son why I recoil and shudder."

I had made a mistake--I would not risk another. "The man has got into
the enfolding arms of mania," I thought, "and I must be chary."

"Will you keep in your remembrance," he continued, "the words uttered by
Edith, and how she came by them? Will you?"

"Yes."

"Then take another glass; you will need it, and another too."

I obeyed not quite so mechanically. The Burgundy was better than the
conversation, and I made the pleasure of the palate compensate for the
pain of the ear.

He now drew out his watch, and, going to the window, withdrew the
curtains. The shades of night had fallen. It looked black as Tartarus,
contrasted with the light within.

"Come here!" he cried; and when I had somewhat reluctantly obeyed what I
considered the request of one whose internal sense had got a jerk from
some mad molecule out of its orbit in the brain--"Do you see anything?"

"Yes," said I--"a big black negative; but as for anything positive, you
might as well look into a coal-pit and find what philosophers do in the
wells of truth. There's nothing to be seen."

"No? Look there--there! See," pointing with his finger, and clutching me
tremulously, "once more--the traces as vivid as ever! See!"

I verily did think I saw something luminous, but it quickly disappeared.
"Oh, probably the reflection of a lantern," I said.

"Yes, a magic one," he replied sneeringly.

"I know of no more magical lantern than a man's head," I replied, a
little disconcerted by his sneer. "Chemists say there's more phosphorus
in the brain than anywhere else; and so I sometimes think."

He made no reply, but, seizing me by the coat, dragged me after him as
he hurried out of the room, and making for a back door, led me out,
bareheaded as I was, into the wood. The darkness had waxed to
pitchiness, and the noises were hushed. The crows had gone to roost; and
had it not been for some too-hoos of the jolly owl, sounding his horn as
he rejoiced that the hated sun had gone to annoy other owls in the west,
the silence would have been complete. But, in truth, I hate silence as
well as darkness, and have no more sympathy with the followers of
Pythagoras than I have with the triumph of the blind Roman who silenced
the covey of pretty women, in the heat of their condolences for his
blindness, by reminding them that they forgot he could feel in the dark.
I thought more of the fire inside, and the bottle of Burgundy, on which
I had ma