On reaching the dome at 2 a.m., he had taken four tabloids, each containing 0.324 gramme of trional, and had drunk the glass of hot milk which Simon always left him in case he should want it.  And he had written on a sheet of paper the words:  ’I am not to be disturbed before 10 a.m., no matter what happens; but call me at ten.—­H.’; and had put the sheet of paper on Simon’s door-mat.  And then he had stumbled into bed, and abandoned himself to sleep—­not without reluctance, for he did not care to lose, even for a few hours, the fine consciousness of that sheer joy.  He desired to rush off instantly into the universe at large and discover Camilla, wherever she might be.

Of course, he had dreamed of Camilla, but the telephone-bell had drowned the remembered accents of her voice.  The telephone-bell had silenced everything.  The telephone-bell had grown from a dream into a nightmare; and at last he had said to himself in the nightmare:  ’I might just as well be up and working as lying throttled here by this confounded nightmare.’  And by an effort of will he had wakened.  And even after he was roused, and had switched on the light, which showed the hands of the clock at a quarter to ten, he could still hear the telephone-bell of his nightmare.  And then the truth occurred to him, as the truth does occur surprisingly to people whose sleep has been disturbed, that the telephone-bell was a real telephone-bell, and not in the least the telephone-bell of a dream, and it was ringing, ringing, ringing in the dome.  There were fifteen lines of telephone in the Hugo building, and one of them ran to the dome.  Few persons called him up on it, because few persons knew its precise number, but he used it considerably himself.

‘Anyhow,’ he murmured, ‘I’ve had over seven and a half hours’ sleep, and that’s something.’

And as he got out of bed to go across to the telephone, his great joy resumed possession of him, and he was rather glad than otherwise that the telephone had forced him to wake.

‘Well, well, well?’ he cried comically, lifting the ear-piece off the hook and stopping the bell.

‘Are you there?’ the still small voice of the telephone whispered in his ear.

‘I should think I was here!’ he cried.  ‘Who are you?’

‘Are you Mr. Hugo?’ asked the voice.

‘I’m what’s left of Mr. Hugo,’ he answered in a sort of drunken tone.  The power of the sedative was still upon him.  ’Who are you?  You’ve pretty nearly rung my head off.’

‘I just want to say good-bye to you,’ said the voice.

‘What!’

Hugo started, glancing round the vast room, which was in shadow except where a solitary light threw its yellow glare on the dial of the clock.

‘Are you there?’ asked the voice patiently once again.

’It isn’t’—­something prompted him to use a Christian name—­’it isn’t Louis?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are you, then?’ Hugo demanded.