‘“Bizarre,” you said; God knows _I_ am.’ But Herbert still remained obdurately silent. ‘You remember, perhaps,’ Lawford faintly began again, ‘our talk the other night?’ ‘Oh, rather,’ replied the cordial voice out of the dusk. ‘I suppose you thought I was insane?’ ‘Insane!’ There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. ‘You were lucidity itself. Besides—well, honestly, if I may venture, I don’t put very much truck in what one calls one’s sanity: except, of course, as a bond of respectability and a means of livelihood.’ ‘But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and came back—well—this?’ ‘I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it was merely an affectation—that what you said was an affectation, I mean—until—well, to be frank, it was the “this” that so immensely interested me. Especially,’ he added almost with a touch of gaiety, ‘especially the last glimpse. But if it’s really not a forbidden question, what precisely _was_ the other? What precise manner of man, I mean, came down into Widderstone?’ ‘It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you’ll try to understand me—my _face_. What you see now is not what I really am, not what I was. Oh, it is all quite different. I know perfectly well how absurd it must sound. And you won’t press me further. But that’s the truth: that’s what they have done for me.’ It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had been suddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette revealed no sign of him. ‘I know, I know,’ he went gropingly on; ‘I felt it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. _You_ can’t see it. _You_ can’t feel it. _You_ can’t hear these hooting voices. It’s no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not over it, of insanity.’