One o'clock boomed out in melancholy tones from the spire of St. Clements, answered by Big Ben in the distance, and a dozen city churches. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a hurried rush of someone up the stairs, then a long fumbling at the keyhole.
She went to the door and opened it, and the aspect of her lover, as he stood there with the light of the passage lamp falling on his distorted features was so terrible, that she shrunk back in fear.
"Don't be frightened, Edith, I won't hurt you—only drunk," and he laughed discordantly as he pushed by her without further greeting, without offering to kiss her, for which last omission she was thankful.
He entered the sitting-room, threw himself into a chair by the table, and buried his head in his hands, as he placed his elbows on the wine-stained mahogany.
What a contrast between this scene and one three years before! The chambers were the same, though not so tidy as of old; then it was summer. It was now winter, with no fire in the grate, and a cheerless look about the place. Then there were two, a man and a woman together—a man young, in the prime of life, happy, hopeful, and a girl of noble instincts, and lovely as the young Aphrodite. Now it was the same man but how changed, how fallen! and the woman was another—the evil genius of the man, just as the first woman might have been his good genius.
Susan stood by him for some minutes without speaking, too terrified to bring out the nasty little speech she had meditated before he came in.
At last she touched him on the shoulder. "Tommy, dear, you are ill."
He raised his head and stared at her with a look in which there was no recognition, and quite empty of its usual love, and said angrily, "Ill—not at all—who the deuce are you?—where's the brandy?"
He rose and walked to the cupboard, took out the decanter of brandy and a tumbler, which he half-filled and drank off.