* * * * *
I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light
still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow
the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were
my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.
At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of
them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it
stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was
upon it, I put it down again.
It was indeed a completion.
But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you
may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John
Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation
that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the
absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in
my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of _The Cases of Martin
Renard_.
No, not for Love--not even for Love....