his best visitors' room. His father-in-law had slept here, with
his whiskers on that pillow. His wife's most formidable aunt had
been all night here, alone with these pictures. She certainly
was... 'But what are you doing here?' cried a voice suddenly out
of his reverie.

He started up and stretched himself, and taking out the neat
little packet that the maid had brought from the chemist's, he
drew up a chair, and sat down once more in front of the glass. He
sighed vacantly, rose and lifted down from the wall above the
fireplace a tinted photograph of himself that Sheila had had
enlarged about twelve years ago. It was a brighter, younger,
hairier, but unmistakably the same dull indolent Lawford who had
ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. The cheek
was a little plumper, the eyes not quite so full-lidded, the hair
a little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small
blonde moustache. He tilted the portrait into the candlelight,
and compared it with this reflection in the glass of what had
come out of Widderstone, feature with feature, with perfect
composure and extreme care, Then he laid down the massive frame
on the table, and gazed quietly at the tiny packet.

It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never before
realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged.
Here in this small punctilious packet lay a Sesame--a power of
transformation beside which the transformation of that rather
flaccid face of the noonday into this tense, sinister face of
midnight was but as a moving from house to house--a change just
as irrevocable and complete, and yet so very normal. Which should
it be, that, or--his face lifted itself once more to the ice-like