y turned dully
upon me, topaz-coloured in a blood-red setting. There was no expression
in the suffused face.

"You want?" he said, in a voice that was august by dint of hopelessness.

"I want to explain," I said. I had no idea that this was what I had come
for.

He answered only: "You!" He had the air of one speaking to something
infinitely unimportant. It was as if I had no inkling of the real issue.

With a bravery of desperation I began to explain that I hadn't stumbled
into the thing; that I had acted open-eyed; for my own ends ... "My own
ends." I repeated it several times. I wanted him to understand, and I
did explain. I kept nothing from him; neither her coming, nor her words,
nor my feelings. I had gone in with my eyes open.

For the first time Fox looked at me as if I were a sentient being. "Oh,
you know that much," he said listlessly.

"It's no disgrace to have gone under to her," I said; "we _had_ to." His
despair seemed to link him into one "we" with myself. I wanted to put
heart into him. I don't know why.

He didn't look at me again.

"Oh, _that_," he said dully, "I--I understand who you mean.... If I had
known before I might have done something. But she came of a higher
plane." He seemed to be talking to himself. The half-forgotten horror
grew large; I remembered that she had said that Fox, like herself, was
one of a race apart, that was to supersede us--Dimensionists. And, when
I looked at him now, it was plain to me that he _was_ of a race
different to my own, just as he had always seemed different from any
other man. He had had a different tone in triumph; he was different now,
in his despair. He went on: "I might have managed Gurnard alone, but I
never thought of her coming. You see one does one's best, but, somehow,
here one grows rather blind. I ought to have stuck to Gurnard, of
course; never to have broken with him. We ought all to have kept
together.--But I kept my end up as long as he was alone."

He went on talking in an expressionless monotone, perhaps to himself,
perhaps to me. I listened as one listens to unmeaning sounds--to that of
a distant train at night. He was looking at the floor, his mouth moving
mechanically. He sat perfectly square, one hand on either knee, his back
bowed out, his head drooping forward. It was as if there were no more
muscular force in the whole man--as if he were one of those ancient
things one sees sunning themselves on benches by the walls of
workhous