XXIXThe evening which ensued was a curious one. If the house-party had seemed strangely incompatible whilst still held together by the rich and genial personality of Gregory Porlock, there were, now that he was dead, no longer any points of contact between its various members. If the original bond had been fear, it had been camouflaged by all that social sense could suggest. To vary the metaphor—if the current ran cold below, there had been a certain glitter on the surface. There was now nothing but a collection of frightened and uncomfortable people constrained to one another’s company and dreadfully conscious that the shadow which lay across them was to deepen before it lifted, and that for one of them it would most probably never lift at all.
A little, as it were, on the edge of all th
