hey had taken in all the landscapes of their everlasting
combat; the bright, square garden behind the shop; the whole lift
and leaning of the side of Hampstead Heath; the little garden of the
decadent choked with flowers; the square of sand beside the sea
at sunrise. They both felt at the same moment all the breadth and
blossoming beauty of that paradise, the coloured trees, the natural and
restful nooks and also the great wall of stone--more awful than the wall
of China--from which no flesh could flee.

Turnbull was moodily balancing his sword in his hand as the other spoke;
then he started, for a mouth whispered quite close to his ear. With a
softness incredible in any cat, the huge, heavy man in the black hat and
frock-coat had crept across the lawn from his own side and was saying
in his ear: "Don't trust that second of yours. He's mad and not so mad,
either; for he frightfully cunning and sharp. Don't believe the story he
tells you about why I hate him. I know the story he'll tell; I overheard
it when the housekeeper was talking to the postman. It's too long to
talk about now, and I expect we're watched, but----"

Something in Turnbull made him want suddenly to be sick on the grass;
the mere healthy and heathen horror of the unclean; the mere inhumane
hatred of the inhuman state of madness. He seemed to hear all round him
the hateful whispers of that place, innumerable as leaves whispering
in the wind, and each of them telling eagerly some evil that had not
happened or some terrific secret which was not true. All the rationalist
and plain man revolted within him against bowing down for a moment in
that forest of deception and egotistical darkness. He wanted to blow up
that palace of delusions with dynamite; and in some wild way, which I
will not defend, he tried to do it.

He looked across at MacIan and said: "Oh, I can't stand this!"

"Can't stand what?" asked his opponent, eyeing him doubtfully.

"Shall we say the atmosphere?" replied Turnbull; "one can't use uncivil
expressions even to a--deity. The fact is, I don't like having God for
my second."

"Sir!" said that being in a state of great offence, "in my position I am
not used to having my favours refused. Do you know who I am?"

The editor of _The Atheist_ turned upon him like one who has lost
all patience, and exploded: "Yes, you are God, aren't you?" he said,
abruptly, "why do we have two sets of teeth?"

"Teeth?" spluttered the genteel lunatic; "te