THE LAST ARABIAN NIGHT 523

"Another ten minutes and we shouldn't have been
there, and then I shouldn't have got back home till
twelve. What time is it now? Quarter-past ten, eh?
What time did you leave my place?"

"I don't know really. I'm all mixed up—"

"My God!-you are," said Mr. Golspie bitterly. "And
you're going to be a worse mix up soon, let me tell you."

"I think-it couldn't have been much after eight-I
don't know, though-might have been half-past eight/'

"Nearly two hours-och!" Mr. Golspie groaned.
"Here, this fellow's got to drive faster than this, or
we'll be all the damned night getting there."

It was horrible stumbling back up that garden path
again, going through the hall and climbing the stairs
once more. It was worse inside the fiat. "You go in
there and wait, you," said Mr. Golspie, and gave him a
mighty shove that landed him in the middle of the sit-
ting-room, which seemed to him now, of all the places
he had ever known, the most horrible, the most closely
packed with misery, and the very sight of its cushions
and fancy boxes made him feel sick. Nevertheless, he
had not been there more than a minute before he knew
somehow that Lena was not dead. Then, after a few
more minutes, voices came through the open door be-
hind him, and he turned and crept nearer to it.

"No, no, no," cried a voice, and he recognised it at
once as that of the foreign, witch-like old woman who
lived downstairs, "she would not 'ave a doctair. I loosen
her dress and geef her cognac and do dees teeng and
odair teengs, and ven I say, 'You 'ave a vairy great shock,
my dee-air, me call a doctair/ she say 'No, no, No. No
doctair.' Veil den, eet does not mattair. But I say, 'You
go to bed. Aw, yes, you go to bed, at vonce, my deeair.'