His mind revolted from the mirage, smarting with shame and self-disgust. Dr. Gentian was very adroit. He had put this thing so subtly that he, Andrew, could not only save himself but Caterina for himself and fool his mind into thinking he had acted nobly. No one could accuse him if he did this--Sebastian would not--his own spirit might for a while but it would grow sleepy--a year from now, this present would be forgotten, buried under a drifting red-and-yellow heap of leaf-brittle days like the skeleton of a rat, to crumble into earth and water and sun. And Sebastian would be still in his dungeon--but perhaps Caterina and he could buy him out somehow if he had not died ... The stone. The bar. The escape. But it seemed impossible that they should really escape. Dr. Gentian was too strong. He had been in prison himself--he would not have left them there, together, unchained, without providing against any escape. All the time that they had been gnawing in the dark he had been outside the window, listening, smiling, till he could no longer contain the mirth in his belly and went slowly back to laugh at them aloud with the devils that lived in the chimney of his study. Yes, he must have been doing that. There was no use trying to bargain with him over Mr. Cave's projected plan of revolt. He knew of that, too, undoubtedly--and if, by some miracle, he did not, it offered the one slim chance that, in the confusion of such an event, they might escape indeed. Was he overrating Dr. Gentian's powers? Perhaps. But as he stared at him now, with heavy eyes, he saw him as a man no longer, not even a Cæsar, but something inhuman, with the transient powers of the inhuman over human stuff. An undying figure that walked from the East, with a cloud of flies above it, and a gilt pomander in its hand. "Aren't you ever afraid of hell?" he found himself saying, queerly, with a catch in his voice. "I should think you'd be afraid of hell." The smile on Dr. Gentian's face became a rictus cut in ivory, the muscles of the jaw stood out. "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it," he quoted in a slow, dry voice., "'Think'st thou that I'--did you ever read Marlowe, Andrew? The style is very impure--bombastic, even--he cannot compare with Pope--but there are things in his Faustus which--" He stopped. His mouth relaxed. But while he spoke, there had been something in his face that Andrew had never expected to see there--a turn of the mouth--a shape behind the eyes--something ruined and very lonely--a statue defaced--a barren bough in the gale. It passed. "Well?" said the easy voice. Andrew looked at the floor. He was twenty-two. When you were twenty-two, Death was something far-off that happened to other people. It needn't happen to him for a long time. What if the Minorcans were oppressed? They weren't actually slaves. They got along. Some people, maybe, had to be oppressed. It wasn't his quarrel.