He scrambled into bed and instantly fell asleep, while the lovely face of Rita Wallace was the first thing that swam into his disordered brain.
In a remote village of Norfolk, not a quarter of a mile from Gilbert Lothian's own house, a keen-faced man with a pointed beard, a slim, alert figure like an osier wand and steely brown eyes was reading a thin green-covered book of poems.
Now and then he made a pencil note in the margin. His face was alive with interest, almost with excitement. It was as though he were tracing something, hunting for some secret hidden in the pages.
More than once he gave a subdued exclamation of excitement.
"It's there!" he said at last to himself. "Yes, it is there! I'm sure of it, quite apart from what I've heard in the village since I came."
He rose, put the book carefully away in a drawer, locked it, blew out the lamp and went to bed.
Three hundred miles away in Cornwall, a crippled spinster was lying on her bed of pain in a cottage by the sea.
The windows of her room were open and the moon-rays touched a white Crucifix upon the wall to glory.
The Atlantic groundswell upon the distant beaches made a sound as of fairy drums.
The light of a shaded candle fell upon the white coverlet of her bed, and upon a book bound in sage-green and gold which lay there.