It was just eleven when he issued from the big house in
Portland Place and refrained from taking a cab. He wanted to walk that
he might better think. What crude and wanton irony there was in his
situation! To have been made father-confessor to a murderer, he--well
on towards a judgeship! With his contempt for the kind of weakness which
landed men in such abysses, he felt it all so sordid, so "impossible,"
that he could hardly bring his mind to bear on it at all. And yet
he must, because of two powerful instincts--self-preservation and
blood-loyalty.
The wind had still the sapping softness of the afternoon, but rain had
held off so far. It was warm, and he unbuttoned his fur overcoat. The
nature of his thoughts deepened the dark austerity of his face, whose
thin, well-cut lips were always pressing together, as if, by meeting,
to dispose of each thought as it came up. He moved along the crowded
pavements glumly. That air of festive conspiracy which drops with the
darkness on to lighted streets, galled him. He turned off on a darker
route.
This ghastly business! Convinced of its reality, he yet could not see
it. The thing existed in his mind, not as a picture, but as a piece of
irrefutable evidence.
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