For the last hour he had been completely absorbed in his sport; now with a snap like that of a released spring his mind leaped back to that which had occupied it as he walked here and saw the dust of his brother’s motor-bicycle hanging in the air. He had locked up in his mind, when he began his shooting, all connection with that, his hate, the sleepless night with its visions that seemed so wild at the time, but which, on his waking, had taken on so much quieter and more likely an aspect, and now, when he unlocked his mind again, he found that they had grown like fungi in the darkness of a congenial atmosphere. They were solid and mature: where before there had been but a fairy-ring of imagination, where nightly elves had danced, there were now those red, firm-fleshed, poisoned growths, glistening and corrupt.
His subconscious mind poured out its storage: it had been busy while he was shooting, and wonderfully acute. It reminded him now that a quarter of a mile further on, the Old Park came to an end, and one clump of rhododendrons stood behind the wall which ran along the road. Just here the road took a sharp turn to the right: a man walking along it (or, for that matter, bicycling along it) would only come into sight of any one who might happen to be by that rhododendron bush half-a-dozen yards before he came to it himself, and anything else he might see there (a gun, for instance) would be at point-blank range. Such a gun-barrel would rest conveniently on the top of the wall; any one who happened to be holding the weapon would be concealed between the wall and the bush....
These pictures seemed to be shewn Raymond rather than to be imagined by him; it was as if some external agency held open the book which contained them and turned over the leaves. It might prove to be himself who would presently lie _perdu_ there, but he had no sense of any personal volition or share in the matter. His hatred of Colin had somehow taken counsel (even as doctors consult over a bad case) with the necessity that Colin should die, and this was their advice; Raymond was but the patient who in the apathy of sickness was going to do as they told him, not caring much what happened, only conscious that if this advice was successful in all its aspects, he would be restored to complete health.