‘Why, you said even though Sabathier had failed, though I was still my own old stodgy self, that you thought the face—the face, you know, might work in. Somehow, sometimes I think it has. It does really rather haunt me. In that case—well, what then?’ Lawford had himself listened to this involved explanation much as one watches the accomplishment of a difficult trick, marvelling more at its completion at all than at the difficulty involved in the doing of it. ‘“Work in,”’ repeated Herbert, like a rather blasé child confronted with a new mechanical toy; ‘did I really say that? well, honestly, it wasn’t bad; it’s what one would expect on that hypothesis. You see, we are only different, as it were, in our differences. Once the foot’s over the threshold, it’s nine points of the law! But I don’t remember saying it.’ He shamefacedly and naively confessed it: ‘I say such an awful lot of things. And I’m always changing my mind. It’s a standing joke against me with my sister. She says the recording angel will have two sides to my account: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—diametrically opposite convictions, and both kinds wrong. On Sundays I am all things to all men. As for Sabathier, by the way, I do want particularly to have another go at him. I’ve been thinking him over, and I’m afraid in some ways he won’t quite wash. And that reminds me, did you read the poor chap?’ ‘I just grubbed through a page or two; but most of my French was left at school. What I did do, though, was to show the book to an old friend of ours—my wife’s and mine—just to skim—a Mr Bethany. He’s an old clergyman—our vicar, in fact.’ Herbert had sat down, and with eyes slightly narrowed was listening with peculiar attention. He smiled a little magnanimously. ‘His verdict, I should think, must have been a perfect joy.’ ‘He said,’ said Lawford, in his rather low, monotonous voice, ‘he said it was precious poor stuff, that it reminded him of patchouli; and that Sabathier—the print I mean—looked like a foxy old roué. They were, I think, his exact words. We were alone together, last night.’ ‘You don’t mean that he simply didn’t see the faintest resemblance?’ Lawford nodded. ‘But then,’ he added simply, ‘whenever he comes to see me now he leaves his spectacles at home.’ And at that, as if at some preconcerted signal, they both went off into a simple shout of laughter, unanimous and sustained. But this first wild bout of laughter over, the first real bursting of the dam, perhaps, for years, Lawford found himself at a lower ebb than ever. ‘You see,’ he said presently, and while still his companion’s face was smiling around the remembrance of his laughter like ripples after the splash of a stone, ‘Bethany has been absolutely my sheet-anchor right through. And I was—it was—you can’t possibly realise what a ghastly change it really was. I don’t think any one ever will.’