He did not raise his eyes. But he waited for a long interval, during which the silence in the room became so heavy and cold that it almost blotted out the sunlight.
“But have patience with me. I want to serve you. Oh, you don’t know how I want to serve you. I give you my word, I’ll get it sometime and I think not too late. I’ll kill myself if I don’t. I’m putting all I am and all I have into trying to understand. Don’t give me up. It’s only because I’m flesh and blood.”
He stopped and raised his eyes.
The room was empty.
That afternoon Lindsay took a walk so long, so devil-driven that he came back streaming perspiration from every pore. Mrs. Spash regarded him with a glance in which disapproval struggled with sympathy. “I don’t know as you’d ought to wear yourself out like that, Mr. Lindsay. Later, perhaps you’ll need all your strength—”
“Very likely you’re right, Mrs. Spash,” Lindsay agreed. “But I’ve been trying to work it out.”
Mrs. Spash left as usual at about seven. By nine, the last remnant of the long twilight, a collaboration of midsummer with daylight-saving, had disappeared. Lindsay lighted his lamp and sat down with Lutetia’s poems. The room was peculiarly cheerful. The beautiful Murray sideboard, recently discovered and recovered, held its accustomed place between the two windows. The old Murray clock, a little ship swinging back and forth above its brass face, ticked in the corner. The old whale-oil lamps had resumed their stand, one at either end of the mantel. Old pieces, old though not Lutetia’s—they were gone irretrievably—bits picked up here and there, made the deep sea-shell corner cabinet brilliant with the color of old china, glimmery with the shine of old pewter, sparkly with the glitter of old glass. Many chairs—windsors, comb-backs, a Boston rocker—filled the empty spaces with an old-time flavor. In traditional places, high old glasses held flowers. The single anachronism was the big, nickel, green-shaded student lamp.
Lindsay needed rest, but he could not go to bed. He knew perfectly well that he was exhausted, but he knew equally well that he was not drowsy. His state of mind was abnormal. Perhaps the three large cups of jet-black coffee that he had drunk at dinner helped in this matter. But whatever the cause, he was conscious of every atom of this exaggerated spiritual alertness; of the speed with which his thoughts drove; of the almost insupportable mental clarity through which they shot.
“If this keeps up,” he meditated, “it’s no use my going to bed at all tonight. I could not possibly sleep.”