‘Well,’ said Herbert with a faint smile, ‘that depends on your definition of the word. He wasn’t a flunkey, a fool, or a prig, if that’s what you mean. He wasn’t perhaps on Mrs Grundy’s visiting list. He wasn’t exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it. To the stodgy, suety world of course it’s little else than sheer moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy way the world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally it hissed.... I shall find the book. You shall have the book; oh yes.’ ‘There’s only one more question,’ said Lawford in a dull, slow voice, stooping and covering his face with his hands. ‘I know it’s impossible for you to realise—but to me time seems like that water there, to be heaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of brass and wood, cymbal and drum will crash out—and sweep me under. I can’t tell you Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that mole in my mind’s dark. You say it may be this face, working in! God knows. I find it easy to speak to you—this cold, clear sense, you know. The others feel too much, or are afraid, or—Let me think—yes, I was going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.’ He peered darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. ‘What remains now? Where do _I_ come in? What is there left for _me_ to do?’ And at that moment there sounded, even above the monotonous roar of the water beyond the window—there fell the sound of a light footfall approaching along the corridor. ‘Listen,’ said Herbert; ‘here’s my sister coming; we’ll ask her.’ CHAPTER THIRTEEN The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown. ‘Just home?’ said Herbert. ‘We’ve been for a walk—’ ‘My sister always forgets everything,’ said Herbert, turning to Lawford; ‘even tea-time. This is Mr Lawford, Grisel. We’ve been arguing no end. And we want you to give a decision. It’s just this: Supposing if by some impossible trick you had come in now, not the charming familiar sister you are, but shorter, fatter, fair and round-faced, quite different, physically, you know—what would you do?’ ‘What nonsense you talk, Herbert!’ ‘Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrification—by some unimaginable ingression or enchantment, by nibbling a bunch of roses, or whatever you like to call it?’ ‘_Only_ physically?’ ‘Well, yes, actually; but potentially, why—that’s another matter.’ The dark eyes passed slowly from her brother’s face and rested gravely on their visitor’s. ‘Is he making fun of me?’ Lawford almost imperceptibly shook his head. ‘But what a question! And I’ve had no tea.’ She drew her gloves slowly through her hand. ‘The thing, of course, isn’t possible, I know. But shouldn’t I go mad, don’t you think?’