Then the memory of his wife's faults came up before him like an indictment seeking her life. She was flighty, unwise, dull, uncompanionable—intemperate.
She was no pleasure to him. She seemed to be the source of no pleasure to herself. If the Powers of good would only take her, what a blessed relief to him!
If the Powers of any denomination whatever would only take her and leave him free!
He rose, and strode up and down the long room, his face puckered and pinched, his hands clutched, his eyebrows dragged down over his eyes until the eyes disappeared, those eyes wont to be so free and open.
If the Powers of any denomination whatever——His thoughts paused a while, his brows relaxed, his whole face changed character, put on holiday attire. With a light foot and a pleasant smile he approached the chimney-piece and pulled the bell.
"James," he said, when the man entered, "bring me a flask of cognac."
While the servant was going to the cellar he said to himself, with a gentle smile, "I have been very thoughtless about that press in the Tower of Silence. I have left claret and port and sherry there, but until now I never remembered brandy! How careless I have been."
In a few minutes James returned with the bottle, drew the cork, decanted the brandy, and left.
Grey took up the decanter with a cordial smile on his face, walked towards the tower-room, the first-floor room in the Tower of Silence upon the top of which the wasted skeleton of the huge tank stood out clear against the quiet summer stars.
It was now past eleven o'clock. No profounder silence reigned by night in deserted mine deep in the bowels of the earth, in Asian desert open to the glittering stars and the pale radiance of the moon, on the dark peaks of mighty alp that reaches upward into the thin windless air, than in the chambers and passages of the fearful Manor House.