He stood still, wishing himself invisible.  The room was very chilly.  He did not think he would ever feel like that.  But people must be met—­they must be faced—­talked to—­smiled at.  He heard another door, much nearer—­the door of the drawing-room—­being opened and flung to again.  He imagined for a moment he would faint.  How absurd!  That kind of thing had to be gone through.  A voice spoke.  He could not catch the words.  Then the voice spoke again, and footsteps were heard on the first floor landing.  Hang it all!  Was he to hear that voice and those footsteps whenever any one spoke or moved?  He thought:  “This is like being haunted—­I suppose it will last for a week or so, at least.  Till I forget.  Forget!  Forget!” Someone was coming up the second flight of stairs.  Servant?  He listened, then, suddenly, as though an incredible, frightful revelation had been shouted to him from a distance, he bellowed out in the empty room:  “What!  What!” in such a fiendish tone as to astonish himself.  The footsteps stopped outside the door.  He stood openmouthed, maddened and still, as if in the midst of a catastrophe.  The door-handle rattled lightly.  It seemed to him that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at him; the ceiling slanted queerly for a moment, a tall wardrobe tried to topple over.  He caught hold of something and it was the back of a chair.  So he had reeled against a chair!  Oh!  Confound it!  He gripped hard.

The flaming butterfly poised between the jaws of the bronze dragon radiated a glare, a glare that seemed to leap up all at once into a crude, blinding fierceness, and made it difficult for him to distinguish plainly the figure of his wife standing upright with her back to the closed door.  He looked at her and could not detect her breathing.  The harsh and violent light was beating on her, and he was amazed to see her preserve so well the composure of her upright attitude in that scorching brilliance which, to his eyes, enveloped her like a hot and consuming mist.  He would not have been surprised if she had vanished in it as suddenly as she had appeared.  He stared and listened; listened for some sound, but the silence round him was absolute—­as though he had in a moment grown completely deaf as well as dim-eyed.  Then his hearing returned, preternaturally sharp.  He heard the patter of a rain-shower on the window panes behind the lowered blinds, and below, far below, in the artificial abyss of the square, the deadened roll of wheels and the splashy trotting of a horse.  He heard a groan also—­very distinct—­in the room—­close to his ear.

He thought with alarm:  “I must have made that noise myself;” and at the same instant the woman left the door, stepped firmly across the floor before him, and sat down in a chair.  He knew that step.  There was no doubt about it.  She had come back!  And he very nearly said aloud “Of course!”—­such was his sudden and masterful perception of the indestructible character