e and
helpless silence. His mouth opened but no words came.

'Of course,' began Herbert again, 'I don't say there's anything in
it--except the--the mere coincidence,' he paused and glanced out of the
open casement beside him. 'But there's just one obvious question. Do you
happen to know of any strain of French blood in your family?'

Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at last.
'No,' he said, after a long pause, 'there's a little Dutch, I think, on
my mother's side, but no French.'

'No Sabathier, then?' said Herbert, smiling. 'And then there's another
question--this change; is it really as complete as you suppose? Has
it--please just warn me off if I am in the least intruding--has it been
noticed?'

Lawford hesitated. 'Oh, yes,' he said slowly, 'it has been noticed--my
wife, a few friends.'

'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his fingers on
the open casement.

'No, no. And you think?'

'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziest
conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There are
dozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in the
hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight
and corded up. We have practically no control over their main functions.
We can't even replace a little finger-nail. And look at the faces of
us--what atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! But
we know our bodies change--age, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. It
proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it is not
in the least untenable that by force of some violent convulsive effort
from outside one's body might change. It answers with odd voluntariness
to friend or foe, smile or snarl. As for what we call the laws of
Nature, they are pure assumptions to-day, and may be nothing better
than scrap-iron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal
impudence.' He smoked on in silence for a moment. 'You say you fell
asleep down there?'

Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Just
following up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,' he remarked musingly,
'it wasn't such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.'

'But surely,' said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of
candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness, towards
this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled clear-cut
features--'surely then, in that case, he is