or instance, I
nearly laughed.... Have you ever watched shadows upon a wall? Really,
they are diverting beyond belief."

"Yes. I have watched them often. They are more real to me than actual
people, because they are uglier. Beauty is a lie!"

A note of dreadful conviction crept into the hunchback's voice. Suvaroff
looked at him intently, and said, quite simply:

"What a bitter truth _you_ are, my friend!"

Minetti stared at Suvaroff, and he rose. "Perhaps I shall see you at
your puppet show some evening," he said. And, without waiting for a
reply, he left the room.

Suvaroff lay again all night upon his bed staring in a mute agony at the
ceiling. Once or twice he fancied he heard the sounds of music from the
next room. His heart leaped joyfully. But almost instantly his hopes
sank back, like spent swimmers in a relentless sea. It seemed as if his
brain were thirsting. He was in a pitiless desert of white-heated
thought, and there was not a cloud of oblivion upon the horizon of his
despair. Remembrance flamed like a molten sun, greedily withering every
green, refreshing thing in its path. How long before this dreadful
memory would consume him utterly?

"If I could only laugh!" he cried in his agony. "_If I could only
laugh!_"

* * *

All next day Suvaroff was in a fever; not a physical fever, but a mental
fever that burned with devastating insistence. He could not lie still
upon his bed, so he rose and stumbled about the city's streets. But
nothing diverted him. Before his eyes a sheet of fire burned, and a
blinding light seemed to shut out everything else from his vision. Even
his thoughts crackled like dry faggots in a flame.

"When evening comes," he said, "a breeze will spring up and I shall have
some relief." But almost at once he thought: "A breeze will do no good.
It will only make matters worse! I have heard that nothing puts out a
fire so quickly as a shower. Let me see--It is now the middle of
August.... It does not rain in this part of the world until October.
Well, I must wait until October, then. No; a breeze at evening will do
no good. I will go and watch the shadows again. Shadows are cool affairs
if one sits in them, but how...."

And he began to wonder how he could contrive to sit in shadows that fell
only on a wall.

How he got to the wine-shop he did not know, but at a late hour he found
himself sitting at his accustomed seat. His bottle of brandy stood
before him. To-night the shadows w