Laughter burst into the room.
Pangbutt moved uneasily:
“How oddly those men laugh!” he said.
“You are grown suspicious, Paul—they are not even thinking of us.... Every nudge at the elbow is not Envy.”
Pangbutt sighed, and turned his eyes inwards again towards the man who interested him most:
“I begin to think,” said he, “that I have been living in a fools’ paradise.”
Caroline’s eyes hardened:
“There are worse things than a fools’ paradise,” she said. “The man who lives for himself alone may awake one day to find himself in a mad-house—one with all the other ghosts that flit about his prison—a shadow amongst shadows, seeking shadows.”
“A shadow?”
She nodded: