“You aren’t fit.  Let me....”

I pushed him roughly aside—­what business was it of his?  I slunk hastily out of the room.  The others remained.  I knew what they were going to do—­to talk things over, to gabble about “the man who....”

It was treacherous walking, that tessellated pavement in the hall.  Someone said:  “Hullo, Granger,” as I passed.  I took no notice.

Where did I wish to go to?  There was no one who could minister to me; the whole world had resolved itself into a vast solitary city of closed doors.  I had no friend—­no one.  But I must go somewhere, must hide somewhere, must speak to someone.  I mumbled the address of Fox to a cabman.  Some idea of expiation must have been in my mind; some idea of seeing the thing through, mingled with that necessity for talking to someone—­anyone.

I was afraid too; not of Fox’s rage; not even of anything that he could do—­but of the sight of his despair.  He had become a tragic figure.

I reached his flat and I had said:  “It is I,” and again, “It is I,” and he had not stirred.  He was lying on the sofa under a rug, motionless as a corpse.  I had paced up and down the room.  I remember that the pile of the carpet was so long that it was impossible to walk upon it easily.  Everything else in the room was conceived in an exuberance of luxury that now had something of the macabre in it.  It was that now—­before, it had been unclean.  There was a great bed whose lines suggested sinking softness, a glaring yellow satin coverlet, vast, like a sea.  The walls were covered with yellow satin, the windows draped with lace worth a king’s ransom, the light was softened, the air dead, the sounds hung slumbrously.  And, in the centre of it, that motionless body.  It stirred, pivoted on some central axis beneath the rug, and faced me sitting.  There was no look of inquiry in the bloodshot eyes—­they turned dully upon me, topaz-coloured in a blood-red setting.  There was no expression in the suffused face.

“You want?” he said, in a voice that was august by dint of hopelessness.

“I want to explain,” I said.  I had no idea that this was what I had come for.

He answered only:  “You!” He had the air of one speaking to something infinitely unimportant.  It was as if I had no inkling of the real issue.

With a bravery of desperation I began to explain that I hadn’t stumbled into the thing; that I had acted open-eyed; for my own ends ...  “My own ends.”  I repeated it several times.  I wanted him to understand, and I did explain.  I kept nothing from him; neither her coming, nor her words, nor my feelings.  I had gone in with my eyes open.

For the first time Fox looked at me as if I were a sentient being.  “Oh, you know that much,” he said listlessly.

“It’s no disgrace to have gone under to her,” I said; “we had to.”  His despair seemed to link him into one “we” with myself.  I wanted to put heart into him.  I don’t know why.