“The pain of it,” he went on, still quietly, still tenderly, “is that I cannot explain it to anyone, that I cannot explain it to myself; that there are no words for it, nothing but the thing. The only explanation I can give is that I am become a madman, and that you must accept the fact. For the thing I do I can no more help doing than I could help the beating of my heart. All the world of love that I might bear to you, or to any other human soul, could no more enable me to stop than it would enable the grass to stop growing. Again you must accept the fact—you must learn to think of me as a man who is in the grasp of a fiend.” There was a pause. Not once had I taken my eyes from my brother’s, and I sat with my heart throbbing wildly; the strangeness of the whole thing was too much for me—at times I was certain that I was indeed listening to a maniac. When my brother began speaking again, I was at first hardly conscious of it. “Edward,” he said, “I have thought about this—that perhaps my presence would be painful to you. If so, let me go away. Take what tools I have here, and make this place your home—you have knowledge at your command, you can plant and hunt and study, and do what you will. As for me, such things make no difference; I could soon make myself comfortable again, and perhaps——” “Say no more about it,” I interrupted quickly; “if anyone must go, let it be me, for I shall have need of occupation.” For long hours after that strange experience I was pacing up and down the storm-swept beach of the island. What I had heard had disturbed me more than anything before in my life; the whole surroundings contributed to the effect—the perils I had passed through, the terrible future which stretched before me, the loss of my brother, and the finding of this strange madman in his place. But I was by nature a practical person, scientific and precise in my mode of thought; I did my best to convince myself that solitude and suffering had unhinged my brother’s mind. There is no use telling a scientist that he cannot understand a certain matter, and expecting him to let it rest; my mind was soon made up that I would study this malady, and perhaps cure it. My interest in the strange problem did more than anything else to keep me from realising to the full extent the discomfort I must needs face in the future. When hunger brought my thoughts back to myself, I returned to the cave, where I found my brother pacing backward and forward upon a path which he had worn deep in the ground in front of his home; his head was sunk forward, his eyes on the ground, and he was evidently lost in deep thought. I spoke to him once, but he did not hear me; I walked by him and entered the cavern.