‘Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just the facts. If I am not mistaken, he will pooh-pooh the whole thing; tell you to keep quiet, not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if we realised, say, typhoid, who’d dare to face it? That will give us time; to wait a while, to recover our breath, to see what happens next. And if—as I don’t believe for a moment—Why, in that case I heard the other day of a most excellent man—Grosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed. He’ll bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We’ll have him down quietly. You see? But there won’t be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will have come. We shall remember. What I mean is this.’ He crossed his legs and pushed out his lips. ‘We are on quaky ground; and it’s absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soul—you know that. I own frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The faith was absolute’—he placed one firm hand on Lawford’s knee—‘why, I cannot explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the consequences; we must not scan too closely. Think _with_; never against: and bang go all the arguments. Your wife, poor dear, believes; but of course, of course, she is horribly—’ he broke off; ‘of course she is _shaken_, you old simpleton! Time will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self’s the thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it—that must be kept unsmirched. We won’t go wearily over the painful subject again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that you were absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible effects, and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless—in the long run. They—what shall we say?—have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side too. A loathsome process too. But there—we are not speaking of any such monstrosities, and even if we were, you and I with God’s help would just tire them out. And that ally gone, our poor dear old Mrs Grundy will at once capitulate. Eh? Eh?’ Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like the gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain. And the face that now confronted Mr Bethany, though with his feeble unaided sight he could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every sharp-cut hungry feature. A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the window, saw burnt-out candle, comprehensive glass. ‘Yes, yes.’ he said; ‘I’ll send for Simon at once.’