“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it.”
“Then I may as well turn in.”
Eric threw off the dressing-gown and put on his pyjamas. The doctor, he knew, was watching him, but he was successfully deliberate and composed. They shook hands and said good-night without emotion or straining after heroics. There was a half-heard phrase about “having another word with” him in the morning. Eric lay for a few moments in darkness, waiting to hear the doctor’s car drive away; there was no sound, however, and he was asleep before he had done speculating whether Gaisford had come on foot or in a car....
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOURNEY’S END
“Your distresses in your journey... are proper seasonings for the greater fatigues and distresses, which you must expect in your travels; and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which everyone meets with in his journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the voiture that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better or worse; though, at best you will now and then find some bad roads and some bad inns....
“My long and frequent letters which I send you, in great doubt of their success, put me in mind of certain papers which you have very lately, and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we call messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite....”
Lord Chesterfield to his son.
“Miss Maitland asked me to say she would like to see you as soon as you are ready.”