s of outcasts
and vagabonds--and the real thing in vagabonds is pretty rare in print,
I can tell you. We're all, every one of us, sodden with facts, drugged
with the second-hand, and barnacled with respectability until--until the
touch comes. Goodness knows where from; but there's no mistaking it; oh
no!'

'But what,' said Lawford uneasily, 'what on earth do you mean by the
touch?'

'I mean when you cease to be a puppet only and sit up in the gallery
too. When you squeeze through to the other side. When you suffer a kind
of conversion of the mind; become aware of your senses. When you get a
living inkling. When you become articulate to yourself. When you SEE.'

'I am awfully stupid,' Lawford murmured, 'but even now I don't really
follow you a bit. But when, as you say, you do become articulate to
yourself, what happens then?'

'Why, then,' said Herbert with a shrug almost of despair, 'then
begins the weary tramp back. One by one drop off the truisms, and the
Grundyisms, and the pedantries, and all the stillborn claptrap of the
marketplace sloughs off. Then one can seriously begin to think about
saving one's soul.'

'Saving one's soul,' groaned Lawford; 'why, I am not even sure of my own
body yet.' He walked slowly over to the window and with every thought in
his head as quiet as doves on a sunny wall, stared out into the garden
of green things growing, leaves fading and falling water. 'I tell you
what,' he said, turning irresolutely, 'I wonder if you could possibly
find time to write me out a translation of Sabathier. My French is much
too hazy to let me really get at the chap. He's gone now; but I really
should like to know what kind of stuff exactly he has left behind.'

'Oh, Sabathier!' said Herbert, laughing. 'What do you think of that,
Grisel?' he asked, turning to his sister, who at that moment had looked
in at the door. 'Here's Mr Lawford asking me to make a translation of
Sabathier. Lunch, Lawford.'

Lawford sighed. And not until he had slowly descended half the narrow
uneven stairs that led down to the dining-room did he fully realise the
guile of a sister that could induce a hopeless bookworm to waste a whole
morning over the stupidest of companions, simply to keep his tired-out
mind from rankling, and give his Sabathier a chance to go to roost.

'I think, do you know,' he managed to blurt out at last 'I think I ought
to be getting home again. The house is empty--and--'

'You shall go this evening,'