‘I must wash,’ said Stephen hoarsely, when she told him breakfast was ready and would do him good.
She conducted him to the bathroom.
‘I must shave,’ he said, looking at her with hollow eyes. ‘I have to preach this morning. I must go back to my hotel and shave.’
‘Oh no, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham; and brought him George’s razors—a little blunt, but yet razors.
He stared at them. His eyes seemed to become more hollow.
‘Razors?’ he said. ‘Here?’
That there should be razors in the apartment of a widow——
‘The late Mr. Cumfrit’s, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham.
Of course. Really his control was gone; he was no longer apparently able to keep his thoughts from plunging into the most incredible places.
He stropped the razors, thinking of the probable last time they had been stropped by his father-in-law before being folded away by him who would never strop again, and shaved in front of the glass in the bathroom before which the excellent man must so often have stood. Pulvis et umbra sumum, said Stephen to himself in his profound dejection, forgetting for a moment the glorious resurrection he so carefully believed in. At what point did one, he wondered, his mind returning to his troubles,—at what point did one, in the circumstances in which he found himself, inform the police?