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 I he is no more and no less a fact, a
personality, an amusing reality than—well, this teacup. Here we are,
amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores
of books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and
there’s not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet
grope between the lines of any autobiography, it’s pretty clear what
one has got—a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the
indescribable. As for what you say _your_ case is, the bizarre—that
kind very seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all
our pretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You
just trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and—but one
moment, I’ll light up.’

A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the night
air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles that
stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford’s head. Then
sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectation
of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. ‘Nothing
much struck me,’ he went on, leaning back on his hands, ‘I mean on
Sunday evening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in
the moon a distinct glimpse of your face.’

‘This,’ said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart. Herbert nodded. ‘The fact is, I have a print of it,’ he said. ‘A print of it?’

‘A miserable little dingy engraving.’

‘Of this?’ Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. ‘Where?’

‘That’s the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I got
home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in
the house and it will turn up all in good time. It’s the frontispiece
of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by some
amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover—confessions, travels,
trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.’

‘And mine?’ said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight. Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost
birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor. ‘Sabathier’s,’ he said. ‘Sabathier’s!’

‘A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from
memory; and perhaps it’s not quite so vivid in this light; but still
astonishingly clear.’

Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion’s face in an intense and
helpless silence. His mouth opened but no words came. ‘Of course,’ began Herbert again, ‘I don’t say there’s anything in
it—except the—the mere coincidence,’ he paused and glanced out of the
open casement beside him. ‘But there’s just one obvious question. Do
you happen to know of any strain of French blood in your family?’

Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at last. ‘No,’ he said, after a long pause, ‘there’s a little Dutch, I think, on
my mother’s side, but no French.’

‘No Sabathier, then?’ said Herbert, smiling. ‘And then there’s another
question—this change; is it really as complete as you suppose? Has
it—please just warn me off if I am in the least intruding—has it been
noticed?’

Lawford hesitated. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said slowly, ‘it has been noticed—my
wife, a few friends.’

‘Do you mind this infernal clatter?’ said Herbert, laying his fingers
on the open casement. ‘No, no. And you think?’

‘My dear fellow, I don’t think anything. It’s all the craziest
conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There are
dozens here—in print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in the
hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight
and corded up. We have practically no control over their main
functions. We can’t even replace a little finger-nail. And look at the
faces of us—what atrocious mockeries most of them are of _any_ kind of
image! But we know our bodies change—age, sickness, thought, passion,
fatality. It proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a
theory it is not in the least untenable that by force of some violent
convulsive effort from outside one’s body _might_ change. It answers
with odd voluntariness to friend or foe, smile or snarl. As for what we
call the laws of Nature, they are pure assumptions to-day, and may be
nothing better than scrap-iron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford,
consider man’s abysmal impudence.’ He smoked on in silence for a
moment. ‘You say you fell asleep down there?’

Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. ‘Just
following up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,’ he remarked musingly,
‘it wasn’t such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.’

‘But surely,’ said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of
candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness, towards
this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled clear-cut
features—‘surely then, in that case, he is here now?