malevolent intrigue. In a curious half-humorous, half-contemptuous sense, he felt sorry for the Head. Poor devil!--everlastingly chained to Millstead, always working the solemn, rhythmic treadmill, with a wife beside him as sharp as a knife-edge.... Speed walked across to Lavery's, pale-faced and smiling.

II

The Annual Athletic Sports.

It was raining hard. He stood by the tape, stopwatch in hand, distributing measured encouragement and congratulation, and fulfilling his allotted rôle of timekeeper. "Well run, Herbert," he managed to say with a show of interest. "Not bad, indeed, sir ... eleven and two-fifths seconds." ... "Well done, Roberts.... Hard luck, Hearnshaw--pity you didn't sprint harder at the finish, eh? ... Herbert first, Roberts second, Hearnshaw third."

The grass oozed with water and the cinder-track with blackish slime; he shivered as he stood, and whenever he stooped the water fell over the brim of his hat and blurred the print on his sports-programme. It was hard to distinguish rain from perspiration on the faces of the runners. The bicycles used in the slow-bicycle race lay in a dripping and rusting pile against a tree-trunk; crystal raindrops hung despairingly from the out-stretched tape. There seemed something unnecessarily, gratuitously, even fatuously dismal about the entire procedure; the weight of dismalness pressed heavily on him--heavily--heavily--and more heavily as the afternoon crawled by. Yet he gave a ghastly smile as he marked a wet note-book with a wet copying pencil and exclaimed: "Well run, Lister _Secundus_. Four minutes and forty-two and a fifth seconds.... Next race, please. All candidates for the Quarter-Mile Handicap. First Heat.... Answer please.... Arnold, Asplin, Brooks, Carmichael, Cavendish, Cawstone, Primus, Felling, Fyfield...."

But at last there came the end of the dreary afternoon, when grey dusk began to fall somberly upon a grey world, when the last race had been mournfully held, and his outdoor work was over. Mechanically he was collecting into a pile the various impedimenta of the obstacle race; he was alone, for the small, dripping crowd of sight-seers had gone over to the other side of the pavilion to witness the putting of the weight. Pritchard's job, he reflected. Pritchard's staccato tenor voice rose above the murmur: "Thirty-eight feet four inches.... Excellent, Robbins...." And then the scrape of the spade smoothing over the soft, displaced mud, a sound that seemed to Speed to strike the note of utter and inextinguishable misery.

Old Millstead bells began to chime the hour of five o'clock.

And then a voice quite near him said: "Well, Mr. Speed?"

He knew that voice. He turned round sharply. Clare!

Never did he forget the look of her at that moment. He thought afterwards (though it could not have been more than imagination) that as she spoke the downfalling rain increased to a torrent; he saw her cheeks, pink and shining, and the water glistening on the edges of her hair. She wore a long mackintosh that reached almost to her heels, and a sou'wester pulled over her ears and forehead. But the poise of her as she stood, so exquisitely serene with the rain beating down upon her, struck some secret chord in his being which till that moment had been dumb.

He dropped the sacks into a pool of water and stared at her in wistful astonishment.

"You've dropped your things," she said.

He was staring at her so intently that he seemed hardly to comprehend her words. The chord in him that had been struck hurt curiously, like a muscle long unused. When at last his eyes fell to the sopping bundle at his feet he just shrugged his shoulders and muttered: "Oh, _they_ don't matter. I'll leave them." Then, recollecting that he had not yet given her any greeting, he made some conventional remark about the weather.

Then she made another conventional remark about the weather.

Then he said, curiously: "We don't see so much of each other nowadays, do we?"

To which she replied: "No. I wonder why? Are they overworking you?"

"Not that," he answered.

"Then I won't guess any other reasons."

He said jokingly: "I shall come down to the town and give you another of those surprise visits one of these evenings."

The crowd were returning from watching the putting of the weight. She made to leave him, saying as she did so: "_Yes_, do. You like a talk, don't you?"

"Rather!" he exclaimed, almost boyishly, as she went away.

_Almost boyishly_! Even a moment of her made a difference in him.

III

That evening, for the first time in his life, he was "ragged." He was taking preparation in the Big Hall. As soon as the School began to enter he could see that some mischief was on foot. Nor was it long in beginning to show itself. Hardly had the last-corner taken his seat when a significant rustle of laughter at the rear of the Hall warned him that danger was near. He left his seat on the rostrum and plunged down the aisle to the place whence the laughter had come. More laughter.... He saw something scamper swiftly across the floor, amidst exclamations of feigned alarm. Someone had let loose a mouse.

