XII


Somehow the night had passed--somehow in bitterness, in anguish. But it
had passed.

Ernest's lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the
black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted Reginald
in the studio.

Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in his most characteristic
pose, supporting his head with his hand and looking with clear piercing
eyes searchingly at the boy.

"Yes," he observed, "it's a most curious psychical phenomenon."

"You cannot imagine how real it all seemed to me."

The boy spoke painfully, dazed, as if struck by a blow.

"Even now it is as if something has gone from me, some struggling
thought that I cannot--cannot remember."

Reginald regarded him as a physical experimenter might look upon the
subject of a particularly baffling mental disease.

"You must not think, my boy, that I bear you any malice for your
extraordinary delusion. Before Jack went away he gave me an exact