The letter to Arnold Jacks was already composed; she knew it by
heart, and had but to write it out. In the course of a sleepless
night, this was done. In the early glimmer of a day of drizzle and
fog, the letter went to post.
There needed courage--yes, there needed courage--on a morning
such as this, when the skyless atmosphere weighed drearily on heart
and mind, when hope had become a far-off thing, banished for long
months from a grey, cold world, to go through with the task which
Irene had set herself. Could she but have slept, it might have been
easier for her; she had to front it with an aching head, with eyes
that dazzled, with blood fevered into cowardice.
Dr. Derwent was plainly in no mood for conversation. His voice had
been seldom heard during the past week. At the breakfast-table he
read his letters, glanced over the paper, exchanged a few sentences
with Eustace, said a kind word to Olga; when he rose, one saw that
he hoped for a quiet morning in his laboratory.
"Could I see you for half an hour before lunch, father?"
He looked into the speaker's face, surprised at something unusual in
her tone, and nodded without smiling.
"When you like."
She stood at the window of the drawing-room, looking over the
enclosure in the square, the dreary so-called garden, with its gaunt
leafless trees that dripped and oozed. Opposite was the long facade
of characterless houses, like to that in which she lived; the steps,
the door-columns, the tall narrow windows; above them, murky vapour.
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