“You look so tired! I feel responsible. I’ve been so very difficult, haven’t I? But I’m not going to be silly any more. And—and isn’t there anything I can do? You are tired, you know.”
Anthony smiled and shook his head.
Suddenly: “Fool that I am!” she exclaimed; and was gone from the room.
Anthony blinked wonderingly. He found consecutive thought difficult. This sudden recurrence of fatigue was a nuisance. “Haven’t seen her laugh yet,” he murmured. “Must make her laugh. Want to hear. Now, what in hell do we do if Brother James turns out to be the dastardly assassin after all? But I don’t believe he is. It wouldn’t fit. No, not at all!”
His eyes closed. With an effort, he opened them. To hold sleep at bay he picked up a book that lay beside him on the couch. He found it to be a collection of essays, seemingly written in pleasant and even scholarly fashion. He flicked over the leaves. A passage caught his eye. “And so it is with the romantic. He is as a woman enslaved by drugs. From that first little sniff grows the craving, from the craving the necessity, from the necessity—facilis descensus Averno.…”
The quotation set his mind working lazily. So unusual to find that dative case; they nearly all used the almost-as-correct but less pleasant ‘Averni.’ But he seemed to have seen ‘Averno’ somewhere else, quite recently, too. Funny coincidence.
The book slipped from his hand to the floor. In a soft wave, sleep came over him again. His eyes closed.
He opened them to hear the door of the room closed softly. From behind him came a pleasant sound. He sat upright, turning to investigate.
Beside a small, tray-laden table stood his hostess. She was pouring whisky from decanter to tumbler with a grave preoccupation which lent an added charm to her beauty. Anthony, barely awake, exclaimed aloud.
She turned in a flash. “You were asleep,” she said, and blushed under the stare of the green eyes.