Professor MacPhail was understood to dissent from this. He used the word sordid with more r’s than the dictionary provides. He was saying that in order to arrive at a philosophic conclusion it was necessary to “impairsonalize” the problem, when Ione drifted away again. There was something about the rise and fall of his periods and the drumming of those Scottish r’s that was very soporific.

When she really woke up there was a feeling of time having passed. She sat up, and was aware of stiffness, and of an arm about her. When she moved it had tightened, but now it relaxed. The voice that had talked with the Professor said,

“Are you awake?”

She drew a long breath.

“Yes-I am. You’ve been holding me-how very kind. I don’t know when I’ve slept like that-I might have been drugged-”

She became aware of several things simultaneously. The air was clearer to breathe, there was light coming in through the fanlight over the door, and there was enough of it to show that there was no longer a third occupant of the stair.

“Where is the Professor?”

“He went when the fog lifted-about half an hour ago.”

“But why didn’t you wake me? We ought to have gone too.”

“Well, I think on the whole he preferred to fade away on his own.”

The light which lay in a yellow oblong across the treads of the stairs was not daylight. It came from a street-lamp which couldn’t be very far away. The fog had lifted, but it was still dark.

She said, “What time is it?”

“It must be nearly three o’clock. If you won’t mind being left, I think the best plan will be for me to go and get my car. It’s in a lock-up garage about a quarter of a mile from here. Is there anywhere I can take you?”