"I go on, you know, Miss Cardinal.

After all, it's my bread and butter." Maggie, looking at him, knew that this was exactly the way that he did not regard it, and felt a sudden sympathy towards him with his thin hair, his large spectacles and his shabby clothes.

But her look at him was the last thing of which she was properly conscious.

The wall beyond the fireplace, that had seemed before to her dim and dark, now suddenly appeared to lurch forward, to bulge before her eyes; the floor with its old, rather shabby carpet rose on a slant as though it was rocked by an unsteady sea; worst of all, the large black cat swelled like a balloon, its whiskers distended like wire.

She knew that her eyes were burning, that her forehead was cold, and that she felt sick.