years, and then I will ask your opinion as to the
success of my marriage. I don't take a step of this kind without maturely
considering it. Have I made many blunders as yet?«
    »As yet, not that I know of.«
    »Do I impress you as one likely to commit follies?«
    »I had rather wait a little before answering that.«
    »That is to say, you prefer to prophesy after the event. Very well, we shall
see.«
    In the length of Gower Street they talked of several other things less
personal. By degrees the tone of their conversation had become what it was used
to be, now and then almost confidential.
    »You are still at the same lodgings?« asked Amy, as they drew near to the
railway station.
    »I moved yesterday, so that the girls and I could be under the same roof -
until the next change.«
    »You will let us know when that takes place?«
    He promised, and with exchange of smiles which were something like a
challenge they took leave of each other.
 

                                   Chapter 27

                                 The Lonely Man

A touch of congestion in the right lung was a warning to Reardon that his
half-year of insufficient food and general waste of strength would make the
coming winter a hard time for him, worse probably than the last. Biffen,
responding in person to the summons, found him in bed, waited upon by a gaunt,
dry, sententious woman of sixty - not the landlady, but a lodger who was glad to
earn one meal a day by any means that offered.
    »It wouldn't be very nice to die here, would it?« said the sufferer, with a
laugh which was cut short by a cough. »One would like a comfortable room, at
least. Why, I don't know. I dreamt last night that I was in a ship that had
struck something and was going down; and it wasn't the thought of death that
most disturbed me, but a horror of being plunged in the icy water. In fact, I
have had just the same feeling on shipboard. I remember waking up midway between
Corfu and Brindisi, on that shaky tub of a Greek boat; we were rolling a good
deal, and I heard a sort of alarmed rush and shouting up on deck. It was so warm
and comfortable in the berth, and I thought with intolerable horror of the
possibility of sousing into the black depths.«
    »Don't talk, my boy,« advised Biffen. »