Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. ‘You mustn’t let me tire you,’ he said; ‘but even on our theory it would not necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It’s true this fellow Sabathier really was something of a personality. He had a rather unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something out of experience that isn’t there; and he seemed never to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in the women he met, what even—if they have it—they cannot give. The little book I wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really does manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one’s imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone for years. He’s enormously vivid—quite beyond my feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can’t get nearer than two years to his death. I shouldn’t mind guessing some last devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an instant too long beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he killed himself; and perhaps lived to regret it ever after. ‘After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?’ Herbert continued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering from shelf to shelf. ‘You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that the body fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in the sleep of the living it lies very feebly guarded. And supposing in that state some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied, just happens on it—like some hungry sexton beetle on the carcase of a mouse. Supposing—I know it’s the most outrageous theorising—but supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier’s emanation, or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some fatality longing on and on just for life, or even for the face, the voice, of some “impossible she” whom he couldn’t get in this muddled world, simply loathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in ambush down beside those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowy hospitality—oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a chance, one quiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep, fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his place, and he in yours!’ Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek hair shining. ‘The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn’t you have made a fight for it? Wouldn’t you have risked the raid? I can just conceive it—the amazing struggle in that darkness within a darkness; like some dazed alien bee bursting through the sentinels of a hive; one mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the appalling stirring on the other side; the groping back to a house dismantled, rearranged, not, mind you, disorganised or