Page:The council of seven.djvu/345

 moment he got the chance. And that chance was surely coming, unless

His friendly letter in hand, Helen had now to harden the will with a brief restatement of a dreadful plight. She was luring a man who on the surface was simple and kindly to her house in order to do him to death. As she sat down to breakfast opposite her husband and toyed with dry toast and a cup of tea, a ghoulish sense of nightmare seemed to cause the four walls of their little dining room to contract.

John was very pale. He, too, had not slept. At three o'clock he had got up and dressed and had spent the night's remaining hours downstairs among his books. Helen saw that his hand was trembling as she gave him his cup. He, too, was living on his nerves.

This long-drawn Thursday was for both an intolerable day. They now stood together fighting with their wills against an implacable destiny. John, some instinct told her, was already trying to subdue the whole force of his nature to the thought of death. Precisely in what form it would overtake him or when it might be expected to do so, he did all that he could not to allow her to guess. But in the course of another night in which neither of them closed their eyes, words escaped his lips that gave her a clue to the mind process which in the end would destroy him.

"Macbeth has murdered sleep," he whispered to her in the winter darkness. "This side the grave, my darling, I shall never sleep again."