And he went to bed with the certainty that Bosinney was in love with his
wife.
The summer night was hot, so hot and still that through every opened
window came in but hotter air. For long hours he lay listening to her
breathing.
She could sleep, but he must lie awake. And, lying awake, he hardened
himself to play the part of the serene and trusting husband.
In the small hours he slipped out of bed, and passing into his
dressing-room, leaned by the open window.
He could hardly breathe.
A night four years ago came back to him--the night but one before his
marriage; as hot and stifling as this.
He remembered how he had lain in a long cane chair in the window of his
sitting-room off Victoria Street. Down below in a side street a man had
banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it
were now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead
silence that followed. And then the early water-cart, cleansing the
reek of the streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless
lamp-light; he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till
it passed and slowly died away.
He leaned far out of the dressing-room window over the little court
below, and saw the first light spread.
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