ught he was going away from it: instead, he had come straight to the
spot where, if anywhere, his nerves might be expected to play him false.

"Bah!" he said, and he said it aloud, "the silly things are only wax.
Who's afraid?" His voice sounded loud in the silence that lives with the
wax people. "They're only wax," he said again, and touched with his
foot, contemptuously, the crouching figure in the mantle.

And, as he touched it, it raised its head and looked vacantly at him,
and its eyes were mobile and alive. He staggered back against another
figure, and dropped the match. In the new darkness he heard the
crouching figure move towards him. Then the darkness fitted in round him
very closely.

* * * * *

"What was it exactly that sent poor Vincent mad: you've never told me?"
Rose asked the question. She and Edward were looking out over the pines
and tamarisks, across the blue Mediterranean. They were very happy,
because it was their honeymoon.

He told her about the Musee Grevin and the wager, but he did not state
the terms of it.

"But why did he think you would be afraid?"

He told her why.

"And then what happened?"

"Why, I suppose he thought there was no time like the present--for his
five pounds, you know--and he hid among the wax-works. And I missed my
train, and _I_ thought there was no time like the present. In fact,
dear, I thought if I waited I should have time to make certain of
funking it, so I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and
sat down right in one of the wax-work groups--they couldn't see me from
the passage where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply
went to sleep; and I woke up--and there was a light, and I heard some
one say: 'They're only wax,' and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of
the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one
of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was
trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I'd got near me, he began to
scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one
in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They
have to put his food beside him while he's asleep. It's horrible. I
can't help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow."

"Of course it's not," said Rose. "Poor Vincent! Do you know I never
_really_ liked him." There was a pause. Then she said: "But how was it
_you_ weren't frightene