rre," you said; God knows I am.' But Herbert still remained
obdurately silent. 'You remember, perhaps,' Lawford faintly began again,
'our talk the other night?'

'Oh, rather,' replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.

'I suppose you thought I was insane?'

'Insane!' There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. 'You
were lucidity itself. Besides--well, honestly, if I may venture, I don't
put very much truck in what one calls one's sanity: except, of course,
as a bond of respectability and a means of livelihood.'

'But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really
stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and came
back--well--this?'

'I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it was
merely an affectation--that what you said was an affectation, I
mean--until--well, to be frank, it was the "this" that so immensely
interested me. Especially,' he added almost with a touch of gaiety,
'especially the last glimpse. But if it's really not a forbidden
question, what precisely was the other? What precise manner of man, I
mean, came down into Widderstone?'

'It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you'll try to understand
me--my FACE. What you see now is not what I really am, not what I was.
Oh, it is all quite different. I know perfectly well how absurd it must
sound. And you won't press me further. But that's the truth: that's what
they have done for me.'

It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had been
suddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this confession.
He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette
revealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he went gropingly on; 'I felt
it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. YOU
can't see it. YOU can't feel it. YOU can't hear these hooting voices.
It's no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not
over it, of insanity.'

'As to that, Mr Lawford,' came the still voice out of the darkness;
'the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof
positive that you're not. Insanity is on another plane, isn't it?
in which one can't compare one's states. As for what you say being
credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-nine
hundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed the
poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor credulous
creatures as my sister and