Dream and waking thoughts were mingled like sky and cloud upon a windy day in April.  Suddenly he saw again that lonely figure on the narrow way with darknesses above and darknesses below and darknesses on every hand.  But this time it was not Sir Richmond....  Who was it?  Surely it was Everyman.  Everyman had to travel at last along that selfsame road, leaving love, leaving every task and every desire.  But was it Everyman?...  A great fear and horror came upon the doctor.  That little figure was himself!  And the book which was his particular task in life was still undone.  He himself stood in his turn upon that lonely path with the engulfing darknesses about him....

He seemed to wrench himself awake.

He lay very still for some moments and then he sat up in bed.  An overwhelming conviction had arisen—­in his mind that Sir Richmond was dead.  He felt he must know for certain.  He switched on his electric light, mutely interrogated his round face reflected in the looking glass, got out of bed, shuffled on his slippers and went along the passage to the telephone.  He hesitated for some seconds and then lifted the receiver.  It was his call which aroused the nurse to the fact of Sir Richmond’s death.

Section 6

Lady Hardy arrived home in response to Dr. Martineau’s telegram late on the following evening.  He was with her next morning, comforting and sympathetic.  Her big blue eyes, bright with tears, met his very wistfully; her little body seemed very small and pathetic in its simple black dress.  And yet there was a sort of bravery about her.  When he came into the drawing-room she was in one of the window recesses talking to a serious-looking woman of the dressmaker type.  She left her business at once to come to him.  “Why did I not know in time?” she cried.

“No one, dear lady, had any idea until late last night,” he said, taking both her hands in his for a long friendly sympathetic pressure.

“I might have known that if it had been possible you would have told me,” she said.

“You know,” she added, “I don’t believe it yet.  I don’t realize it.  I go about these formalities—­”

“I think I can understand that.”

“He was always, you know, not quite here....  It is as if he were a little more not quite here....  I can’t believe it is over....”

She asked a number of questions and took the doctor’s advice upon various details of the arrangements.  “My daughter Helen comes home to-morrow afternoon,” she explained.  “She is in Paris.  But our son is far, far away in the Punjab.  I have sent him a telegram....  It is so kind of you to come in to me.”