Keith went, not home, but to his club; and in the room devoted to the reception of guests, empty at this hour, he sat down and read the report of the trial.  The fools had made out a case that looked black enough.  And for a long time, on the thick soft carpet which let out no sound of footfall, he paced up and down, thinking.  He might see the defending counsel, might surely do that as an expert who thought there had been miscarriage of justice.  They must appeal; a petition too might be started in the last event.  The thing could—­must be put right yet, if only Larry and that girl did nothing!

He had no appetite, but the custom of dining is too strong.  And while he ate, he glanced with irritation at his fellow-members.  They looked so at their ease.  Unjust—­that this black cloud should hang over one blameless as any of them!  Friends, connoisseurs of such things—­a judge among them—­came specially to his table to express their admiration of his conduct of that will case.  Tonight he had real excuse for pride, but he felt none.  Yet, in this well-warmed quietly glowing room, filled with decorously eating, decorously talking men, he gained insensibly some comfort.  This surely was reality; that shadowy business out there only the drear sound of a wind one must and did keep out—­like the poverty and grime which had no real existence for the secure and prosperous.  He drank champagne.  It helped to fortify reality, to make shadows seem more shadowy.  And down in the smoking-room he sat before the fire, in one of those chairs which embalm after-dinner dreams.  He grew sleepy there, and at eleven o’clock rose to go home.  But when he had once passed down the shallow marble steps, out through the revolving door which let in no draughts, he was visited by fear, as if he had drawn it in with the breath of the January wind.  Larry’s face; and the girl watching it!  Why had she watched like that?  Larry’s smile; and the flowers in his hand?  Buying flowers at such a moment!  The girl was his slave-whatever he told her, she would do.  But she would never be able to stop him.  At this very moment he might be rushing to give himself up!

His hand, thrust deep into the pocket of his fur coat, came in contact suddenly with something cold.  The keys Larry had given him all that time ago.  There they had lain forgotten ever since.  The chance touch decided him.  He turned off towards Borrow Street, walking at full speed.  He could but go again and see.  He would sleep better if he knew that he had left no stone unturned.  At the corner of that dismal street he had to wait for solitude before he made for the house which he now loathed with a deadly loathing.  He opened the outer door and shut it to behind him.  He knocked, but no one came.  Perhaps they had gone to bed.  Again and again he knocked, then opened the door, stepped in, and closed it carefully.  Candles lighted, the fire burning; cushions thrown on the floor in front of it and strewn with flowers!  The table, too, covered with flowers and with the remnants of a meal.  Through the half-drawn curtain he could see that the inner room was also lighted.  Had they gone out, leaving everything like this?  Gone out!  His heart beat.  Bottles!  Larry had been drinking!