childhood was the cause. Whatever it was, his terrible awakeness was the curse of his life. He had done what he could in recent years. He had lived more and more in the open air, and that had helped a good deal. And marriage with Valerie had helped him. He had been better in the first year than he had been for a decade. But this autumn the shadow had fallen on him again, and he had as well the fits of indigestion and nausea and depression that he was beginning to dread.
Even the strong coffee that he took did little to buck him up this day. He paced the garden on his side of the house for an hour and found himself exhausted. He went into his den and drank a stiff whisky and lay down on his lounge, hoping the warmth of the room would help him to doze the morning and the mood away. But it was no use. When he got up the bones in his body seemed to dance under his skin like the ridiculous antics of marionettes moved by the jerks of a capricious string. His nerves were driving him mad.
He forced himself to eat a little of the chicken jelly Lee brought him for lunch. He asked about Valerie, and was glad to hear she had gone out to garden. He went out to his verandah and tried to get some distraction from the whistling of the wind in the trees and the scurrying of the leaves about the paths. But he was beyond the stage when nature was any use to him. He went into his back room, and from the window caught a glimpse of Valerie wheeling a barrow of manure to her flower-beds. He heard her whistling. It did not hurt him that she could be happy without him. It was the one thing that helped him to bear himself, when he did bear himself. As he looked at her then he was hardly conscious of her as a woman he loved ; he was so weary and so hounded by some insatiable demon within. When he heard she had gone off