He was furious with anger. Nothing angered him more than any breach of discipline, and this breach of discipline was obviously an insult to him personally. They had never "ragged" him before; they were "ragging" him now because they disliked him. He saw the faces of all around him grinning maliciously.

"Anyone who laughs has a hundred lines."

A sharp brave laugh from somewhere--insolently defiant.

"Who was it that laughed then?"

No answer.

Then, amidst the silence, another laugh, a comic, lugubriously pitched laugh that echoed weirdly up to the vaulted roof.

He was white now--quite white with passion.

"Was that you, Slingsby?"

A smart spot! It _was_ Slingsby, and Slingsby, recognising the rules of civilised warfare even against Speed, replied, rather sheepishly: "Yes, sir."

"A thousand lines and detention for a week!"

The school gasped a little, for the punishment was sufficiently enormous. Evidently Speed was not to be trifled with. There followed a strained silence for over ten minutes, and at last Speed went back to his official desk feeling that the worst was over and that he had successfully quelled the rebellion. Then, quite suddenly, the whole building was plunged into darkness.

He rose instantly shouting: "Who tampered with those switches?"

He had hardly finished his query when pandemonium began. Desk-lids fell; electric torches prodded their rays upon scenes of wild confusion; a splash of ink fell on his neck as he stood; voices shrieked at him on all sides. "Who had a fight with Burton?" "Hit one your own size." "Oh, Kenneth, meet me at the pavilion steps!" "Three cheers for the housemaster who knocked the porter down!" He heard them all. Somebody called, sincerely and without irony: "Three cheers for old Burton!"--and these were lustily given. Somebody grabbed hold of him by the leg; he kicked out vigorously, careless in his fury what harm he did. The sickly odour of sulphuretted hydrogen began to pervade the atmosphere.

He heard somebody shriek out: "Not so much noise, boys--the Head'll come in!" And an answer came: "Well, he won't mind much."

He stood there in the darkness for what seemed an age. He was petrified, not with fear, but with a strange mingling of fury and loathing. He tried to speak, and found he had no voice; nor, anyhow, could he have made himself heard above the din.

Something hit him a terrific blow on the forehead. He was dazed. He staggered back, feeling for his senses. He wondered vaguely who had hit him and what he had been hit with. Probably a heavy book.... The pain seemed momentarily to quench his anger, so that he thought: This is not ordinary "ragging." They hate me. They detest me. They want to hurt me if they can.... He felt no anger for them now, only the dreadfulness of being hated so much by so many people at once.

He must escape somehow. They might kill him in the dark there if they found him. He suddenly made his decision and plunged headlong down the centre aisle towards the door. How many boys he knocked down or trampled on or struck with his swinging arms as he rushed past he never knew, but in another moment he was outside, with the cool air of the cloisters tingling across his bruised head and the pandemonium in the Hall sounding suddenly distant in his ears.

In the cloisters he met the Head, walking quickly along with gown flying in the wind.

In front of Speed he stopped, breathless and panting. "Um--um--what is the matter, Mr. Speed? Such an--um--terrible noise--I could--um--hear it at my dinner-table--and--um--yourself--what has happened to you? Are you ill? Your head is covered with--um--blood.... What is all the commotion about?"

Speed said, with crisp clearness: "Go up into the Hall and find out."

And he rushed away from the Head, through the echoing cloisters, and into Lavery's. He washed here, in the public basins, and tied a handkerchief round the cut on his forehead. He did not disturb Helen, but left his gown on one of the hooks in the cloak-room and went out again into the dark and sheltering night, hatless and coatless, and with fever in his heart. The night was bitterly cold, but he did not feel it; he went into the town by devious ways, anxious to avoid being seen; when he was about half-way the parish clock chimed eight. He felt his head; his handkerchief was already damp on the outside; it must have been a deep cut.

IV

"Mr. Speed!" she said, full of compassion. A tiny lamp in the corridor illumined his bandaged head as he walked in. "What on earth has happened to you? Can you walk up all right?"

"Yes," he answered, with even a slight laugh. The very presence of her gave him reassurance. He strode up the steps into the sitting-room and stood in front of the fire. She followed him and stared at him for a moment without speaking. Then she said, almost unconcernedly: "Now you mustn't tell me anything till you've been examined. That looks rather a deep cut. Now sit down in that chair and let me attend to you. Don't talk."

