again, 'our talk the other night?'

'Oh, rather,' replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.

'I suppose you thought I was insane?'

'Insane!' There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo.
'You were lucidity itself. Besides--well, honestly, if I may
venture, I don't put very much truck in what one calls one's
sanity: except, of course, as a bond of respectability and a
means of livelihood.'

'But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really
stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and
came back--well--this?'

'I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it
was merely an affectation--that what you said was an
affectation, I mean--until--well, to be frank, it was the "this"
that so immensely interested me. Especially,' he added almost
with a touch of gaiety, 'especially the last glimpse. But if it's
really not a forbidden question, what precisely was the other?
What precise manner of man, I mean, came down into Widderstone?'

'It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you'll try to
understand me--my FACE. What you see now is not what I really
am, not what I was. Oh, it is all quite different. I know
perfectly well how absurd it must sound. And you won't press me
further. But that's the truth: that's what they have done for
me.'