"Nothing, then."
"All-powerful. I cannot go. If I would go, I cannot. Perhaps—perhaps Jack is coming here."
The painter's eyes were blazing. Uniacke felt himself turn cold.
"Jack coming here!" he said harshly. "Nonsense, Sir Graham. Nobody ever comes here."
"Dead bodies come on the breast of the sea."
The painter looked towards the window, putting himself into an attitude of horrible expectation.
"Is it not so?" he asked, in a voice that quivered slightly as if with an agitation he was trying to suppress.
Uniacke made no reply. He was seized with a horror he had not known before. He recognised that the island influence mysteriously held his guest. After an interval he said abruptly:
"What is your doctor's name, did you say?"
"Did I ever say whom I had consulted?" said Sir Graham, almost with an invalid's ready suspicion, and peering at the clergyman under his thick eyebrows.