back, until--'

'"Until?"' Lawford managed to remark.

'Ah, that settles me again. Don't they call it an amoeba? But
really I am abjectly ignorant of all that kind of stuff. We
are ALL we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And
for that matter, anything outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend
in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy
said--it's only the impossible that's credible; whatever
credible may mean....'

It seemed to Lawford as if the last remark had wafted him bodily
into the presence of his kind, blinking, intensely anxious old
friend, Mr Bethany. And what leagues asunder the two men were who
had happened on much the same words to express their convictions.

He drew his hand gropingly over his face, half rose, and again
seated himself. 'Whatever it may be,' he said, 'the whole thing
reminds me, you know--it is in a way so curiously like my own--my
own case.'

Herbert sat on, a little drawn up in his chair, quietly smoking.
The crash of the falling water, after seeming to increase in
volume with the fading of evening, had again died down in the
darkness to a low multitudinous tumult as of countless
inarticulate, echoing voices.

'"Bizarre," you said; God knows I am.' But Herbert still remained
obdurately silent. 'You remember, perhaps,' Lawford faintly began