musingly, 'it wasn't such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.'

'But surely,' said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of
candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness,
towards this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled
clear-cut features--'surely then, in that case, he is here now?
And yet, on my word of honour, though every friend I ever had in
the world should deny it, I am the same. Memory stretches back
clear and sound to my childhood. I can see myself with
extraordinary lucidity, how I think, my motives and all that; and
in spite of these voices that I seem to hear, and this peculiar
kind of longing to break away, as it were, just to press on--it
is I,--I myself, that am speaking to you now out of this--this
mask.'

Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. 'You mustn't let
me tire you,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not
necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's
true this fellow Sabathier really was something of a personality.
He had a rather unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to
squeeze something out of experience that isn't there; and he
seemed never to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in his
fellow-creatures, especially in the women he met, what even--if
they have it--they cannot give. The little book I wanted to show
you is partly autobiographical and really does manage to set the
fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one's
imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in
the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old
tombstone for years. He's enormously vivid--quite beyond my
feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture.