CHAPTER IX.
When Fielding had gone, Drake opened the window and stepped out on the balcony.
'Unless you want to marry her yourself'; the words were stamped upon his mind in capitals.

They formulated to him for the first time the cause of that unreasoned conviction of his, and formulated it too, as he realised, with absolute truth.

Yes, it was just his desire for Clarice to which he owed his belief that she had an unquestionable right to know his responsibility for Gorley's death.
He wanted her, and wanting her, was committed to scrupulous frankness.
Drake looked out across the city.

At his feet lay the quiet strip of garden, lawn and bush; beyond, the lamps burning on the parapets of the Embankment, and beyond them, the river shining in the starlight, polished and lucent like a slab of black marble, with broad regular rays upon it of a still deeper blackness, where the massive columns of Hungerford Bridge cast shadows on the water.

An engine puffed and snorted into the station, leaving its pennant of white smoke in the air.