The Return | Page 8

while, then he deliberately sat
down once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his mind
seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. 'What is it really? What is it
really?--really?' He sat there and it seemed to him his body was
transparent as glass. It seemed he had no body at all--only the memory
of an hallucinatory reflection in the glass, and this inward voice crying,
arguing, questioning, threatening out of the silence--'What is it
really--really-- REALLY?' And at last, cold, wearied out, he rose once
more and leaned between the two long candle-flames, and stared
on--on--on, into the glass.
He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks to
do--lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible pause
between the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture
that the face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to
his fainter secondary thoughts; as if these unfamiliar features were not
entirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass before
him, tell precisely what that face WAS expressing. He was still, it
seemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for certain when Sheila
returned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, or was
in pain: he would have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in some
unheard-of snare--caught, how? when? where? by whom?
CHAPTER TWO
But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain extent
calmed Lawford's mind and given him confidence. Hitherto he had met
the little difficulties of life only to vanquish them with ease and
applause. Now he was standing face to face with the unknown. He
burst out laughing, into a long, low, helpless laughter. Then he arose
and began to walk softly, swiftly, to and fro across the room--from wall
to wall seven paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightly-lit
profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil surface of the looking-glass.
The power of concentration was gone again. He simply paced on

mechanically, listening to a Babel of questions, a conflicting medley of
answers. But above all the confusion and turmoil of his brain, as a
boatswain's whistle rises above a storm, so sounded that same
infinitesimal voice, incessantly repeating another question now, 'What
are you going to do? What are you going to do?'
And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it were, came
another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to utter stillness again.
'It's nearly half-past eight, Arthur; I can't wait any longer.'
Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and confronted
the closed door. 'Very well, Sheila, you shall not wait any longer.' He
crossed over to the door, and suddenly a swift crafty idea flashed into
his mind.
He tapped on the panel. 'Sheila,' he said softly, 'I want you first, before
you come in, to get me something out of my old writing-desk in the
smoking-room. Here is the key.' He pushed a tiny key--from off the
ring he carried--beneath the door. 'In the third little drawer from the top,
on the left side, is a letter; please don't say anything now. It is the letter
you wrote me, you will remember, after I had asked you to marry me.
You scribbled in the corner under your signature the initials
"Y.S.O.A."--do you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!--do
you remember? Will you please get that letter at once?'
'Arthur,' answered the voice from without, empty of all expression,
'what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless nonsense about a
silly letter? What has happened? Is this a miserable form of persecution?
Are you mad?--I refuse to get the letter.'
Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. 'I am not mad.
Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the letter, if only
for your own peace of mind.' He heard his wife hesitate as she turned.
He heard a sob. And once more he waited.
'I have brought the letter,' came the low toneless voice again.

'Have you opened it?'
There was a rustle of paper. 'Are the letters there underlined three
times--"Y.S.O.A."?'
'The letters are there.'
'And the date of the month is underneath, "April 3rd." No one else in
the whole world, living or dead, could know of this but ourselves,
Sheila?'
'Will you please open the door?'
'No one?'
'I suppose not--no one.'
'Then come in.' He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark, rather
handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark rich colour
entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in shadow. He had
still a moment's respite.
'I need not ask you to be patient,' he began quickly;