He obeyed her, with a feeling in his heart of ridiculously childish happiness. He remembered when Helen had once bade him not talk, and how the demand had then irritated him. Curious that Clare could even copy Helen exactly and yet be tremendously, vitally different!

She unwound the bandage, washed the cut, and bandaged it up again in a clean and workmanlike manner. The deftness of her fingers fascinated him; he gazed on them as they moved about over his face; he luxuriated amongst them, as it were.

At the finish of the operation she gave that sharp instant laugh which, even after hearing it only a few times, he had somehow thought characteristic of her. "You needn't worry," she said quietly, and in the half-mocking tone that was even more characteristic of her than her laugh. "You're not going to die. Did you think you were? Now tell me how it happened."

"You'll smile when I tell you. I was taking prep, and they ragged me. Somebody switched off the lights and somebody else must have thrown a book at me. That's all."

"That's all? It's enough, isn't it? And what made you think I should smile at such an affair?"

"I don't know. In a certain sense it's, perhaps, a little funny.... D'you know, lately I've had a perfectly overwhelming desire to laugh at things that other people wouldn't see anything funny in. The other night Helen told me not to talk to her because she couldn't believe a word I said, but she didn't mind if I kissed her. I laughed at that--I couldn't help it. And now, when I think of an hour ago with all the noise and commotion and flash-lights and stink-bombs and showers of ink--oh, God, it was damned funny!"

He burst into gusts of tempestuous, half-hysterical laughter.

"Stop laughing!" she ordered. She added quietly: "Yes, you look as if you've been in an ink-storm--it's all over your coat and collar. What made them rag you?"

"They hate me."

"Why?"

He pondered, made suddenly serious, and then said: "God knows."

She did not answer for some time. Then she suddenly went over to the china cupboard and began taking out crockery. Once again his eyes had something to rivet themselves upon; this time her small, immensely capable hands as she busied herself with the coffee-pot. "And you thought I should find it amusing?" she said, moving about the whole time. As she continued with the preparations she kept up a running conversation. "Well, I _don't_ find it amusing. I think it's very serious. You came here last summer term and at first you were well liked, fairly successful, and happy. Now, two terms later, you're apparently detested, unsuccessful, and--well, not so happy as you were, eh? What's been the cause of it all? You say God knows. Well, if He does know, He won't tell you, so you may as well try to find out for yourself."

And she went on: "I don't want to rub it in. Forgive me if I am doing so."

Something in the calm kindliness of her voice made him suddenly bury his head in his hands and begin to sob. He gasped, brokenly: "All right.... Clare.... But the future.... Oh, God--is it _all_ black? ... What--_what_ can I do, Clare?"

She replied, immensely practical: "You must control yourself. You're hysterical--laughing one minute and crying the next. Coffee will be ready in a while--it'll quiet your nerves. And the future will be all right if only you won't be as big a fool as you have been."

Then he smiled. "You _do_ tell me off, don't you?" he said.

"No more than you need.... But we're talking too much. I don't want you to talk a lot--not just yet. Sit still while I play the piano to you."

She played some not very well-known composition of Bach, and though when she began he was all impatience to talk to her, he found himself later on becoming tranquil, perfectly content to listen to her as long as she cared to go on. She played quite well, and with just that robust unsentimentality which Bach required. He wondered if she had been clever enough to know that her playing would tranquillise him.

When she had finished, the coffee was ready and they had a cosy little armchair snack intermingled with conversation that reminded him of his Cambridge days. He would have been perfectly happy if he had not been burdened with such secrets. He wanted to tell her everything--to show her all his life. And yet whenever he strove to begin the confession she twisted the conversation very deftly out of his reach.

At last he said: "I've got whole heaps to tell you, Clare. Why don't you let me begin?"

She looked ever so slightly uncomfortable.

"Do you _really_ want to begin?"

"Yes."

"Begin then."

But it was not so easy for him to begin after her straightforward order to do so. She kept her brown eyes fixed unswervingly on him the whole time, as if defying him to tell anything but the utterest truth. He paused, stammered, and then laughed uncomfortably.

"There's a lot to tell you, and it's not easy."

"Then don't trouble. I'm not asking you to."

"But I want to."

She said, averting her eyes from him for a moment: "It's not really that you want to begin yourself, it's that you want _me_ to begin, isn't it?"

Then he said: "Yes, I wanted you to begin if you would. I wanted you to ask me a question you used to ask me?"

"What's that?"

"Whether I'm happy ... or not. I always used to say yes, and since that answer has become untrue you've never asked me the question."

