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,’ said Herbert, ‘if you really must insist
on it. But honestly, Lawford, we both think that after what the last
few days must have been, it is merely common sense to take a rest. How
can you possibly rest with a dozen empty rooms echoing every thought
you think? There’s nothing more to worry about; you agree to that. Send
your people a note saying that you are here, safe and sound. Give them
a chance of lighting a fire, and driving in the fatted calf. Stay on
with us just the week out.’

Lawford turned from one to the other of the two friendly faces. But
what was dimly in his mind refused to express itself. ‘I think, you
know, I—’ he began falteringly. ‘But it’s just this thinking that’s the deuce—this preposterous habit
of having continually to make up one’s mind. Off with his head, Grisel! My sister’s going to take you for a picnic; we go every other fine
afternoon; and you can argue it out with her.’

Once alone again with Grisel, however, Lawford found talking
unnecessary. Silences seemed to fall between them as quietly and
restfully as evening flows into night. They walked on slowly through
the fading woods, and when they had reached the top of the hill that
sloped down to the dark and foamless Widder they sat down in the
honey-scented sunshine on a knoll of heather and bracken, and Grisel
lighted the little spirit-kettle she had brought with her, and busied
herself very methodically over making tea. That done, she clasped her hands round her knees, and sat now
gossiping, now silent, in the pale autumnal beauty. There was a bird
wistfully twittering in the branches overhead, and ever and again a
withered leaf would slip circling down from the motionless beech boughs
arched in their stillness above their heads beneath the thin blue sky. ‘Men, you know,’ she began again suddenly, starting out of reverie,
‘really are absurdly blind; and just a little bit absurdly kindly
stupid. How many times have I been at the point of laughing out at my
brother’s delicious naive subtleties. But you do, you will, understand,
Mr Lawford, that he was, that we are both “doing our best”—to make
amends?’

‘I understand—I do indeed—a tenth part of all your kindness.’

‘Yes, but that’s just it—that horrible word “kindness”! If ever there
were two utterly self-absorbed people, without a trace, with an
absolute horror of kindness, it is just my brother and I. It’s most of
it false and most of it useless. We all surely must take what comes in
this topsy-turvy world. I believe in saying out:—that the more one
thinks about life the worse it becomes. There are only two kinds of
happiness in this world—a wooden post’s and Prometheus’s. And who ever
heard of any one having the impudence to be kind to Prometheus? As for
a miserable “medium” like me, not quite a post and leagues and leagues
from even envying a Prometheus, she’s better for the powder without the
jam. But that’s all nothing. What I can’t help thinking—and it’s not a
bit giving my brother away, because we both think it—that it was partly
our thoughtlessness that added at least something to—to the rest. It
was perfectly absurd. He saw you were ill; he saw—he must have seen
even in that first Sunday talk—that your nerves were all askew. And who
doesn’t know what “nerves” means nowadays? And yet he deliberately
chattered. He loves it—just at large, you know, like me. I told him
before I came out that I intended, if I could, to say all this. And now
it’s said you’ll please forgive me for going back to it.’

‘Please don’t talk about forgiveness. But when you say he chattered,
you mean about Sabathier, of course. And that, you know, I don’t care a
fig for now. We can settle all that between ourselves—him and me, I
mean. And now tell me candidly again—Is there any “prey” in my face
now?’

She looked up fleetingly into his eyes, leant back her head and
laughed. ‘“Prey,” there never was a glimpse.’

‘And “change”?’ Their eyes met again in an infinitely brief, infinitely
bewildering argument. ‘Really, really, scarcely perceptible,’ she assured him, ‘except, of
course, how horribly, horribly ill you look. And that only seems to
prove to me you must be hiding something else. No illusion on earth
could—could have done that to your face.’

‘You think, I know,’ he persisted, ‘that I must be persuaded and
cosseted and humoured. Yes, you do; it’s my poor old sanity that’s
really in both your minds. Perhaps I am—not absolutely sound. Anyhow. I’ve been watching it in your looks at each other all the time. And I
can never, never say, never tell you what you have done for me. But you
see, after all, we did win through; I keep on telling myself that. So
that now it’s purely from the most selfish and practical motives that I
want you to be perfectly frank with me. I have to go back, you know;
and some of them, one or two of my friends I mean, are not all on my
side. Think of me as I was when you came into the room, three centuries
ago, and you turned and looked, frowning at me in the candle-light;
remember that and look at me now.