anticipation that, lying like a chained animal, deep in the recesses of his brain, must soon be loosed and then bravely faced. But not yet, oh no, not yet! Let his mind stay with the past as long as it might.
In the past was Crispin. He looked back over that first meeting with him, the actual moment when he had asked him for a match, the dinner, the return to the hotel when, influenced then by all that Dunbar had told him, he had seen him standing there, the polite gestures, the hospitable words, the drive in the motor.... His mind stopped abruptly there. The door swung to, the lock was turned.
In that earlier Crispin there had been something deeply pathetic—and when he dared to look forward—he would see that in the later Crispin there was the same. So with a sudden flash of lightning revelation that seemed to flare through the whole dark room he saw that it was not the real Crispin with whom they—Hesther, Dunbar and he—were dealing at all.
No more than the ravings of fever were the real patient, the wicked cancerous growth the real body, the broken glass the real picture that seemed to be shattered beneath it.
They were dealing with a wild and dangerous animal, and in the grip of that animal, pitiably, was the true struggling suffering soul of Crispin. Not
