And above all I wanted to know what steps I must now take with regard to Julia Oliphant.
Of course I intended to tell her everything, and to tell him that I had done so. The worst I should risk would be his momentary anger that I had betrayed him. He had wished to spare her a meeting with himself, but he had not known that she was unsparable. More than that, she was indissuadable. I should not be able to keep her from him. And, if he clung so touchingly to me, found me so "magnificently steady," what comfort would he not find in that unvarying constancy of hers? He might break out on me for the moment, but he would bless me for it by and by.
I sat down in the other chair. I was very tired. I dozed.
In perhaps a quarter of an hour I opened my eyes again. He had not moved. It was a mild night, the deep chair was not uncomfortable, and I dozed again and again woke. Still he slept. I muttered a "Good night, poor old chap." I was too drowsy even to get up and turn down the incandescent light.
Afterwards he blamed himself that he had not sent me away; but that sleep had dropped on him like a falling beam. All his sleep, he explained, was like that. Immeasurable chasms of time seemed to have passed away between his closing his eyes and his opening them again.
A light creaking of his chair brought me suddenly wide awake and sitting up. A peep of grey daylight showed in the upper portion of the window-frame, but the incandescent mantle still glared yellowly above his head. He had moved, but without waking. He turned his head and slumbered on.
But the turn of his head had brought his face into the light....
He only shaved once a day, in the morning; and on the following morning he shaved again. But it was his whole beard that he thus shaved off daily, thirty days' growth in a night. He had had no set intention of growing that beard that I had seen in the hansom. A few days before coming to Trenchard's place he had woke up one morning, stroked his face, and found it there.
"Most certainly he shall write his book," Julia declared.
"We'll see about that. You don't think he'll give us the slip again?"
"I don't think so--I mean he doesn't seem to want to at present."
"And he was all right when you left him? Is he comfortable there? Had he a good breakfast? Was his bed made? Does anybody go in and clear up for him? Had he any flowers?"