ing folds of the looped-up mosquito-bar, like the
curtains of a catafalque, and a round cap he wore to cover his bald
spot, gave him the air of some old pope holding an audience. He raised
his eyes without lifting his head, and smiled as Madame Sarafov and her
daughter, with measured strides that reminded one again of the larger
carnivora, moved forward to the bedside. And he lifted his hand in a
decidedly pontifical fashion, as though to bless them. I remained for a
moment in the shadow before they turned and explained who I was; and the
pale blue eyes, without any recognition, beamed upon me as upon a new
and promising adherent to the faith. He was immensely improved, though
very much nearer the grave than when I had seen him for that dubious
moment through the window of his house in Ipsilon. The harsh ravages of
a life of distorted ideals had been softened by illness to an ascetic
benignity. And he talked. I was obliged to admit to myself that so far I
had never seen him in private life. He talked and he was full of
reminiscence. He had a musical tenor voice, and he spoke rapidly and
with an unconcerned change from subject to subject which might be set
down to garrulity. He gazed into the shadows as he talked and I
listened, very much astonished. For it was not the talk of a wicked man
or an unhappy man or even an unsuccessful man. It was rather the talk of
an intelligent humbug, such as one might expect from the super-annuated
and senile secretary of some rich and fantastic scientific society. He
gave one that impression, that his whole life had been one of gentle
dilletantism under the protecting shadow of giant vested interests. It
was an astonishingly picturesque scene, the sort of _genre_ picture the
Victorians did so well and for which we moderns have so profound a
contempt. It might have been called 'The Old Professor Tells His Story.'
It flowed from him. He had a fund of phrases, quite common no doubt, but
which he used as though he had invented them himself. His long,
rose-tinted, transparent nostrils moved at times. His hands lay on the
bedspread, singularly small and chunky for so large a being, and he
often withdrew his gaze suddenly from the shadows of the past and
examined his knuckles with a sharp scrutiny that, I suppose, was merely
a habit born of an unconscious reflex action, but gave one a notion that
at times he began to doubt his own reality.

"And then," said Mr. Spenlove after a pause, "I discov