FORE:The Chinese have a way of catching fish which is peculiar to themselves, and much practised along the Yang-tse. A net several feet square hangs at the end of a long pole, and is lowered gently into the water and then suddenly raised. Any fish that happens to be swimming over the net at the time is liable to be taken in. He is lifted from the large net by means of a small scoop, and the raising and lowering process is resumed. Fred thought it was an excellent employment for a lazy man, and Frank suggested that it would be better for two lazy men than one, as they could keep each other company.Norah had gone: that fact was indelibly imprinted on his mind, but as yet it aroused no emotion. It had produced no sense of desolation in him: all the strainings of doubt and desire{318} which had racked him before were dead. The suspense was over, his love would enjoy no fruition, and he had been all evening exactly as is the man who has been condemned to be hung, and now, though he has passed a month of sleeplessness or nightmare, has no anxiety to torture him, and for that first night after his trial is over, can rest in the certainty of the worst and the uttermost. Several times this evening Keeling had probed into his own heart, pricking it with the reminder of the knowledge that she had left him, but no response, no wail or cry of pain had come from it. His heart knew it, and there was no use in repeating the news. His heart had received it, and lay there beating quietly and steadily. Meantime all his surface-perceptions went on with no less vividness than was their wont. There was Alice making her usual mistakes over the moves of the pieces, there was Lady Keeling alternating between drowsiness and volubility. Her fat face wrinkled and bulged on one side when her head fell a little crooked as she dozed; it became symmetrical again when she recovered herself, and talked on her invariable topics, Lord Inverbroom, dinner, her engagements as Lady Mayoress, Mr Silverdale, and so forth. She alluded again to her husbands magnanimity in not turning out the County Club from their premises, she even introduced Norahs name, and endorsed her expressed intention to be polite to her if she came{319} in to tea on Sunday. When necessary he replied, Quite so, my dear, but nothing reached him. It was perfectly easy now to be polite and patient. He was locked up somewhere inside himself, and sparrows were twittering in the bushes far outside.
Faucibus luctus
