* * * * *

The church clock struck the quarter to eleven.  Hester Dethridge showed herself at the back garden door.  Geoffrey crossed the lawn, and joined her.  The light of the lamp in the passage fell on his face.  She started back from the sight of it.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She shook her head; and pointed through the dining-room door to the brandy-bottle on the table.

“I’m as sober as you are, you fool!” he said.  “Whatever else it is, it’s not that.”

Hester looked at him again.  He was right.  However unsteady his gait might be, his speech was not the speech, his eyes were not the eyes, of a drunken man.

“Is she in her room for the night?”

Hester made the affirmative sign.

Geoffrey ascended the st airs, swaying from side to side.  He stopped at the top, and beckoned to Hester to join him.  He went on into his room; and, signing to her to follow him, closed the door.

He looked at the partition wall—­without approaching it.  Hester waited, behind him.

“Is she asleep?” he asked.

Hester went to the wall; listened at it; and made the affirmative reply.

He sat down.  “My head’s queer,” he said.  “Give me a drink of water.”  He drank part of the water, and poured the rest over his head.  Hester turned toward the door to leave him.  He instantly stopped her. “I can’t unwind the strings. I can’t lift up the paper.  Do it.”

She sternly made the sign of refusal:  she resolutely opened the door to leave him.  “Do you want your Confession back?” he asked.  She closed the door, stolidly submissive in an instant; and crossed to the partition wall.

She lifted the loose strips of paper on either side of the wall—­pointed through the hollowed place—­and drew back again to the other end of the room.

He rose and walked unsteadily from the chair to the foot of his bed.  Holding by the wood-work of the bed; he waited a little.  While he waited, he became conscious of a change in the strange sensations that possessed him.  A feeling as of a breath of cold air passed over the right side of his head.  He became steady again:  he could calculate his distances:  he could put his hands through the hollowed place, and draw aside the light curtains, hanging from the hook in the ceiling over the head of her bed.  He could look at his sleeping wife.

She was dimly visible, by the light of the candle placed at the other end of her room.  The worn and weary look had disappeared from her face.  All that had been purest and sweetest in it, in the by-gone time, seemed to be renewed by the deep sleep that held her gently.  She was young again in the dim light:  she was beautiful in her calm repose.  Her head lay back on the pillow.  Her upturned face was in a position which placed her completely at the mercy of the man under whose eyes she was sleeping—­the man who was looking at her, with the merciless resolution in him to take her life.