'Ah, yes, your thoughts?'

'I hardly know--oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It
was just like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.'

Mr Bethany gazed without stirring. 'And yet, you know,' he said,
'I can hardly believe, I mean conceive, how-- You have been taking
no drugs, no quackery, Lawford?'

'I never dose myself,' said Lawford, with sombre pride.

'God bless me, that's Lawford to the echo,' thought his visitor.
'And before--?' he went on gently; 'I really cannot conceive, you
see, how a mere fit could... Before you sat down you were quite
alone?' He stuck out his head. 'There was nobody with you?'

'With me? Oh no,' came the soft answer.

'What had you been thinking of? In these days of faith-cures, and
hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities--why, the simple
old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel.
You were thinking, you say; do you remember, perhaps, just the
drift?'

'Well,' began Lawford ruminatingly, 'there was something curious
even then, perhaps. I remember, for instance, I knelt down to
read an old tombstone. There was a little seat--no back. And an
epitaph. The sun was just setting; some French name. And there
was a long jagged crack in the stone, like the black line you