deserted world of swamps and willows.

We sat smoking in comparative silence, the strain growing every minute
greater. The worst feature of the situation seemed to me that we did not
know what to expect, and could therefore make no sort of preparation by
way of defense. We could anticipate nothing. My explanations made in the
sunshine, moreover, now came to haunt me with their foolish and wholly
unsatisfactory nature, and it was more and more clear to me that some
kind of plain talk with my companion was inevitable, whether I liked it
or not. After all, we had to spend the night together, and to sleep in
the same tent side by side. I saw that I could not get along much longer
without the support of his mind, and for that, of course, plain talk was
imperative. As long as possible, however, I postponed this little
climax, and tried to ignore or laugh at the occasional sentences he
flung into the emptiness.

Some of these sentences, moreover, were confoundedly disquieting to me,
coming as they did to corroborate much that I felt myself:
corroboration, too--which made it so much more convincing--from a
totally different point of view. He composed such curious sentences, and
hurled them at me in such an inconsequential sort of way, as though his
main line of thought was secret to himself, and these fragments were the
bits he found it impossible to digest. He got rid of them by uttering
them. Speech relieved him. It was like being sick.

"There are things about us, I'm sure, that make for disorder,
disintegration, destruction, _our_ destruction," he said once, while the
fire blazed between us. "We've strayed out of a safe line somewhere."

And another time, when the gong sounds had come nearer, ringing much