ible she" whom he couldn't get in this muddled world, simply
loathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in ambush down beside
those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowy
hospitality--oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a chance, one
quiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes
wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep,
fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his
place, and he in yours!' Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek
hair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn't you
have made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked the raid? I can just
conceive it--the amazing struggle in that darkness within a darkness;
like some dazed alien bee bursting through the sentinels of a hive;
one mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the appalling stirring on the
other side; the groping back to a house dismantled, rearranged, not,
mind you, disorganised or disintegrated....' He broke off with a smile,
as if of apology for his long, fantastic harangue.

Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert's colourless face.
There was not a sound else, it seemed, than that slightly drawling
scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, baffling
thoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. 'It's tempting stuff,' he
said, choosing another cigarette. 'But anyhow, the poor beggar failed.'

'Failed?'

'Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mere
imperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a passing likeness
to the man, but to Sabathier himself!' His eyes moved slowly round and
dwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny on his visitor.

'You say a passing likeness; do you MEAN that?'

Herbert smiled indulgently. 'If one CAN mean what is purely a
speculation. I am only trying to look at the thing dispassionately, you
see. We are so much the slaves of mere repetition. Here is life--yours
and mine--a kind of plenum in vacuo. It is only when we begin to play
the eavesdropper; when something goes askew; when one of the sentries on
the frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoarse "Qui vive?"--it is only
then we begin to question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the calves
of our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's but his own
satisfaction just that one fundamental question--Are we the prisoners,
the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the crea