and unparalleled sensation in the town of Bursley ...  He seemed for an instant dimly to perceive ways, or incomplete portions of ways, by which he might still escape ...  Then with a brusque gesture he dismissed such futile scheming and yielded anew to the impulse which had suddenly and piquantly seized him, three hours before, when Leonora said:  ’Uncle Meshach won’t,’ and he replied, ‘I’ve fixed it up.’  His dilemma was too complicated.  No one, not even Dain, was aware of its intricacies; Dain knew a lot, Leonora a little, and sundry other persons odd fragments.  But he himself could scarcely have drawn the outlines of the whole sinister situation without much reference to books and correspondence.  No, he had finished.  He was bored, and he was irritable.  The impulse hurried him on.

‘In half an hour that ass Twemlow will be here,’ he thought, looking at the office dial over the mantelpiece.

And then he left his room, calling out to the clerks’ room as he passed:  ‘Just going on to the bank.  I shall be back in a minute or two.’

At the south-western corner of the works was a disused enamel-kiln which had been built experimentally and had proved a failure.  He walked through the yard, crept with some difficulty into the kiln, and closed the iron door.  A pale silver light came down the open chimney.  He had decided as he crossed the yard that he should place the mouth of the revolver between his eyes, so that he had nothing to do in the kiln but to put it there and touch the trigger.  The idea of this simple action preoccupied him.  ‘Yes,’ he reflected, taking the revolver from his pocket, ‘that is where I must put it, and then just touch the trigger.’  He thought neither of his family, nor of his sins, nor of the grand fiasco, but solely of this physical action.  Then, as he raised the revolver, the fear troubled him that he had not burnt a particular letter from a Jew in London, received on the previous day.  ’Of course I burnt it,’ he assured himself.  ‘Did I, though?’ He felt that a mysterious volition over which he had no control would force him to return to his office in order to make sure.  He gave a weary curse at the prospect of having to put back the revolver, leave the kiln, enter the kiln again, and once more raise the revolver.

As he passed by the archway near the packing house the afternoon postman appeared and gave him a letter.  Without thinking he halted on the spot and opened it.  It was written in haste, and ran:  ’My Dear Stanway,—­I am called away to London and may have to sail for New York at once.  Sorry to have to break the appointment.  We must leave that affair over.  In any case it could only be a mere matter of form.  As I told you, I was simply acting on behalf of my sister.  My kindest regards to your wife and your daughters.  Believe me, yours very truly,—­ARTHUR TWEMLOW.’