All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words of thetelegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony on its commonplacesyllables: rattling them out like a discharge of musketry, letting them, one by one, dripslowly and coldly into his brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in somegame of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his compartment at the pier, andstood facing the wind-swept...