She might go downstairs for a gossip with the landlady.
After smoking a cigar, he tried again.

The lights on the staircase were now put out: it was eleven o'clock.
She was not asleep: the nurse was reading to her from some devotional book.

He gave it up, for that night.

His head ached; the ferment of his own abominable thoughts had fevered him.

A cowardly dread of the slightest signs of illness was one of his special weaknesses.