‘What, Sabathier?’ the other echoed, laying his hand upon the stone. And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the unanswerable question. ‘He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!’ said Lawford, ‘how he must have wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch, think of the fret and fever he must have been in—just before. Imagine it.’ ‘But it might, you know,’ suggested the other with a smile—‘might have been sheer indifference.’ ‘“Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish”—no, no,’ said Lawford, his heart beating as if it would choke him, ‘I don’t fancy it was indifference.’ It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger’s features but there seemed a faint suggestion of irony in his voice. ‘And how do you suppose your angry naughty child would set about it? It’s narrow quarters; how would he begin?’ Lawford sat quite still. ‘You say—I hope I am not detaining you—you say you have come here, sat here often, on this very seat; have you ever had—have you ever fallen asleep here?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ inquired the other curiously. ‘I was only wondering,’ said Lawford. He was cold and shivering. He felt instinctively it was madness to sit on here in the thin gliding mist that had gathered in swathes above the grass, milk-pale in the rising moon. The stranger turned away from him. ‘“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause,”’ he said slowly, with a little satirical catch on the last word. ‘What did _you_ dream?’ Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean grey beams of light between the cypresses. But to his wide and wandering eyes it seemed that a radiance other than hers haunted these mounds and leaning stones. ‘Have you ever noticed it?’ he said, putting out his hand towards his unknown companion; ‘this stone is cracked from head to foot?... But there’—he rose stiff and chilled—‘I am afraid I have bored you with my company. You came here for solitude, and I have been trying to convince you that we are surrounded with witnesses. You will forgive my intrusion?’ There was a kind of old-fashioned courtesy in his manner that he himself was dimly aware of. He held out his hand. ‘I hope you will think nothing of the kind,’ said the other earnestly; ‘how could it be in any sense an intrusion? It’s the old story of Bluebeard. And I confess I too should very much like a peep into his cupboard. Who wouldn’t? But there, it’s merely a matter of time, I suppose.’ He paused, and together they slowly ascended the path already glimmering with a heavy dew. At the porch they paused once more. And now it was the stranger that held out his hand.