“I tried to tell him,” said Lawrence to me, “that Wilderling was off his head.  I hadn’t the least hope, of course....  It was all quite clear, and, at such a time, quite just.  Wilderling had been shooting them out of his window....  The officer listened very politely, but when I had finished he only shook his head.  That was their affair he said.

“It was then that I realised Wilderling.  He was standing quite close to me.  He had obviously been struggling a bit, because his shirt was all torn, and you could see his chest.  He kept moving his hand and trying to pull his shirt over; it was his only movement.  He was as straight as a dart, and except for the motion of his hand as still as a statue, standing between the soldiers, looking directly in front of him.  He had been mad in that other room, quite dotty.

“He was as sane as anything now, grave and serious and rather ironical, just as he always looked.  Well it was at that moment, when I saw him there, that I thought of Vera.  I had been thinking of her all the time of course.  I had been thinking of nothing else for weeks.  But that minute, there in the hall, settled me.  Callous, wasn’t it?  I ought to have been thinking only of Wilderling and his poor old wife.  After all, they’d been awfully good to me.  She’d been almost like a mother all the time....  But there it was.  It came over me like a storm.  I’d been fighting for nights and days and days and nights not to go to her—­fighting like hell, trying to play the game the sentimentalists would call it.  I suppose seeing the old man there and knowing what they were going to do to him settled it.  It was a sudden conviction, like a blow, that all this thing was real, that they weren’t playing at it, that any one in the town was as near death as winking....  And so there it was!  Vera!  I’d got to get to her—­at once—­and never leave her again until she was safe.  I’d got to get to her!  I’d got to get to her!  I’d got to get to her!...  Nothing else mattered.  Not Wilderling’s death nor mine either, except that if I was dead I’d be out of it and wouldn’t be able to help her.  They talk about men with one idea.  From that moment I had only one idea in all the world—­I don’t know that I’ve had any other one since.  They talk about scruples, moralities, traditions.  They’re all right, but there just are moments in life when they simply don’t count at all....  Vera was in danger—­Well, that was all that mattered.

“The officer said something to Wilderling.  I heard Wilderling answer:  “You’re rebels against His Majesty....  I wish I’d shot more of you!” Fine old boy, you know, whatever way you look at it.

“They moved him forward then.  He went quite willingly, without any kind of resistance.  They motioned to me to follow.  We walked out of the flat down the stairs, no one saying a word.  We went out on to the Quay.  There was no one there.  They stood him up against the wall, facing the river.  It was dark, and when he was against the wall he seemed to vanish,—­only I got one kind of gesture, a sort of farewell, you know, his grey hair waving in the breeze from the river.