He looked into my eyes, and I shivered; for, though I knew him to be sightless, he seemed to be looking into my soul.
"Sometimes I feel there's not room for compromise in this life," he said.
"You are—thirty? I'm afraid I'm a quarter of a century older, O'Rane."
"Thank God! there's room for inconsistency," he laughed.
I was at my office the following afternoon when George Oakleigh telephoned to say that his uncle wished to see me at once on a matter of urgency; could I make it convenient to come round immediately? I replied that it was exceedingly inconvenient, but that, if he could play truant from the Admiralty, I could absent myself equally well from my own department.
"Thank God you can come!" he exclaimed with disquieting fervour. "It's a bad business."
I arrived at "The Sanctuary" to find all silent and tense with expectant tragedy. Bertrand sprawled with slackened limbs on a long wicker chair, an untasted drink by his side and an unlighted cigar in his mouth. George was looking bleakly out of the window, with his right hand gripping his left wrist behind his back; the afternoon sun exposed every line and wrinkle of his face, and I found him ten years older, effortless and numbed.
"Tell me what's happened," I said, as I closed the door.
Bertrand looked at me for a moment, though I could see that his attention was wandering, and then turned to his nephew.