There was no mist at this height above the Charles.  The night was still, and the moon westering.  The light had a glimmering, metallic essence, as from a cosmic mirror in the firmament.  Long shadows of trees and shrubbery lay across the grass.  Clear in the moonlit foreground stood an elm, the pride of Tory Hill—­springing as a single shaft for twice the measure of a man—­springing and spreading there into four giant branches, each of which sprang and spread higher into eight—­so springing and spreading, springing and spreading still—­rounded, symmetrical, superb—­till the long outermost shoots fell pendulous, like spray from a fountain of verdure.  The silence held the suggestion of mighty spiritual things astir.  At least the heaven was not of brass, if the earth continued to be of adamant.  On the contrary, the sky was high, soft, dim, star-bestrewn, ineffable.  It was spacious; it was free; it was the home of glorious things; it was the medium of the eternal.

He was not reassured; he was not even comforted; what relief he got came only from a feeling—­a fancy, perhaps—­that the weight had been eased, that he was freed for a minute from the crushing pressure of the inevitable.  It would return again and break him down, but for the moment it was lifted, giving him room and power to breathe.  He did breathe—­long deep draughts of the cool night air that brought refreshment and something like strength to struggle on.

He came back into the room.  His pens and papers were scattered on the floor, and ink from the overturned inkstand was running out on the Oriental rug.  It was the kind of detail that before this evening would have shocked him; but nothing mattered now.  He was too indifferent to lift his hand and put the inkstand back into its place.  Instead, he threw himself on a couch, turning his face to the still open window and drinking in with thirsty gasps the blessed, revivifying air.

V

Guion awoke in a chill, gray light, to find himself covered with a rug, and his daughter, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, bending above him.  Over her shoulder peered the scared face of a maid.  His first sensation was that he was cold, his first act to pull the rug more closely about him.  His struggle back to waking consciousness was the more confused because of the familiar surroundings of the library.

“Oh, papa, what’s the matter?”

He threw the coverlet from him and dragged himself to a sitting posture.

“What time is it?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.  “I must have dropped off to sleep.  Is dinner ready?”

“It’s half-past six in the morning, papa dear.  Katie found you here when she came in to dust the room.  The window was wide open and all these things strewn about the floor.  She put the rug on you and came to wake me.  What is it?  What’s happened?  Let me send for the doctor.”

With his elbow on his knee, he rested his forehead on his hand.  The incidents of the night came back to him.  Olivia seated herself on the couch beside him, an arm across his shoulder.