"They are still ajar for me," he said. "But they were more widely open when I came here. For pity's sake, Tom, go on helping me. It is only you, I think, who can get them closed for me." He paused a moment, looking out into the still blackness of the garden, and again something stirred and creaked in the bushes, and the drowsy wind was tainted with some sharp smell. He turned to Tom-- "I wonder if all that you have been saying is a fairy tale," he said, "and whether I have been taking it literally, so that I imagine that things which are only, and can only be, allegorical and mythical are true." "You mean the Pan-pipes, for instance, which I heard for the first time at Pangbourne, and which I hear so often now?" asked Merivale. "Yes, that among other things. Pan himself, too. I begin to think of Pan as a real being, the incarnation of all the terror and fear and sorrow of the world. The crying child you spoke of is part of Pan, the shriek of the rabbit is part of him. All these things, as you say, you have turned your back on. What if they should all be shown you suddenly, they and the huge significance and universality of them?" Merivale looked quite grave; anyhow it was no fairy story to him, whatever it might be to others. "Yes, that is all possible," he said, "and that will mean that I shall see Pan. What a wonderful mode of expression that is of the Greeks. For Pan means 'everything,' and to see everything would be clearly more than one could stand. And so to see Pan means death." Once again the strange, pungent odour was noticeable. "Where are you going to sleep to-night?" asked Philip suddenly. "Oh, in the hammock," said Tom. "I hardly ever sleep in the house." Then a more definite, though utterly fantastic, fear seized Philip. "No, sleep in the house to-night," he said, feeling that his fear was too childish to be allowed utterance. At that Merivale laughed; there was no need for Philip to utter his thought, for he knew perfectly well what it was. "I know what you mean," he said, "but do you think that if Pan is going to visit me he will only come into the garden, and not into the house? You are mixing up the fear of Pan with the general sense of insecurity about sleeping out of doors, which comes from unfamiliarity with that delightful way of spending the night. And I know another thing you felt; you heard an odd rustling in the bushes, as I often hear it, and you smelt a rather queer smell, something rather pungent, and it reminded you of a goat. Of course Pan used to appear, so the Greek myth said, in goat form, and your inference was that Pan was in those bushes. But he is just as much in this verandah, and, for that matter, in Piccadilly, poor thing! There is quite certainly no getting away from him; I am as safe here as I should be if I was locked into the strong-room in the Bank of England. For it is not just to this place or that that he comes, but to this person or that."