"You don't mind leaving me?"
"I think you wish me to leave you—"
"Perhaps I do," he said, watching her to see if she winced at the words.
But her face was still and calm.
"What then?"
"Then it is better for me to go for a little while than to stay."
"For a little while," he repeated, "yes."
He turned and went slowly out of the room, and suddenly his face was distorted. For, in the darkness of the hall, he heard the child crying and lamenting. He stopped and listened to it like a man who resolutely faces his destruction. And, as so many times, he asked himself; "Is this a freak of my imagination, a trick of my nerves?" No, the sound was surely real, was close to him. It thrilled in his ears keenly. He could not doubt its reality. Yet he acknowledged to himself that he could not actually locate it. Only in that respect did it differ from other sounds of earth. As he stood in the half darkness, listening, a horror, greater than he had ever felt before, came over him. The cry seemed to him menacing, no longer merely a cry for sympathy, for assistance, no longer merely the cry of a helpless creature in pain. He turned white and sick, and clapped his two hands to his ears. And just as he did so the dining-room door opened and Lily came out, a thin stream of light following her and falling upon Maurice. He started at the vision of her and at the revealing illumination. His nerves were quivering. His whole body seemed to vibrate.
"Don't come near me," he cried out to Lily. "It is worse since you are with me. Your presence makes my danger. Ah!"
And with a cry he dashed into his study, banging the door behind him, as if he fled from her.