In the room an interval of silence, and without song of the robins and murmur of the sea, nearer now and louder as the rising tide lapped up the sands at the back of the Bar.  The faint yellow-pink after-thought of sunrise and pencillings of tarnished cloud alike had vanished into the all-obtaining misty blue of the upper sky.  Heading for the French coast, a skein of wild geese passed in wedge-shaped formation with honking cries and the beat of strong-winged flight.  The barrow creaked again, wheeled some few yards further along the battery walk.

“Thanks—­so I supposed,” Sir Charles Verity calmly said.

He stretched himself, falling into a less constrained and careful posture.  Leaned his elbow on the chair-arm, his chin in the hollow of his hand, crossed the right leg over the left.

“Twenty-four hours will give me time for all which is of vital importance.  The rest must, and no doubt perfectly will, arrange itself.—­Oh!  I’ll obey you within reasonable limits, McCabe.  I have no craving to hurry the inevitable conclusion.  These last hours possess considerable significance and charm—­an impressiveness even, which it would be folly to thrust aside or waste.”

Once more he looked up, his tone and expression devoid now of all bitterness.

“I propose to savour their pleasant qualities to the full.  So make yourself easy, my good fellow,” he continued with an admirable friendliness.  “Go and get your breakfast.  Heaven knows you’ve most thoroughly earned it, and a morning pipe of peace afterwards.—­The bell upon the small table?—­Yes—­oh, yes—­and Hordle within earshot.  I’ve everything I require; and, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, shall be glad enough of a respite from this course of food and drink, potions and poultices—­remedial to the delinquent flesh no doubt, but a notable weariness to the-spirit.—­And, see here, report to the two ladies, my sister and—­and Damaris, that you leave me in excellent case, free of discomfort, resting for a time before girding up my loins to meet the labours of the day.”

Charles Verity closed his eyes in intimation of dismissal, anxious to be alone the better to reckon with that deeper, final loneliness which confronted him just now in all its relentless logic.

For, though his mind remained lucid, self-realized and observant, his control of its action and direction was incomplete owing to bodily fatigue.  Hence it lay open to assault, at the mercy of a thousand and one crowding thoughts and perceptions.  And over these he desired to gain ascendency—­to drive, rather than be driven by them.  The epic of his three-score years, from its dim, illusive start to this dramatic and inexorable finish—­but instantly disclosed to him in the reluctant admissions of the good-hearted Irish doctor—­flung by at a double, in coloured yet incoherent progression, so to speak, now marching to triumphant blare of trumpet, now to roll of muffled drum.  Which incoherence