Graham was sitting up in bed when Peter returned to his room. He was
looking about him with an expression of queer surprise,--puzzled
apparently to find himself in his room.
"Oh, hello, old man!" said Peter. "How d'you feel?"
Graham put his hand up to his head. "I don't know yet. Have I been
asleep? I thought I'd been in a railway accident. I was looking about
for the broken girders and the ghastly signs of a smash."
He got slowly out of bed, put on his slippers and walked up and down for
a few minutes with a heavy frown on his face. The emotion of the night
before had left its marks. He stopped in front of a chair on the back of
which his evening clothes were hanging neatly. He remembered that he had
thrown them off. He noticed--at first with irritation--that the things
on his dressing-table had been re-arranged--tampered with. It didn't
look as he liked it to look. Something had been taken away. It dawned on
him that all his razors had been removed. "Removed,"--the word sent a
sort of electric shock through his brain as it passed through. He went
over to the window and looked out into the street. The sun glorified
everything with its wonderful touch. Good God! To think that he might be
standing at that very moment on the other side of the great veil.
"I don't know--I don't know what to say to you for all this, Peter," he
said.
Peter sat down, thrust his hands into his pockets and his long legs out
in front of him. Reaction had set in. He felt depressed and wretched.
"One of these days," he said, "I may ask you to do the same thing for
me."