Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/349

 again. And presently he turned away light-heartedly, and walked back to the Barracks.

He was glad, very glad, that his enemy was dead.

This was the thought, this the feeling—a feeling of gladness, a thought, "But I am glad, glad, glad!"—which kept him company all the succeeding days.

The knowledge that he would never have to see him again—never again look upon his famous, handsome face—never again listen to his voice, his smooth, even, complacent voice—this knowledge poured through him with warm comfort.

He would lie out on the grass, in the sun, revelling in a sensasationsensation [sic] of well-being that was almost physical, and rehearsing in memory the events as they had happened: Shergold's arrival, their conversation, Shergold's departure; the great, good, satisfying outburst of vituperation with which Le Mesurier had pursued him from his threshold; and then that brief moment of soul-filling consummation, of tangible, ponderable joy, on the Coupée.

Remorse? No, he did not feel the slightest remorse. "Remorse?—I thought a man who had killed another always felt remorse," he said to himself, with a vague sort of surprise, but with very certain exultation. Hitherto, he had accepted tacitly the conventional teachings on the subject. Bloodguiltiness must be followed by remorse, as certainly as night by morning. The slayer destroyed, along with his victim, his own peace for ever. He could no more enjoy food, rest, or pleasant indolence. And sleep—"Macbeth has murdered sleep!" He must always be haunted by the reproachful phantom of the dead, and shaken by continual ague-fits of terror, gnawed by perpetual dread, lest his crime should be discovered