He sat down with his hands in his pockets and still with his eyes fixed almost incredulously on mine. "How?" he said. "Well, my dear fellow, if I'm any judge--mind, I don't say that I am--but I can't help thinking she thinks you don't care for her; and perhaps takes your silence for--for bad temper. She has been very decent to you, hasn't she?" "'Decent'? My God!" said Seaton. I smoked on in silence; but he still continued to look at me with that peculiar concentration I remembered of old. "I don't think, perhaps, Withers," he began presently, "I don't think you quite understand. Perhaps you are not quite our kind. You always did, just like the other fellows, guy me at school. You laughed at me that night you came to stay here--about the voices and all that. But I don't mind being laughed at--because I know." "Know what?" It was the same old system of dull question and evasive answer. "I mean I know that what we see and hear is only the smallest fraction of what is. I know she lives quite out of this. She _talks_ to you; but it's all make-believe. It's all a 'parlour game.' She's not really with you; only pitting her outside wits against yours and enjoying the fooling. She's living on inside, on what you're rotten without. That's what it is--a cannibal feast. She's a spider. It does't much matter what you call it. It means the same kind of thing. I tell you, Withers, she hates me; and you can scarcely dream what that hatred means. I used to think I had an inkling of the reason. It's oceans deeper than that. It just lies behind: herself against myself. Why, after all, how much do we really understand of anything? We don't even know our own histories, and not a tenth, not a tenth of the reasons. What has life been to me?--nothing but a trap. And when one is set free, it only begins again. I thought you might understand; but you are on a different level: that's all." "What on earth are you talking about?" I said, half contemptuously, in spite of myself. "I mean what I say," he said gutturally. "All this outside's only make-believe--but there! what's the good of talking? So far as this is concerned I'm as good as done. You wait." Seaton blew out three of the candles and, leaving the vacant room in semi-darkness, we groped our way along the corridor to the drawing-room. There a full moon stood shining in at the long garden windows. Alice sat stooping at the door, with her hands clasped, looking out, alone. "Where is she?" Seaton asked in a low tone. Alice looked up; their eyes met in a kind of instantaneous understanding, and the door immediately afterwards opened behind us. "_Such_ a moon!" said a voice that, once heard, remained unforgettably on the ear. "A night for lovers, Mr. Withers, if ever there was one. Get a shawl, my dear Arthur, and take Alice for a little promenade. I dare say we old cronies will manage to keep awake. Hasten, hasten, Romeo! My poor, poor Alice, how laggard a lover!"