I can’t afford
twopence. So you must _give_ me what you were wondering.’

Lawford gazed rather blankly across the twilight fields. ‘I was
wondering,’ he said with an oddly naive candour, ‘how long it took one
to sink.’

‘They say, you know,’ Grisel replied solemnly, ‘drowned sailors float
midway, suffering their sea change; purgatory. But what a splendid
pennyworth. All pure philosophy!’

‘“Philosophy!”’ said Lawford; ‘I am a perfect fool. Has your brother
told you about me?’

She glanced at him quickly. ‘We had a talk.’

‘Then you do know—?’ He stopped dead, and turned to her. ‘You really
realise it, looking at me now?’

‘I realise,’ she said gravely, ‘that you look even a little more pale
and haggard than when I saw you first the other night. We both, my
brother and I, you know, thought for certain you’d come yesterday. In
fact, I went into the Widderstone in the evening to look for you,
knowing your nocturnal habits....’ She glanced again at him with a kind
of shy anxiety. ‘Why—why is your brother so—why does he let me bore him so horribly?’

‘Does he? He’s tremendously interested; but then, he’s pretty easily
interested when he’s interested at all. If he can possibly twist
anything into the slightest show of a mystery, he will. But, of course,
you won’t, you can’t, take all he says seriously. The tiniest pinch of
salt, you know. He’s an absolute fanatic at talking in the air. Besides, it doesn’t really matter much.’

‘In the air?’

‘I mean if once a theory gets into his head—the more far-fetched, so
long as it’s original, the better—it flowers out into a positive
miracle of incredibilities. And of course you can rout out evidence for
anything under the sun from his dingy old folios. Why did he lend you
that _particular_ book?’

‘Didn’t he tell you that, then?’

‘He said it was Sabathier.’ She seemed to think intensely for the
merest fraction of a moment, and turned. ‘Honestly, though, I think he
immensely exaggerated the likeness. As for...’

He touched her arm, and they stopped again, face to face. ‘Tell me what
difference exactly you see,’ he said. ‘I am quite myself again now,
honestly; please tell me just the very worst you think.’

‘I think, to begin with,’ she began, with exaggerated candour, ‘his is
rather a detestable face.’

‘And mine?’ he said gravely. ‘Why—very troubled; oh yes—but his was like some bird of prey. Yours—what mad stuff to talk like this!—not the least symptom, that I
can see, of—why, the “prey,” you know.’

They had come to the wicket in the dark thorny hedge. ‘Would it be very
dreadful to walk on a little—just to finish?’

‘Very,’ she said, turning as gravely at his side. ‘What I wanted to say was—’ began Lawford, and forgetting altogether
the thread by which he hoped to lead up to what he really wanted to
say, broke off lamely; ‘I should have thought you would have absolutely
despised a coward.’

‘It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well
understands. Besides, we weren’t cowards—we weren’t cowards a bit. My
childhood was one long, reiterated terror—nights and nights of it. But
I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one so much as dreamt of the
company I had. Ah, and you didn’t see either that my heart was
absolutely in my mouth, that I was shrivelled up with fear, even at
sight of the fear on your face in the dark. There’s absolutely nothing
so catching. So, you see, I _do_ know a little what nerves are; and
dream too sometimes, though I don’t choose charnelhouses if I can get a
comfortable bed. A coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one
of the bravest things in a man I ever heard of. Bullets—that kind of
courage—no real woman cares twopence for bullets. An old aunt of mine
stared a man right out of the house with the thing in her face. Anyhow,
whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are quits.’

‘Will you—’ began Lawford, and stopped. ‘What I wanted to say was,’ he
jerked on, ‘it is sheer horrible hypocrisy to be talking to you like
this—though you will never have the faintest idea of what it has meant
and done for me. I mean... And yet, and yet, I do feel when just for
the least moment I forget what I am, and that isn’t very often, when I
forget what I have become and what I must go back to—I feel that I
haven’t any business to be talking with you at all. “Quits!” And here I
am, an outcast from decent society. Ah, you don’t know—’

She bent her head and laughed under her breath. ‘You do really stumble
on such delicious compliments. And yet, do you know, I think my brother
would be immensely pleased to think you were an outcast from decent
society if only he could be thought one too. He has been trying half
his life to wither decent society with neglect and disdain—but it
doesn’t take the least notice. The deaf adder, you know. Besides,
besides; what is all this meek talk? I detest meek talk—gods or men. Surely in the first and last resort all we are is ourselves. Something
has happened; you are jangled, shaken. But to us, believe me, you are
simply one of fewer friends—and I think, after struggling up
Widderstone Lane hand in hand with you in the dark, I have a right to
say “friends”—than I could count on one hand. What are we all if we
only realized it? We talk of dignity and propriety, and we are like so
many children playing with knucklebones in a giant’s scullery. Come
along, he will, some suppertime, for us, each in turn—and how many even
will so much as look up from their play to wave us good-bye? that’s
what I mean—the plot of _silence_ we are all in. If only I had my
brother’s lucidity, how much better I would have said all this. It is
only, believe me, that I want ever so much to help you, if I may—even
at risk, too,’ she added, rather shakily, ‘of having that help—well—I
know it’s little good.’

The lane had narrowed. They had climbed the arch of a narrow stone
bridge that spanned the smooth dark Widder. A few late starlings were
winging far above them. Darkness was coming on apace. They stood for
awhile looking down into the black flowing water, with here and there
the mild silver of a star dim leagues below. ‘I am afraid,’ said
Grisel, looking quietly up, ‘you have led me into talking most pitiless
nonsense. How many hours, I wonder, did I lie awake in the dark last
night, thinking of you? Honestly, I shall never, _never_ forget that
walk. It haunted me, on and on.’

‘Thinking of me? Do you really mean that? Then it was not all
imagination; it wasn’t just the drowning man clutching at a straw?’

The grey eyes questioned him. ‘You see,’ he explained in a whisper, as
if afraid of being overheard, ‘it—it came back again, and—I don’t mind
a bit how much you laugh at me! I had been asleep, and had had a most
awful dream, one of those dreams that seem to hint that some day _that_
will be our real world, that some day we may awake where dreaming then
will be of this; and I woke—came back—and there was a tremendous
knocking going on downstairs.