“Why? After all, an ancient man and a modern man might resemble each other.” “There are degrees in resemblance,” said Bickley with one of his contemptuous snorts. “It won’t do, Humphrey, my boy,” he added. “I can only think of one possible explanation—outside of the obvious one of madness.” “What is that?” “The Glittering Lady produced what Bastin called that cinematograph show in some way or other, did she not? She said that in order to do this she loosed some hidden forces. I suggest that she did nothing of the sort.” “Then whence did the pictures come and why?” “From her own brain, in order to impress us with a cock-and-bull, fairy-book story. If this were so she would quite naturally fill the role of the lover of the piece with the last man who had happened to impress her. Hence the resemblance.” “You presuppose a great deal, Bickley, including supernatural cunning and unexampled hypnotic influence. I don’t know, first, why she should be so anxious to add another impression to the many we have received in this place; and, secondly, if she was, how she managed to mesmerise three average but totally different men into seeing the same things. _My_ explanation is that you were deceived as to the likeness, which, mind you, I did not recognise; nor, apparently, did Bastin.” “Bastin never recognises anything. But if you are in doubt, ask Yva herself. She ought to know. Now I’m off to try to analyse that confounded Life-water, which I suspect is of the ordinary spring variety, lightened up with natural carbonic acid gas and possibly not uninfluenced by radium. The trouble is that here I can only apply some very elementary tests.” So he went also, in an opposite direction to Bastin, and I was left alone with Tommy, who annoyed me much by attempting continually to wander off into the cave, whence I must recall him. I suppose that my experiences of the day, reviewed beneath the sweet influences of the wonderful tropical night, affected me. At any rate, that mystical side of my nature, to which I think I alluded at the beginning of this record, sprang into active and, in a sense, unholy life. The normal vanished, the abnormal took possession, and that is unholy to most of us creatures of habit and tradition, at any rate, if we are British. I lost my footing on the world; my spirit began to wander in strange places; of course, always supposing that we have a spirit, which Bickley would deny.