the breath of spring, another interview was taking place in Mr.
Champers-Haswell's private suite at The Court, the decorations of
which, as he was wont to inform his visitors, had cost nearly £2000. Sir
Robert, whose taste at any rate was good, thought them so appalling that
while waiting for his host and partner, whom he had come to see, he took
a seat in the bow window of the sitting-room and studied the view that
nobody had been able to spoil. Presently Mr. Haswell emerged from his
bedroom, wrapped in a dressing gown and looking very pale and shaky.

"Delighted to see you all right again," said Sir Robert as he wheeled up
a chair into which Mr. Haswell sank.

"I am not all right, Aylward," he answered; "I am not all right at all.
Never had such an upset in my life; thought I was going to die when that
accursed savage told his beastly tale. Aylward, you are a man of the
world, tell me, what is the meaning of the thing? You remember what we
thought we saw in the office, and then--that story."

"I don't know," he answered; "frankly I don't know. I am a man who has
never believed in anything I cannot see and test, one who utterly lacks
faith. In my leisure I have examined into the various religious
systems and found them to be rubbish. I am convinced that we are but
highly-developed mammals born by chance, and when our day is done,
departing into the black nothingness out of which we came. Everything
else, that is, what is called the higher and spiritual part, I attribute
to the superstitions incident to the terror of the hideous position in
which we find ourselves, that of gods of a sort hemmed in by a few years
of fearful and tormented life. But you know the old arguments, so why
should I enter on them? And now I am confronted with an experience
which I cannot explain. I certainly thought that in the office on Friday