The blood flowed slowly back into Sally's face, and her heart, whichhad leaped madly for an instant at the sound of his voice, resumed itsnormal beat. The suddenness of the shock over, she was surprised to findherself perfectly calm. Always when she had imagined this meeting,knowing that it would have to take place sooner or later, she had feltsomething akin to panic: but now that it had actually occurred it hardlyseemed to stir her. The events of the night had left her incapable ofany violent emotion.

　　"Hullo, Sally!" said Gerald.

　　He spoke thickly, and there was a foolish smile on his face as he stoodswaying with one hand on the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves,collarless: and it was plain that he had been drinking heavily. His facewas white and puffy, and about him there hung like a nimbus a soddendisreputableness.

　　Sally did not speak. Weighed down before by a numbing exhaustion, sheseemed now to have passed into that second phase in which over-tirednerves enter upon a sort of Indian summer of abnormal alertness. Shelooked at him quietly, coolly and altogether dispassionately, as if hehad been a stranger.

　　"Hullo!" said Gerald again.

　　"What do you want?" said Sally.

　　"Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'd come in.""What do you want?"The weak smile which had seemed pinned on Gerald's face vanished. Atear rolled down his cheek. His intoxication had reached the maudlinstage.

　　"Sally... S-Sally... I'm very miserable." He slurred awkwardly over thedifficult syllables. "Heard your voice. Saw the door open. Thought I'dcome in."Something flicked at the back of Sally's mind. She seemed to have beenthrough all this before. Then she remembered. This was simply Mr.

　　Reginald Cracknell over again.

　　"I think you had better go to bed, Gerald," she said steadily. Nothingabout him seemed to touch her now, neither the sight of him nor hisshameless misery.

　　"What's the use? Can't sleep. No good. Couldn't sleep. Sally, youdon't know how worried I am. I see what a fool I've been."Sally made a quick gesture, to check what she supposed was about todevelop into a belated expression of regret for his treatment ofherself. She did not want to stand there listening to Gerald apologizingwith tears for having done his best to wreck her life. But it seemedthat it was not this that was weighing upon his soul.

　　"I was a fool ever to try writing plays," he went on. "Got a winnerfirst time, but can't repeat. It's no good. Ought to have stuck tonewspaper work. I'm good at that. Shall have to go back to it. Hadanother frost to-night. No good trying any more. Shall have to go backto the old grind, damn it."He wept softly, full of pity for his hard case.

　　"Very miserable," he murmured.

　　He came forward a step into the room, lurched, and retreated to thesafe support of the door. For an instant Sally's artificial calm wasshot through by a swift stab of contempt. It passed, and she was backagain in her armour of indifference.

　　"Go to bed, Gerald," she said. "You'll feel better in the morning."Perhaps some inkling of how he was going to feel in the morning workedthrough to Gerald's muddled intelligence, for he winced, and his mannertook on a deeper melancholy.

　　"May not be alive in the morning," he said solemnly. "Good mind to endit all. End it all!" he repeated with the beginning of a sweepinggesture which was cut off abruptly as he clutched at the friendly door.

　　Sally was not in the mood for melodrama.

　　"Oh, go to bed," she said impatiently. The strange frozen indifferencewhich had gripped her was beginning to pass, leaving in its place agrowing feeling of resentment--resentment against Gerald for degradinghimself like this, against herself for ever having found glamour in theman. It humiliated her to remember how utterly she had once allowed hispersonality to master hers. And under the sting of this humiliation shefelt hard and pitiless. Dimly she was aware that a curious change hadcome over her to-night. Normally, the sight of any living thing indistress was enough to stir her quick sympathy: but Gerald mourning overthe prospect of having to go back to regular work made no appeal toher--a fact which the sufferer noted and commented upon.

　　"You're very unsymp... unsympathetic," he complained.

　　"I'm sorry," said Sally. She walked briskly to the door and gave it apush. Gerald, still clinging to his chosen support, moved out into thepassage, attached to the handle, with the air of a man the foundationsof whose world have suddenly lost their stability. He released thehandle and moved uncertainly across the passage. Finding his own dooropen before him, he staggered over the threshold; and Sally, havingwatched him safely to his journey's end, went into her bedroom with theintention of terminating this disturbing night by going to sleep.

　　Almost immediately she changed her mind. Sleep was out of the question.

　　A fever of restlessness had come upon her. She put on a kimono, and wentinto the kitchen to ascertain whether her commissariat arrangementswould permit of a glass of hot milk.

　　She had just remembered that she had that morning presented the last ofthe milk to a sandy cat with a purposeful eye which had dropped inthrough the window to take breakfast with her, when her regrets forthis thriftless hospitality were interrupted by a muffled crash.

　　She listened intently. The sound had seemed to come from across thepassage. She hurried to the door and opened it. As she did so, frombehind the door of the apartment opposite there came a perfect fusilladeof crashes, each seeming to her strained hearing louder and moreappalling than the last.

