I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had
changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my
room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a
blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the
batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the
passage and listened a minute at Miles’s door. What, under my endless
obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his
not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I
had expected. His voice tinkled out. “I say, you there—come in.” It was
a gaiety in the gloom!
I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but
very much at his ease. “Well, what are _you_ up to?” he asked with a
grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had
she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was
“out.”