AT noon the next day Annandale was not awake nor was he asleep. Through spaces in which memories met, entangled and sank, he was groping in search of himself. In these spaces there were things, some formless, others half-formed, that got between consciousness and interfered with the search.
These things pulled at him, tripped him, shoved him down to the memories that were sinking below. The spaces themselves were very dark. But, in the deeper depths, where memories swooned, the darkness was punctuated by slender flames the size of pins. They burned him.
Up and away he tried to rise. When he nearly succeeded, the things above, the things half-formed and formless that were waiting there, pushed him back. Again he tried. But the darkness was thick, the depths were thunderous, the things above pounded on his head, the thin flames lapped at him.
A force took and lifted him high, very high, and suddenly dropped him. In the abrupt descent he clutched at the things, but he was whirled through them to receding plains and up again, higher, still higher. There a ray filtered, in the light of which a memory staggered. He saw himself drinking in the rooms of that girl of Loftus. From there he passed into blankness at the end of which stood Sylvia, her face white and drawn. The vision vanished. Then it seemed to him that he was drinking with a fat man who had prominent teeth which he took from his mouth and changed into dice. But where? In hell, perhaps. Annandale was uncertain. He knew merely that he had been beastly drunk and that his head was simply splitting.
It continued to split. Hours later, sedatives and his servant aiding, the splitting ceased. But the blanks did not fill and though behind them he could not look, yet the subconscious self that registers and retains everything we do and hear and say prompted him dumbly that behind the blanks there lurked the dismal and, perhaps, the dire.
This foreboding he attributed to his nerves. As a matter of fact they were rather shaky. But inaction was intolerable. He tried to write a note to Sylvia, but his hand was insufficiently steady. Failing in that he told Harris to get some flowers, take them to Miss Waldron, and say that he would call that evening. When later the man returned he brought no answer to the message.
"Was Miss Waldron out?" Annandale asked.
"I could not say, sir. I gave the flowers to the maid, and said as how you would call this evening, sir. The maid came back and said Miss Waldron would not be at 'ome."
At this Annandale flushed. It is true he was flushed already. But the affront was a little more than he could stand. Was he not engaged to her? What did she mean? Yet, then, too, what had he done? He wished to the devil he could tell. Try, though, as he might, he could not recall a thing except a vision of the girl's face, white, drawn and angered. The rest was not blurred, it was blank. It was extremely unfortunate, and Annandale decided that he was both unhappy and misused.
These meditations Harris interrupted.