"Steady--but tell me----" "George--I've been trying to remember----" "What! Good God! You don't remem--_so close that you don't remember_?" "I honestly--but no, that isn't true--I seem to remember something--let me think, let me think.... What time did I go to bed last night?" "Later than usual. Not till half-past nine." "What was I doing? Tell me what I was doing. I was looking at pictures or something, wasn't I?" "You were looking at the Hogarth prints." "Yes, yes, that's right.... I didn't fall asleep, did I?" "No, you didn't." He muttered thickly. Outrageous, extravagant, beyond reason as it was, his sincerity could not be doubted. "It made no difference to him," Julia had said; but that her words should be taken _au pied de la lettre_ like that!... He continued to mutter. "I do remember something--I do remember--at least I did this morning--I thought I did--but it went. Why didn't I come into breakfast? _Why_ was I going away without any breakfast? _Why_ wouldn't I have breakfast, George? I'm sure there was a reason, but I can't for the life of me remember." Then he began to talk rapidly. "That lamp--very close, you say--touching--something all instantaneous and burning--one intense brilliant spot--no before or after--all isolated by itself--but I'll swear I didn't fake the lamp that time! By all that's sacred I swear it, George! Something happened in the night that had nothing to do with me at all! It all happens in the night. Why"--he flung out his arms in a perfectly amazing appeal--"if I'd moved the light at all it would have been farther away! I _wanted_ to do that book! I thought about nothing else from the moment I went upstairs! I ached to be at it--wished this wasted week-end was over--I saw it all again perfectly clearly, beautifully clearly! I'd got out of bed. And then ... everything went out. It was exactly as if somebody'd taken that torch out of my hand, somebody with a stronger will than mine, and concentrated it--in the very moment when I saw that book practically written--one bright blazing bull's-eye----" There was a little bench about four yards away. I think I needed its support more than he. Together we reached it and sat down. He turned the beautiful grey-blue eyes on me. "George," he said more quietly, "something happened. I know it did." I made no reply. "Something happened. Something's been done to me. Somebody's been taking a hand in my life. At breakfast-time I almost knew what it was. Do _you_ know what it was?" There was only one possible answer to this. I made it, in a broken voice. "No, old man, I don't." "Except of course that I've slipped back again." "Except that, I suppose." He passed his hand wearily over his brow, and, much as I hated that insolent vainglorious book of his, the gesture with which he wiped it away went strangely to my heart.