Now the mental excitement had worn itself out and collapsed, and she was aware only of the physical aversion. It rose up in her from her depths: and she realized how it had been eating her life away.

She felt weak and utterly forlorn. She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so–called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love. Look at Michaelis! His life and activity were just insanity. His love was a sort of insanity.

And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forwards! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal.

Connie felt washed–out with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs Bolton. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was NOT aware of the great desert tracts in his consciousness.

Mrs Bolton was admirable in many ways. ways But she had that queer sort of bossiness, endless assertion of her own will, which is one of the signs of insanity in modern woman. She THOUGHT she was utterly subservient and living for others. Clifford fascinated her because he always, or so of ten, frustrated her will, as if by a finer instinct. He had a finer, subtler will of self–assertion than herself. This was his charm for her.

Perhaps that had been his charm, too, for Connie.

‘It’s a lovely day, today!’ Mrs Bolton would say in her caressive, persuasive voice. ‘I should think you’d enjoy a little run in your chair today, the sun’s just lovely.’

‘Yes? Will you give me that book—there, that yellow one. And I think I’ll have those hyacinths taken out.’

‘Why they’re so beautiful!’ She pronounced it with the ‘y’ sound: be–yutiful! ‘And the scent is simply gorgeous.’

‘The scent is what I object to,’ he said. ‘It’s a little funereal.’

‘Do you think so!’ she exclaimed in surprise, just a little offended, but impressed. And she carried the hyacinths out of the room, impressed by his higher fastidiousness.

‘Shall I shave you this morning, or would you rather do it yourself?’ Always the same soft, caressive, subservient, yet managing voice.

‘I don’t know. Do you mind waiting a while. I’ll ring when I’m ready.’

‘Very good, Sir Clifford!’ she replied, so soft and submissive, withdrawing quietly. But every rebuff stored up new energy of will in her.

When he rang, after a time, she would appear at once. And then he would say:

‘I think I’d rather you shaved me this morning.’

Her heart gave a little thrill, and she replied with extra softness:

‘Very good, Sir Clifford!’

“There’s a constable in possession,” said Baynes. “I’ll knock at the window.” He stepped across the grass plot and tapped with his hand on the pane. Through the fogged glass I dimly saw a man spring up from a chair beside the fire, and heard a sharp cry from within the room. An instant later a white-faced, hard-breathing policeman had opened the door, the candle wavering in his trembling hand.

“What’s the matter, Walters?” asked Baynes sharply.

The man mopped his forehead with his handkerchief and gave a long sigh of relief.

“I am glad you have come, sir. It has been a long evening, and I don’t think my nerve is as good as it was.”

“Your nerve, Walters? I should not have thought you had a nerve in your body.”

“Well, sir, it’s this lonely, silent house and the queer thing in the kitchen. Then when you tapped at the window I thought it had come again.”

“That what had come again?”

“The devil, sir, for all I know. It was at the window.”

“What was at the window, and when?”

“It was just about two hours ago. The light was just fading. I was sitting reading in the chair. I don’t know what made me look up, but there was a face looking in at me through the lower pane. Lord, sir, what a face it was! I’ll see it in my dreams.”

“Tut, tut, Walters. This is not talk for a police-constable.”

“I know sir, I know; but it shook me sir, and there’s no use to deny it. it wasn’t black, sir, nor was it white, nor any colour that I know, but a kind of queer shade like clay with a splash of milk in it. Then there was the size of it — it was twice yours, sir. And the look of it — the great staring goggle eyes, and the line of white teeth like a hungry beast. I tell you, sir, I couldn’t move a finger, nor get my breath, till it whisked away and was gone. Out I ran and through the shrubbery, but thank God there was no one there.”

“If I didn’t know you were a good man, Walters, I should put a black mark against you for this. If it were the devil himself a constable on duty should never thank God that he could not lay his hands upon him. I suppose the whole thing is not a vision and a touch of nerves?”

“That, at least, is very easily settled,” said Holmes, lighting his little pocket lantern. “Yes,” he reported, after a short examination of the grass bed, “a number twelve shoe, I should say. If he was all on the same scale as his foot he must certainly have been a giant.”

“What became of him?”

“He seems to have broken through the shrubbery and made for the road.”

“Well,” said the inspector with a grave and thoughtful face, “whoever he may have been, and whatever he may have wanted, he’s gone for the present, and we have more immediate things to attend to. Now, Mr. Holmes, with your permission, I will show you round the house.”