“‘Are you feeling tired?’ he said to her at length, with a smile.
“She laughed, and, calling him a lazy old thing, asked what it was he wanted.
“‘Only my novel that I was reading. I left it in my den. Do you mind? You will find it open on the couch.’
“She sprang up and ran lightly to the door.
“As she paused there for a moment to look back at him and ask the name of the book, he thought how pretty and how sweet she was; and for the first time a faint glimmer of the true nature of the thing he was doing forced itself into his brain.
“‘Never mind,’ he said, half rising, ‘I’ll—’; then, enamoured of the brilliancy of his plan, checked himself; and she was gone.
“He heard her footsteps passing along the matted passage, and smiled to himself. He thought the affair was going to be rather amusing. One finds it difficult to pity him even now when one thinks of it.
“The smoking-room door opened and closed, and he still sat gazing dreamily at the ash of his cigar, and smiling.
“One moment, perhaps two passed, but the time seemed much longer. The man blew the gray cloud from before his eyes and waited. Then he heard what he had been expecting to hear—a piercing shriek. Then another, which, expecting to hear the clanging of the distant door and the scurrying back of her footsteps along the passage, puzzled him, so that the smile died away from his lips.
“Then another, and another, and another, shriek after shriek.