Presently the huge house sank into a silence even more profound than
that in which it was now steeped by day. A cold autumn wind blew round
about it. After midnight the wind dropped, and the temperature with it.
The first severe frost laid its grip on forest and down and garden.
Silently the dahlias and the roses died, the leaves shrivelled and
blackened, and a cold and glorious moon rose upon the ruins of
the summer.
Lankester dozed and woke, keeping up the fire, and wrapping himself in
an eider-down, with which the valet had provided him. In the small hours
he walked across the room to look at Marsham. He was lying still and
breathing heavily. His thick fair hair, always slightly gray from the
time he was thirty, had become much grayer of late; the thin handsome
face was drawn and damp, the eyes cavernous, the lips bloodless. Even in
sleep his aspect showed what he had suffered.
Poor, poor old fellow!
Lankester's whole being softened into pity. Yet he had no illusions as
to the man before him--a man of inferior _morale_ and weak will,
incapable, indeed, of the clever brutalities by which the wicked
flourish; incapable also of virtues that must, after all, be tolerably
common, or the world would run much more lamely than it does.
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