"Perhaps because I knew the answer had become untrue."

"You knew? You _knew_! Tell me, what did you know? What do you know now?"

She said, with a curious change in the quality of her voice: "My dear man, I _know_. I understand you. Haven't you found out that? I know, I've known for a long time that you haven't been happy."

Suddenly he was in the thick of confession to her. He was saying, almost wildly, in his eagerness: "Helen and I--we don't get on well together." Then he stopped, and a wild, ecstatic fear of what he was doing rose suddenly to panic-point and then was lulled away by Clare's eternally calm eyes. "She doesn't understand me--in fact--I don't really think we either of us understand the other."

"No?" she said, interrogatively, and he shook his head slowly and replied: "I think that perhaps explains--chiefly--why I am unhappy. We--Helen and I--we don't know quite what--what to do with each other. Do you know what I mean? We don't exactly quarrel. It's more that we try so hard to be kind that--that it hurts us. We are cruel to each other.... Oh, not actually, you know, but in a sort of secret inside way.... Oh, Clare, Clare, the truth of it is, I can't bear her, and she can't bear me!"

"Perhaps I know what you mean. But she loves you?"

"Oh, yes, she loves me."

"And you love her?"

He looked her straight in the eyes and slowly shook his head.

"I used to. But I don't now. It's awful--awful--but it's the honest truth."

It seemed to him that his confession had reached the vital crest and that all else would be easy and natural now that he had achieved thus far. He went on: "Clare, I've tried to make myself think I love her. I've tried all methods to be happy with her. I've given in to her in little matters and big matters to try to make her happy, I've isolated myself from other people just to please her, I've offered anything--_everything_ to give her the chance of making me love her as I used to! But it's not been a bit of use."

"Of course it hasn't."

"Why of course?"

"Because you can't love anybody by trying. Any more than you can stop loving anybody by trying... Do you know, I've never met anybody who's enraged me as much as you have."

"Enraged you?"

"Yes. What right have I to be enraged with you, you'll say, but never mind that. I've been enraged with you because you've been such a continual disappointment ever since I've known you. This is a time for straight talking, isn't it? So don't be offended. When you first came to Millstead you were just a jolly schoolboy--nothing more, though you probably thought you were--you were brimful of schoolboyish ideals and schoolboyish enthusiasms. Weren't you? Nobody could help liking you--you were so--so _nice_--_nice_ is the word, isn't it?"

"You're mocking me."

"Not at all. I mean it. You _were_ nice, and I liked you very much. Compared with the average fussily jaded Master at a public-school you were all that was clean and hopeful and energetic. I wondered what would become of you. I wondered whether you'd become a sarcastic devil like Ransome, a vulgar little counter-jumper like Pritchard, or a beefy, fighting parson like Clanwell. I knew that whatever happened you wouldn't stay long as you were. But I never thought that you'd become what you are. Good God, man, you _are_ a failure, aren't you?"

"What's the good of rubbing it in?"

"This much good--that I want you to be quite certain of the depth you've fallen to. A man of your sort soon forgets his mistakes. That's why he makes so many of them twice over."

"Well--admitting that I am a failure, what then? What advice have you to offer me?"

"I advise you to leave Millstead."

"When?"

"At the end of the term."

"And where shall I go?"

"Anywhere except to another school."

"What shall I do?"

"Anything except repeat your mistakes."

"And Helen?"

"Take her with you."

"But she is one of my mistakes."

"I know that. But you've got to put up with it."

"And if I can't?"

"Then I don't know."

He suddenly plunged his head into his hands and was silent. Her ruthless summing-up of the situation calmed him, made him ready for the future, but filled that future with a dreariness that was awful to contemplate.

After a while he rose, saying: "Well, I suppose you're right. I'll go back now. God knows what'll happen to me between now and the end of term. But I guess I'll manage somehow. Anyway, I'm much obliged for your first-aid. Good-bye--don't trouble to let me out--I know how the door works."

"I want to lock up after you're gone," she said.

In the dark lobby the sudden terror of what he had done fell on him like a crushing weight. He had told Clare that he did not love Helen. And then, following upon that, came a new and more urgent terror--he had not told Clare that it was she whom he loved. What was the use of telling her the one secret without the other?--Perhaps he would never see Clare again. This might be his last chance. If he did not take it or make it the torture of his self-reproaching would be unendurable.

"You came without any coat and hat," she observed. "Let me lend you my raincoat--it's no different from a man's."

