But there came no answer from the hollow empty house and presently the paroxysm passed and he looked up slowly seeing, as it were, a vision of himself false to every tradition of manhood he had held most dear.
"Coward!" he said. "Rotten blasted coward! Three weeks and this is the last day." He looked at his watch. "Only another hour and then I'm free to speak. Stick it for another hour. Stick it for another hour."
And the very saying of the words seemed to increase his stature, swell his chest, revitalise his manhood.
When a moment later the door opened and Van Diest chanting his perpetual hymn came quietly into the room he found Richard rocking on his heels beside a chair beating time to the music with a shaking forefinger while from his parched lips he emitted a pathetic pretence at whistling the same tune.
"S'bad," muttered Hugo Van Diest. "S'bad business. Must tink all the time and be worried by dese things. For God's sake you don't fidget. You tink all the suffering was wit you, but it was inside of me where the pain live."
"Ha ha!" said Richard.
"Discomfort is nutting. I haf before me the prospec' to be beat. It wass the torture to be beat. You know that."
"Not yet."
"Mus' be taught."
"Ha ha!" said Richard again and banged the dish cover against the table implements of a foodless tray that had marked the hour of a meal time.