temporary breakdown as this, Danton. I think I foresaw it.
And now, just while we are all three alone here together in
friendly conclave, wouldn't it be as well, don't you think, to
confront ourselves with the difficulties? I know--we all know,
that that poor half-demented creature IS Arthur Lawford. This
morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. An awful
calamity has suddenly fallen upon him--this change. I own frankly
at the first sheer shock it staggered me as I think for the
moment it has staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow
face to face, heard him talk, and watched him there upstairs in
the silence stir and awake and come up again to his trouble out
of his sleep. I had no more doubt in my own mind and heart that
he was he than I have in my mind that I--am I. We do in some
mysterious way, you'll own at once, grow so accustomed, so
inured, if you like, to each other's faces (masks though they be)
that we hardly realise we see them when we are speaking together.
And yet the slightest, the most infinitesimal change is instantly
apparent.'

'Oh yes, Vicar; but you see--'

Mr Bethany raised a small lean hand: 'One moment, please. I have
heard Lawford's own account. Conscious or unconscious, he has
been through some terrific strain, some such awful conflict with
the unseen powers that we--thank God!--have only read about, and
never perhaps, until death is upon us, shall witness for
ourselves. What more likely, more inevitable than that such a
thing should leave its scar, its cloud, its masking shadow?--call
it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dread into a face
we'd die for. Some experience, which would be nothing but a