hitherto so quiet, was alive with movement. Crispin now stood back from him watching him The sight of blood had completed what these weeks had been preparing.
With that first touch of the knife on Harkness's body Crispin's soul had died. The battle was over. There was an animal here clothed fantastically in human clothes like a monkey or a dog at a music-hall show. The animal capered, stood on its hind legs, mowed in the air with its hands. It crept up to Harkness and, whining like a dog, pricked him with the knife point now here, now there, in a hundred places.
Harkness looked out once more at the great window with its splash of glorious sky, then ceased to struggle with his cords. His lips moved in some prayer perhaps, and once more, surely now for the last time, he closed his eyes. He had a strange vision of all the moving world beyond that window. At that moment at the hotel the maids would be sweeping the corridors, people would be stirring and rubbing their eyes and looking at their watches; in the town family breakfasts would be preparing, men would be sauntering down the narrow streets to their work; the connection with the London train would be running in with the London papers, already the men and women would be in the fields, the women would be waiting perhaps for the fishing-fleet to
