I sat down, looking out upon the richly-wooded landscape that glowed in the grand and melancholy light which was every moment fading.  The corners of the room were already dark; all was growing dim, and the gloom was insensibly toning my mind, already prepared for what was sinister.  I was waiting alone for his arrival, which soon took place.  The door communicating with the front room opened, and the tall figure of Mr. Jennings, faintly seen in the ruddy twilight, came, with quiet stealthy steps, into the room.

We shook hands, and, taking a chair to the window, where there was still light enough to enable us to see each other’s faces, he sat down beside me, and, placing his hand upon my arm, with scarcely a word of preface began his narrative.

CHAPTER VI

How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion

The faint glow of the west, the pomp of the then lonely woods of Richmond, were before us, behind and about us the darkening room, and on the stony face of the sufferer—­for the character of his face, though still gentle and sweet, was changed—­rested that dim, odd glow which seems to descend and produce, where it touches, lights, sudden though faint, which are lost, almost without gradation, in darkness.  The silence, too, was utter:  not a distant wheel, or bark, or whistle from without; and within the depressing stillness of an invalid bachelor’s house.

I guessed well the nature, though not even vaguely the particulars of the revelations I was about to receive, from that fixed face of suffering that so oddly flushed stood out, like a portrait of Schalken’s, before its background of darkness.

“It began,” he said, “on the 15th of October, three years and eleven weeks ago, and two days—­I keep very accurate count, for every day is torment.  If I leave anywhere a chasm in my narrative tell me.

“About four years ago I began a work, which had cost me very much thought and reading.  It was upon the religious metaphysics of the ancients.”

“I know,” said I, “the actual religion of educated and thinking paganism, quite apart from symbolic worship?  A wide and very interesting field.”

“Yes, but not good for the mind—­the Christian mind, I mean.  Paganism is all bound together in essential unity, and, with evil sympathy, their religion involves their art, and both their manners, and the subject is a degrading fascination and the Nemesis sure.  God forgive me!

“I wrote a great deal; I wrote late at night.  I was always thinking on the subject, walking about, wherever I was, everywhere.  It thoroughly infected me.  You are to remember that all the material ideas connected with it were more or less of the beautiful, the subject itself delightfully interesting, and I, then, without a care.”

He sighed heavily.