"There's the money and this is Monday. If you are not off the island by this day week I'll not leave matters to Farrell—I'll have you put into a madhouse myself to prevent you from plunging us all into disgrace and ruin. Idiot! Fool! Madman!"
He screamed like a sea-gull until his breath was gone, and then, gesticulating wildly, went downstairs with heavy thudding steps like a man walking on stilts.
A few minutes later Gell, going to the window with wet eyes, saw his father on the opposite side of the street, looking up at the house as if half minded to return. His stick fell from his nervous hand, and with difficulty he picked it up. It dropped again, and a passer-by handed it back. Then he went off in the direction of the railway station, dragging his feet after him.
II
Frightened by what his father had said about the intention of the Chief Constable to have him arrested as insane, Gell stayed indoors altogether.
This meant days without food. At first he drank a great deal of water, being very thirsty. Then his thirst abated and his head began to feel light. After a while he became dizzy, and even in the darkness everything seemed to float about him.
On the morning after his father's visit he heard a woman's step on the stairs, followed by her knock at his door. He thought it was his sister Isabella and that she had come, with her sharp tongue, to remonstrate, so he made no answer.
On the day following he heard the same light step. Isabella again! But no, she had always railed against Bessie, and he was not going to give her another opportunity of doing so.
Meantime, without food or drink, he was travelling fast towards the borderland of the desert realm of Insanity, with its cruelly-beautiful mirages.
Lying on his sofa with eyes closed he was picturing to himself the day of Bessie's release, when he would go to Castletown to bring her away, and then the day after, when he would marry her, and then the day after that when they would leave the island for America—Bessie walking along the pier with head down, but himself with head up, as if saying, "There you are—I told you so!"