　　There is something about sudden, loud noises in the stillness of thenight which shatters the most rigid detachment. A short while before,Gerald, toying with the idea of ending his sorrows by violence, had leftSally unmoved: but now her mind leapt back to what he had said, andapprehension succeeded indifference. There was no disputing the factthat Gerald was in an irresponsible mood, under the influence of whichhe was capable of doing almost anything. Sally, listening in thedoorway, felt a momentary panic.

　　A brief silence had succeeded the fusillade, but, as she stood therehesitating, the noise broke out again; and this time it was so loud andcompelling that Sally hesitated no longer. She ran across the passageand beat on the door.

　　Whatever devastating happenings had been going on in his home, it wasplain a moment later that Gerald had managed to survive them: for therecame the sound of a dragging footstep, and the door opened. Gerald stoodon the threshold, the weak smile back on his face.

　　"Hullo, Sally!"At the sight of him, disreputable and obviously unscathed, Sally'sbrief alarm died away, leaving in its place the old feeling of impatientresentment. In addition to her other grievances against him, he hadapparently frightened her unnecessarily.

　　"Whatever was all that noise?" she demanded.

　　"Noise?" said Gerald, considering the point open-mouthed.

　　"Yes, noise," snapped Sally.

　　"I've been cleaning house," said Gerald with the owl-like gravity of aman just conscious that he is not wholly himself.

　　Sally pushed her way past him. The apartment in which she found herselfwas almost an exact replica of her own, and it was evident that ElsaDoland had taken pains to make it pretty and comfortable in a nigglyfeminine way. Amateur interior decoration had always been a hobby ofhers. Even in the unpromising surroundings of her bedroom at Mrs.

　　Meecher's boarding-house she had contrived to create a certaindaintiness which Sally, who had no ability in that direction herself,had always rather envied. As a decorator Elsa's mind ran in thedirection of small, fragile ornaments, and she was not afraid ofover-furnishing. Pictures jostled one another on the walls: china of alldescription stood about on little tables: there was a profusion of lampswith shades of parti-coloured glass: and plates were ranged along aseries of shelves.

　　One says that the plates were ranged and the pictures jostled oneanother, but it would be more correct to put it they had jostled and hadbeen ranged, for it was only by guess-work that Sally was able toreconstruct the scene as it must have appeared before Gerald hadstarted, as he put it, to clean house. She had walked into the flatbriskly enough, but she pulled up short as she crossed the threshold,appalled by the majestic ruin that met her gaze. A shell bursting in thelittle sitting-room could hardly have created more havoc.

　　The psychology of a man of weak character under the influence of alcoholand disappointed ambition is not easy to plumb, for his moods follow oneanother with a rapidity which baffles the observer. Ten minutes before,Gerald Foster had been in the grip of a clammy self-pity, and it seemedfrom his aspect at the present moment that this phase had returned. Butin the interval there had manifestly occurred a brief but adequate spasmof what would appear to have been an almost Berserk fury. What hadcaused it and why it should have expended itself so abruptly, Sally wasnot psychologist enough to explain; but that it had existed there wasocular evidence of the most convincing kind. A heavy niblick, flungpetulantly--or remorsefully--into a corner, showed by what medium thedestruction had been accomplished.

　　Bleak chaos appeared on every side. The floor was littered with everyimaginable shape and size of broken glass and china. Fragments ofpictures, looking as if they had been chewed by some prehistoric animal,lay amid heaps of shattered statuettes and vases. As Sally moved slowlyinto the room after her involuntary pause, china crackled beneath herfeet. She surveyed the stripped walls with a wondering eye, and turnedto Gerald for an explanation.

　　Gerald had subsided on to an occasional table, and was weeping softlyagain. It had come over him once more that he had been very, very badlytreated.

　　"Well!" said Sally with a gasp. "You've certainly made a good job ofit!"There was a sharp crack as the occasional table, never designed by itsmaker to bear heavy weights, gave way in a splintering flurry of brokenlegs under the pressure of the master of the house: and Sally's moodunderwent an abrupt change. There are few situations in life which donot hold equal potentialities for both tragedy and farce, and it was theludicrous side of this drama that chanced to appeal to Sally at thismoment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could haveanalysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking--at the feeblesentimental Sally who had once conceived the absurd idea of taking thispreposterous man seriously. She felt light-hearted and light-headed, andshe sank into a chair with a gurgling laugh.

　　The shock of his fall appeared to have had the desirable effect ofrestoring Gerald to something approaching intelligence. He pickedhimself up from the remains of a set of water-colours, gazing at Sallywith growing disapproval.

　　"No sympathy," he said austerely.

　　"I can't help it," cried Sally. "It's too funny.""Not funny," corrected Gerald, his brain beginning to cloud once more.

　　"What did you do it for?"Gerald returned for a moment to that mood of honest indignation, whichhad so strengthened his arm when wielding the niblick. He bethought himonce again of his grievance.

　　"Wasn't going to stand for it any longer," he said heatedly. "Af............