Manston went homeward alone, his heart full of strange emotions.
Entering the house, and dismissing the woman to her own home, he at once
proceeded upstairs to his bedroom.
Reasoning worldliness, especially when allied with sensuousness, cannot
repress on some extreme occasions the human instinct to pour out the
soul to some Being or Personality, who in frigid moments is dismissed
with the title of Chance, or at most Law. Manston was selfishly and
inhumanly, but honestly and unutterably, thankful for the recent
catastrophe. Beside his bed, for that first time during a period
of nearly twenty years, he fell down upon his knees in a passionate
outburst of feeling.
Many minutes passed before he arose. He walked to the window, and then
seemed to remember for the first time that some action on his part was
necessary in connection with the sad circumstance of the night.
Leaving the house at once, he went to the scene of the fire, arriving
there in time to hear the rector making an arrangement with a certain
number of men to watch the spot till morning. The ashes were still
red-hot and flaming. Manston found that nothing could be done towards
searching them at that hour of the night. He turned homeward again, in
the company of the rector, who had considerately persuaded him to retire
from the scene for a while, and promised that as soon as a man could
live amid the embers of the Three Tranters Inn, they should be carefully
searched for the remains of his unfortunate wife.
Manston then went indoors, to wait for morning.