Tonight she must sleep.  Whilst undressing she measured the familiar draught of oblivion, and said to herself:  ‘The last time.’  She lay down in darkness, closed her eyes, and tried to think only of happy things.  But sleep would not come, and quiet thoughts would not linger with her.  More than an hour must have passed, when she heard Harvey come upstairs.  His step paused near her door, and she raised herself, listening.  He went on, and his own door closed.

Then, for a short time, she lost herself, but in no placid slumber.  Startled to wakefulness, she found that she had left her bed and was sitting on the chair beside it.  She felt for the matches, and lit a candle.  A great anguish of mind came upon her, but she could not shed tears; she wished to escape from her room to Harvey’s, but durst not look out into the dark passage.

When her heart grew quieter, she went again to the drawer in which she kept her remedy for insomnia.  Saying to herself, ’The last time —­ I shall be well again after tomorrow,’ she measured another dose, a larger, and drank it off.  Trembling now with cold, she crept into bed again, and lay watching the candle-flame.

Half an hour after this —­ it was about two o’clock —­ the handle of her door was turned, and Rolfe quietly looked in.  He had awoke with an anxious feeling; it seemed to him that he heard Alma’s voice, on the borderland of dream, calling his name.  But Alma lay asleep, breathing steadily, her face turned from the light.  As the candle had nearly burnt down, he blew it out, and went back to his bed.

At breakfast time Alma did not appear.  The housemaid said that, half an hour ago, she was still sleeping.  When he had had his meal with Hughie, Rolfe went up and entered his wife’s room.  Alma lay just as he had seen her in the night.  He looked close —­ laid his hand upon her ——­

A violent ringing of the bedroom bell brought up the servant.  Harvey met her at the door, and bade her run instantly to the doctor’s house, which was quite near.

The doctor could only say, ‘We warned her.’

CHAPTER 13

Sicut umbra praeterit dies.

The dial on the front of the old house was just shadowing four o’clock.  Harvey Rolfe and his friend Morton sat on the lawn, Harvey reading aloud from a small volume which he had slipped into his pocket before walking over this afternoon.  From another part of the garden sounded young voices, musical in their merriment.

It was a little book called ‘Barrack-Room Ballads’.  Harvey read in it here and there, with no stinted expression of delight, occasionally shouting his appreciation.  Morton, pipe in mouth, listened with a smile, and joined more moderately in the reader’s bursts of enthusiasm.

‘Here’s the strong man made articulate,’ cried Rolfe at length.  ’It’s no use; he stamps down one’s prejudice —­ what?  It’s the voice of the reaction.  Millions of men, natural men, revolting against the softness and sweetness of civilisation; men all over the world; hardly knowing what they want and what they don’t want; and here comes one who speaks for them —­ speaks with a vengeance.’