Uvo, we've no time for all that," I said. He had started up in
bed, painfully excited and distressed, and I began to fear that I might
have my work cut out to keep him there. "We agreed to differ about that
long ago," I reminded him.

"It's only another way of putting what you said just now," he answered.
"You said you did believe in my power of infecting another fellow with
my ideas; you spoke of my responsibility if the other fellow put them
into practice; and now he's done this hideous thing, had done it even
when we were talking!"

"He hasn't done it yet, and I mean to know the reason if he ever does,"
said I, perhaps with rather more confidence than I really felt. I went
on to outline my various notions of prevention. Uvo found no comfort in
any of them.

"You can't trust him alone there for the night, after this, Gilly! He'll
pull it off, Sarah or no Sarah, if you do. And if you send him either to
prison or an asylum--but _you_ won't be sending him! That's just it,
Gilly. He'll have been sent by me!"

It was a case of the devil quoting scripture, but I was obliged to tell
Uvo, as though I had found it out for myself, that criminals and
criminal lunatics were not made that way. Villain-worshippers did not go
to such lengths unless they had the seeds of madness or of crime already
in them. Uvo could not repudiate his own thesis, but he said that if
that were so he had watered those seeds in a way that made him the
worst of the two. There was no arguing with him, no taking his part
against this ruthless self-criticism. He owned that in Nettleton he had
found a sympathetic listener at last, that he had poured the whole virus
of his ideas into those willing ears, and now here was the result. He
threatened to get up and dress, and to stagger into the breach with me
or instead of me. No need to recount our contest on that point. I
prevailed by undertaking to do any mortal thing he liked, as long as he
lay where he was with that quinsy.

"Then save the fellow somehow, Gilly," he cried, "only don't you go near
Nettleton to-night! He obviously isn't safe; take the other risk
instead. Since the old soul's out of the house, let him set fire to it
if he likes; that's better than his murdering you on the spot. Then we
must get him quietly examined, without letting him know that we know
anything at all; and if a private attendant's all he wants, I swear I'm
his man. It's about the least I can do for him, and it would give