All these men, whether skeptics or mystics, looked back for
the rest of their lives on that night as on something unnatural.
They sat still or started up abruptly, and paced the great garden
in long detours, so that it seemed that no three of them were
together at a time, and none knew who would be his companion;
yet their rambling remained within the same dim and mazy space.
They fell into snatches of uneasy slumber; these were very brief,
and yet they felt as if the whole sitting, strolling, or occasional
speaking had been parts of a single dream.

Paynter woke once, and found Ashe sitting opposite him at a table
otherwise empty; his face dark in shadow and his cigar-end
like the red eye of a Cyclops. Until the lawyer spoke,
in his steady voice, Paynter was positively afraid of him.
He answered at random and nodded again; when he again woke
the lawyer was gone, and what was opposite him was the bald,
pale brow of the doctor; there seemed suddenly something
ominous in the familiar fact that he wore spectacles.
And yet the vanishing Ashe had only vanished a few yards away,
for he turned at that instant and strolled back to the table.
With a jerk Paynter realized that his nightmare was but a trick
of sleep or sleeplessness, and spoke in his natural voice,
but rather loud.

"So you've joined us again; where's Treherne?"

"Oh, still revolving, I suppose, like a polar bear under those trees
on the cliff," replied Ashe, motioning with his cigar, "looking at
what an older (and you will forgive me for thinking a somewhat better)