"It has gone," he said. "You have driven it away." Uniacke hurried forward to the Rectory. That night he implored the painter for the last time to leave the island. "Can't you feel," he said, almost passionately, "the danger you are running here, the terrible danger to yourself? The sea preys upon your mind. You ought not to be near it. Every murmur of the waves is suggestive to your ears. The voices of those bells recall to your mind the drowning of men. The sigh of that poor maniac depresses you perpetually. Leave the sea. Try to forget it. I tell you, Sir Graham, that your mind is becoming actually diseased from incessant brooding. It begins even to trick your eyes in this abominable way." "You swear you saw nothing?" "I do. There was nothing. You have thought of that boy until you actually see him before you." "As he is?" "As he is not, as he will never be." The painter got up from his chair, came over to Uniacke, and looked piercingly into his eyes. "Then you declare--on your honour as a priest," he said slowly, "that you do not know that my wonder-child is the boy who is buried beneath that stone?" "I buried that boy, and I declare on my honour as a priest that I do not know it," Uniacke answered, desperately but unflinchingly. It was his last throw for this man's salvation. "I believe you," the painter said. He returned to the fireplace, and leaned his face on his arm against the mantelpiece. "I believe you," he repeated presently. "I have been mistaken." "Mistaken--how?" "Sometimes I have thought that you have lied to me." Uniacke's heart grew heavier at the words. In the morning Sir Graham said to him, with a curious calmness: "I think perhaps you are right, Uniacke. I have been considering your words, your advice." "And you will take it?" Uniacke said, with a sudden enormous sense of gratefulness. "I think I shall." "Think--Sir Graham!" "I'll decide to-night. I must have the day to consider. But--yes, you are right. That--that horrible appearance. I suppose it must be evoked by the trickery of my own brain." "Undoubtedly." "There can be no other reason for it?" "None--none." "Then--then, yes, I had better go from here. But you will come with me?" "To London?" "Anywhere--it does not matter." He looked round him wistfully. "If I am to leave the island," he said sorrowfully, "it does not matter where I go." "To London then," Uniacke said, almost joyously. "I will make my arrangements." "To-morrow?" "To-morrow. Yes. Excuse me for the present. I must run over to the mainland to settle about the Sunday services. I shall be back in a few hours."