He perceived instantly that if he borrowed it he would have an excuse for visiting her again in order to return it. And perhaps then, more easily than now, he could tell her the secret that was almost bursting his heart.

"Thanks," he said, gratefully, and as she helped him into the coat she said: "Ask the boy to bring it back here when he calls for the orders in the morning."

He could have cried at her saying that. The terror came on him feverishly, intolerably, the terror of leaving her, of living the rest of life without a sight or a knowledge of her. He could not bear it; the longing was too great--he could not put it away from him. And she was near him for the last time, her hands upon his arms as she helped him into the coat. She did not want him to call again. It was quite plain.

He had to speak.

He said, almost at the front door: "Clare, do you know the real reason why I don't love Helen any more?"

He thought he heard her catch her breath sharply. Then, after a pause, she said rather curtly: "Yes, of course I do. Don't tell me."

"What!" In the darkness he was suddenly alive. "_What_! You know! You know the real reason! You _don't_! You think you do, but you don't! I'll warrant you don't! You don't know everything!"

And the calm voice answered: "I know everything about you."

"You don't know that I love you!" (_There_! It was spoken now; a great weight was taken off his heart, no matter whether she should be annoyed or not! His heart beat wildly in exultation at having thrown off its secret at long last.)

She answered: "Yes, I know that. But I didn't want you to tell me."

And he was amazed. His mind, half stupefied, accepted her knowledge of his love for her almost as if it were a confession of her returned love for him. It was as if the door were suddenly opened to everything he had not dared to think of hitherto. He knew then that his mind was full of dreaming of her, wild, passionate, tumultuous dreaming, dreaming that lured him to the edge of wonderland and precarious adventure. But this dreaming was unique in his experience; no slothful half-pathetic basking in the fluency of his imagination, no easy inclination to people a world with his own fancies rather than bridge the gulf that separated himself from the true objectiveness of others; this was something new and immense, a hungering of his soul for reality, a stirring of the depths in him, a monstrous leaping renewal of his youth. No longer was his imagination content to describe futile, sensual curves within the abyss of his own self, returning cloyingly to its starting-point; it soared now, embarked on a new quest, took leave of self entirely, drew him, invisibly and incalculably, he knew not where. He knew not where, but he knew with whom.... This strange, magnetic power that she possessed over him drew him not merely to herself, but to the very fountain of life; she was life, and he had never known life before. The reach of his soul to hers was the kindling touch of two immensities, something at once frantic and serene, simple and subtle, solemn and yet deep with immeasurable heart-stirring laughter.

He said, half inarticulate: "What, Clare! You know that I love you?"

"Of course I do."

(Great God, what _was_ this thrill that was coming over him, this tremendous, invincible longing, this molten restlessness, this yearning for zest in life, for action, starry enthusiasm, resistless plunging movement!)

"And you don't mind?"

"I _do_ mind. That's why I didn't want you to tell me.

"But what difference has telling you made, if you knew already?"

"No difference to me. But it will to you. You'll love me more now that you know I know."

"Shall I?" His query was like a child's.

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I _know_. That's all."

They were standing there together in the dark lobby. His heart was wildly beating, and hers--he wondered if it were as calm as her voice. And then all suddenly he felt her arms upon him, and she, Clare--Clare!--the reticent, always controlled Clare!--was crying, actually crying in his arms that stupidly, clumsily held her. And Clare's voice, unlike anything that it had ever been in his hearing before, was talking--talking and crying at once--accomplishing the most curious and un-Clare-like feats.

"Oh, my dear, _dear_ man--_why_ did you tell me? Why did you make everything so hard for me and yourself?--Oh, God--let me be weak for just one little minute--only one little minute!--I love you, Kenneth Speed, just as you love me--we fit, don't we, as if the world had been made for us as well as we for ourselves! Oh, what a man _I_ could have made of you, and what a woman _you_ could have made of me! Dearest, I'm so sorry.... When you've gone I shall curse myself for all this.... Oh, my dear, my dear...." She sobbed passionately against his breast, and then, suddenly escaping from his arms, began to speak in a voice more like her usual one. "You must go now. There's nothing we can do. Please, _please_ go now. No, no--don't kiss me.... Just go.... And let's forgive each other for this scene.... Go, please go.... Good-night.... No, I won't listen to you.... I want you to go.... Good night.... You haven't said a word, I know, and I don't want you to. There's nothing to say at all. Good night.... Good night...."

He found himself outside in High Street as in some strange incomprehensible dream....