corner of the big table. He took a chair on the far side of the room out of the light, but opposite the open door, and waited.
Whether time passed quickly or slowly now, he did not know. He did not know, either, in what form the future would come, or what he would do. He had forecast his arrival here just as it had happened, but his prevision had gone no further than that. There was no anger in his heart, there was perhaps a little hate, but that was immeasurable, at the time, with that which filled it—his dead love. Whatever he would do this night, he felt sure that he would do nothing violent, nothing passionate. All possibility of passion or violence was crushed beneath the huge dead weight that filled his mind and his soul. And then once more the odour of wall-flowers came to him, and he found that he had still in his hand that little scented square of cambric. With a sudden qualm as of physical sickness he threw it into the grate, where a few coals still smouldered.
The house was absolutely still; it was as if silence covered the whole world. No sound of passing traffic came to him, no tattoo of pedestrian heels on the pavement, no clink from the dying fire. Then, after ages, or after a few seconds only, for time had ceased to be computable, a sound came. Somewhere upstairs a door opened. That was followed by the noise of its shutting, and then there came steps on the stairs. They came down one flight; they passed along the landing of the drawing-room; they came down the second flight that led into the hall. Then Charlie's figure came into sight, and, standing opposite the open door into the dining-room, he put on his coat and took his hat. Then he passed out of sight, but the noise of the opening and closing of the front-door told Edgar that he had gone into the street, where, just opposite the house, the motor was waiting. Then he got up and went himself into the hall. Charlie had turned the light out, but the fanlight above the door still burned, and it was easily possible to see.
Then the silence was broken again; the bell sounded, and then the knocker on the front-door, gently at first, but with growing vehemence, as if panic had seized the man who was knocking, and the whole house resounded to it. He had not foreseen that Charlie would recognize the motor or the chauffeur, but it did not matter—nothing mattered. But Edgar just slipped the bolt at the bottom and top of the door, then he lit the hall light again, went upstairs.
