“ When?”
“ That night on Woodborough Road, when you and her passed me—you with your hand on her shoulder.”
“ I never laughed at you,” said Paul.
Dawes kept his fingers on the draught-piece.
“ I never knew you were there till the very second when you passed,” said Morel.
“ It was that as did me,” Dawes said, very low.
Paul took another sweet.
“ I never laughed,” he said, “except as I’m always laughing.”
They finished the game.
That night Morel walked home from Nottingham, in order to have something to do. The furnaces flared in a red blotch over Bulwell; the black clouds were like a low ceiling. As he went along the ten miles of highroad, he felt as if he were walking out of life, between the black levels of the sky and the earth. But at the end was only the sick-room. If he
