Edith whined and once Christine spoke, her clear still voice patient and resolute.

Robert crouched where he had fallen.  The baize door swung back, and touched him very softly like a hand out of the dark.  It comforted him.  It reminded him that he had only to choose, and it would stand between him and this threatening terror—­that it would give him time to rush back down the stone stairs—­out into the street—­further and further till they would never find him again.  But he could not move.  He couldn’t leave Christine like that.  His heart was sick with pity for her.  Why did his father speak to her like that?  Didn’t he see how good and faithful she was?  Didn’t he know that he, Robert, his son, had no one else in the whole world?

His father was speaking more clearly—­shouting each word by itself.

“You understand what I say, Christine.  Either you do what I tell you, or you get out of here; and, by God, this time you shan’t come back.  You’ll never set eyes on him again.”

“I shall always take care of Robert.  I promised Constance when she was dying.  She begged of me——­”

“It’s a lie—­a damned lie!  You’re not fit to have control over my son.  You can’t be trusted.  You’re a bad friend——­”

“I have done all I can.  I have told you there is only one thing left—­to sell this house—–­start afresh.”

“Very well, then.  That’s your last word—­and mine.”

Suddenly it was still.  The stillness was more terrible than anything Robert had ever heard.  He gulped and turned like a small, panic-stricken animal.  At the bottom of the stairs against the light from the kitchen he could see the bailiff’s bulky, honest shadow.

“Look ’ere, little mister, what’s wrong up there?  Anything I can do——­”

The silence was gone.  It was broken by the overturning of a chair, by a quiet, sinister scuffling—­Edith’s voice whining, terrified, thrilled by a silly triumph.

“Don’t—­don’t, Jim.  Remember yourself——­”

The door was dashed open, and something fell across the light, and there was Christine huddled beneath the sideboard, her head resting against its cruel corner.  Her face was towards Robert.  He was not to forget it so long as he lived.  It was so white and still, so angerless.

His paralysing terror was gone.  He leapt to his feet.  He raced down the passage, flinging himself on his father, beating him with his fists, shrieking: 

“You devil—­you devil!”

After that ho did not know what happened.  He seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of struggling figures.  He heard the bailiff’s voice booming, “Come now, sir, this won’t do; I am surprised at a gentleman like you!” and his father’s answer, incoherent, shaken with rage and shame.  Then he must have found his way upstairs.  He never remembered how he got there, but he was lying in his bed, in all his clothes, his head hidden beneath the blankets, twitching from head to foot as though his body had gone mad.