When the dawn broke and the light of day began to steal into the room between the shutters I looked around and shook my head. After all, had I fallen asleep against my will and dreamed the whole thing, as Weldon believed? It might be so. The intellect is a strange, elusive, shadowy affair. It slips from one's control at times. The memory easily clogs. The imagination is easily overheated. And one is not the best judge of one's own experiences. Science had taught me so much, at least, that one cannot always accept the evidence of sense. I began to doubt, to cast about me, and to vote myself absurd. With the rising of the sun, I flung back the shutters and looked forth on a vista of chimneys and leaded roofs. They were so manifestly real and solid and prosaic that all my brain expanded to a sense of ridicule except one small part, which began to shrivel up under the douche I poured upon it, of what I called cold common-sense. But it did not entirely shrivel up. It insisted on certain reservations. It said to me, "Pinsent, my man, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You have no right to ill-treat a part of your intelligence which--even though it may have erred--served you to the best of its ability. And can you be sure it erred? If it hap that it did not, you would never forgive yourself for flouting it. Be wise in time! Don't prejudge the case! Wait and watch! Take precautions! Guard yourself--and, above all, guard your charge!" I determined to suspend judgment. Above all, I determined to guard my charge. But I confess it was with a curling lip I made the resolution. There is something in sunlight, some all-subduing power which irresistibly dries up the fountain springs of the imagination. I cannot conceive a novelist writing a fanciful story in the sunlight. Can you? And the sunlight was pouring into the room when I came to my resolve. Chapter XIX The First Victim When Weldon woke he did one of the three things of which only gentlemen of the finest sensitiveness are capable. He gave me one quick, laughing glance, but perceiving in my solemn visage a predisposition to resent badinage, he immediately said, "Good-morning, old chap. Hope you rested well. As usual, I slept like a log--all night." Now, who could help liking a man of that stamp? Not I, most certainly. And not satisfied with pretending to have forgotten everything, he resolutely refrained from so much as glancing at his treasured sword, which I had broken. My heart went out to him in such a flood of feeling that in order to conceal how fond of him I was and how grateful, I simply had to be insulting. "You needn't tell me you slept," I growled. "You snored like a whole sty-full of hogs" (which was a lie). "It's a wonder to me you did not wake yourself." "Why didn't you shy a boot at my head?" he asked. "I'm awfully sorry, Pinsent. I can see I kept you awake. You look quite washed out."