‘I understood,’ she said, turning slowly in her chair, ‘you gave me to understand that you went out with the specific intention of trying to regain.... But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I must be getting a little bit hardened to the position, so far at least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose part you play so admirably you could scarcely spend a more active life.’
‘All you mean, Sheila, I suppose, is that I have failed.’
‘“Failed” did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just now in your clothes on the bed, one might for the moment be deceived into thinking there was a slight—quite the slightest improvement. There was not quite that’—she hovered for the right word—‘that tenseness. Whether or not, whether you desired any such change or didn’t, I should have supposed in any case it would have been better to act as far as possible like any ordinary person. You were certainly in an extraordinarily sound sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I remembered that it was a little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to keep myself awake and discovered that you had only just come home. I had no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my headaches; a little thought might possibly have suggested that I should be anxious to hear. But no; it seems I cannot profit by experience, Arthur. And even now you have not answered surely a very natural question. You do not recollect, perhaps, exactly what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction even of Widderstone?’
‘Yes, Sheila, I went to Widderstone.’
‘It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside the broken-down grave of a suicide would have the slightest effect on one’s—one’s physical condition; though possibly it might affect one’s brain. It would mine; I am at least certain of that. It was your own prescription, however; and it merely occurred to me to inquire whether the actual experience has not brought you round to my own opinion.’
‘Yes, I think it has,’ Lawford answered calmly. ‘But I don’t quite see what suicide has got to do with it; unless—You know Widderstone, then, Sheila?’
‘I drove there last Saturday afternoon.’
‘For prayer or praise?’ Although Lawford had not actually raised his head, he became conscious rather of the wonderfully adjusted mass of hair than of the pained dignity in the face that was now closely regarding him.
‘I went,’ came the rigidly controlled retort, ‘simply to test an inconceivable story.’
‘And returned?’