House of Commons as soon as luncheon was over. Her clear good sense, upon which he now leaned heavily, saw that for him in so terrible a crisis the paramount need was to keep at work. She divined that the only chance he had of holding on to the will was to occupy himself as much as possible. In such a crisis any form of brooding or inaction would be fatal.
For her, anything of that kind would be fatal, too. She must not look before or after. It was like crossing an abyss on a narrow plank. Her resolve taken, her plan formed, one pang of indecision might paralyze a nerve upon which all chance of safety depended. And she must act without an instant's delay.
She listened for the click of the front door. And then from the discreet ambush of the charming new curtains of that singularly pleasant room, in which so lately as two days ago, each individual object had been a thing of delight, she watched her husband's tall and picturesque figure disappear round the corner of the Square into the Brompton Road. Then she went to the telephone at once and rang up Freeman's Hotel.
It seemed an age before her demand to speak with Mr. Hierons could be met. A voice was not sure whether Mr. Hierons was now staying at the hotel, but it would find out. He had been away some days and the voice rather fancied that he had not yet returned. Minutes passed. And then in the midst of a baffled impotence that was almost a fever now, to
