'My good man, please don't look at me like that. And do not call me "Doug." Even if you were the person, and in the condition, you pretend to be, I should resent hearing the word come from your lips each second.' 'He's mad!' It was said with a little gasp, in the most natural way in the world. Reclosing his eyes, if I could believe the evidence of my senses--which, in his case, I doubted if I was entitled to--he dozed. I began to understand that Mr. Montagu Babbacombe was even more of an artist than I had given him credit for. As I stood watching, with curious interest, the perfection with which he simulated a sick man's slumber, I asked myself if, after all, he might not be right, and I wrong. If he chose to continue the performance even when the necessity for acting was removed, why should he not? It might tend to simplify the situation. At least, it would do no harm. If he declined to allow even me to see the mask slipped a little from his face, I had certainly no reason to complain. Later on I could say, with perfect truth, that, so far as I was able to see, he never rallied from the moment I saw him first. Situated as I was likely to be, it would be a comfort to be able to say something that was true. The misfortune was, that I was not, myself, by any means such an artist as Mr. Babbacombe. I might be able, when in the public eye, to deceive with an air of passable candour, but in private I fell short. I had heard of men who lied with such consistency that, in the end, they deceived themselves. I had not got so far as that. Mr. Babbacombe, it seemed, could play a part so well that he actually was, for the time, the character he feigned to be. With me it was otherwise. I had not yet grown to love deception for deception's sake, as the man in front of me--whether he was Babbacombe or Twickenham--seemed to do. It filled me with an illogical sense of rage to perceive how, in this matter, he took it for granted that his point of view would--or should--necessarily be mine. He liked to keep on stealing all the time; I preferred, in private, to pretend that I was an honest man. However, it certainly was true that the strain of the impersonation lay on him. If he did not choose to allow himself a moment's relaxation, I had no cause to grumble. I had agreed with him that he should carry out a certain piece of deception. I could hardly complain if he carried out his part of the bargain so well that he was actually in danger of deceiving me. Only I did wish that he would own up, for a moment, what a rogue he was. Such was my state of nervous tension that, to me, such an admission would have come as a positive relief. I was willing to admit that I was a humbug--between ourselves. Why should he not be willing to do the same? It would have come as a sort of salve to my sense of self-esteem.