XIX.

Then Mr. Hoopdriver returned to the little room with the lead-framed

windows where he had dined, and where the bed was now comfortably

made,

sat down on the box under the window, stared at the moon rising on

the shining vicarage roof, and tried to collect his thoughts. How they

whirled at first! It was past ten, and most of Midhurst was tucked

away in bed, some one up the street was learning the violin, at rare

intervals a belated inhabitant hurried home and woke the echoes, and a

corncrake kept up a busy churning in the vicarage garden. The sky was

deep blue, with a still luminous afterglow along the black edge of the

hill, and the white moon overhead, save for a couple of yellow stars,

had the sky to herself.

At first his thoughts were kinetic, of deeds and not relationships.

There was this malefactor, and his victim, and it had fallen on Mr.

Hoopdriver to take a hand in the game. HE was married. Did she know he

was married? Never for a moment did a thought of evil concerning her

cross Hoopdriver's mind. Simple-minded people see questions of morals so

much better than superior persons--who have read and thought themselves

complex to impotence. He had heard her voice, seen the frank light in

her eyes, and she had been weeping--that sufficed. The rights of the

case he hadn't properly grasped. But he would. And that smirking--well,

swine was the mildest for him. He recalled the exceedingly unpleasant

incident of the railway bridge. "Thin we won't detain yer, thenks,"

The Wheels of Chance