After its essay
at midnight gymnastics the animal quieted down and lay purring at the
foot of his bed.
The presence of a living thing was a certain comfort, and the reservoir
of his strength was well nigh exhausted.
He dimly remembered his promise to Ethel, but his lids drooped with
sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed in this way, when suddenly his
blood congealed with dread.
He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald
Clarke--unmistakably--groping in his brain as if searching for something
that had still escaped him.
He tried to move, to cry out, but his limbs were paralysed. When, by a
superhuman effort, he at last succeeded in shaking off the numbness that
held him enchained, he awoke just in time to see a figure, that of a
man, disappearing in the wall that separated Reginald's apartments from
his room....
This time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard something like a
secret door softly closing behind retreating steps. A sudden fierce
anger seized him. He was oblivious of the danger of the terrible power
of the older man, oblivious of the love he had once borne him, oblivious
of everything save the sense of outraged humanity and outraged right.
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