Loder waited until he heard the outer door close, then he crossed the room thoughtfully and dropped into the chair that she had vacated.  He sat for a time looking at the hand her fingers had touched; then he lifted his head with a characteristic movement.

“By Jove!” he said, aloud, “how cordially she detests tests him!”

IX

Loder slept soundly and dreamlessly in Chilcote’s canopied bed.  To him the big room with its severe magnificence suggested nothing of the gloom and solitude that it held in its owner’s eyes.  The ponderous furniture, the high ceiling, the heavy curtains, unchanged since the days of Chilcote’s grandfather, all hinted at a far-reaching ownership that stirred him.  The ownership was mythical in his regard, and the possessions a mirage, but they filled the day.  And, surely, sufficient for the day—­

That was his frame of mind as he opened his eyes on the following morning, and lay appreciative of his comfort, of the surrounding space, even of the light that filtered through the curtain chinks, suggestive of a world recreated.  With day, all things seem possible to a healthy man.  He stretched his arms luxuriously, delighting in the glossy smoothness of the sheets.

What was it Chilcote had said?  Better live for a day than exist for a lifetime!  That was true; and life had begun.  At thirty-six he was to know it for the first time.

He smiled, but without irony.  Man is at his best at thirty-six, he mused.  He has retained his enthusiasms and shed his exuberances; he has learned what to pick up and what to pass by; he no longer imagines that to drain a cup one must taste the dregs.  He closed his eyes and stretched again, not his arms only, but his whole body.  The pleasure of his mental state insisted on a physical expression.  Then, sitting up in bed, he pressed the electric bell.

Chilcote’s new valet responded.

“Pull those curtains, Renwick!” he said.  “What’s the time?” He had passed the ordeal of Renwick’s eyes the night before.

The man was slow, even a little stupid.  He drew back the curtains carefully, then looked at the small clock on the dressing-table.  “Eight o’clock, sir.  I didn’t expect the bell so early, sir.”

Loder felt reproved, and a pause followed.

“May I bring your cup of tea, sir?”

“No.  Not just yet.  I’ll have a bath first.”

Renwick showed ponderous uncertainty.  “Warm, sir?” he hazarded.

“No.  Cold.”

Still perplexed, the man left the room.

Loder smiled to himself.  The chances of discovery in that quarter were not large.  He was inclined to think that Chilcote had even overstepped necessity in the matter of his valet’s dullness.

He breakfasted alone, following Chilcote’s habit, and after breakfast found his way to the study.