The part of his consciousness that remained still clouded seemed quivering with a vision of the girl with her hands raised to her shoulders in the act of slipping off her dusky dress; but as his full awareness returned to him he saw that she had left his side and was standing by the green lamp, her eyes fixed reproachfully upon him out of the foreground of that mirror of her mother’s⁠—of that woman’s who believed in spirits⁠—and her fingers occupied in fastening up her hair.

Automatically, and with a hand that shook, like a man’s who has seen a ghost, he took out his packet of cigarettes and lit a match.

His cigarette alight, he got up from the bed; and walking with shaky knees across the room⁠—he felt far more dizzy in the head than under the power of Mr. Urquhart’s Malmsey!⁠—he offered his packet to her. But Christie, with eyes whose pupils were so large that they completely dominated her face, refused his offer with a wordless shake of her head.