When at last Orlando Fosca closed the door behind him and was safely back in his study, he sank down into his armchair, loosened the laces of his boots, leaned back and closed his eyes. For a few moments he gave in to the sense of total dizzy exhaustion, to the relief of being here alone, of not having to go out for supper (kind of dear old Grace to have thought of that soup), of not having to brace himself or to consider others. Damon had agreed to meet Mrs. Ferrier’s plane. For a few hours at least his responsibilities were at an end. The image which floated before his mind was that chestnut tree with its great open wound. Something, perhaps, could be done about that tomorrow. He opened his eyes and looked about him, at the familiar wall of books on his left, at Grace’s ridiculous penguin in its glass globe, and lastly at the small round photograph of his wife as she had looked when he first met her, the radiant young face framed in fair hair, the large sensitive eyes, eyelids drooping a little, the ghost of a smile. Thinking of her, as it always would, opened the deep reserves of feeling and it swept over him, with a force that made him lean forward and groan, what Edward’s loss would mean to the University. This was the great tree standing with a limb torn off, bleeding into the air, that branch rich with leaves and flowers which would never grow back again, never bear its real fruit, that branch which had just fallen with a great crash. And Fosca smiled at himself, recognizing that in spite of all his quarrels with it, he loved the University passionately, in a different way but no less than he had loved his wife. “We can’t do without Edward,” he said aloud, hatred not love in his tone, for he hated the smug safe scholars who remained, who would never kill themselves because they would never be stretched as Edward had been on the rack of conscience. An Olympian, Edward called him, for he had accused Fosca of being too detached. But whatever virtue there might be in such a stance went out of it if the only struggles one watched from the heights were the petty struggles for advancement, the jealousies over honorary degrees, the endless playing for position which was one side of University life. Edward had transcended all this by sheer passionate intensity. “We can’t do without him,” Fosca said again.

What would Edward have been if he had not tied himself to the rack?