He drew nearer to Marsham, resting his forehead on the bed.  The firelight threw the shadow of his gaunt kneeling figure on the white walls.  And at last, after the struggle, there seemed to be an effluence—­a descending, invading love—­overflowing his own being—­enwrapping the sufferer before him—­silencing the clamor of a weeping world.  And the dual mind of the modern, even in Lankester, wavered between the two explanations:  “It is myself,” said the critical intellect, “the intensification and projection of myself.” “It is God!” replied the soul.

Marsham, meanwhile, as the morning drew on, and as the veil of morphia between him and reality grew thinner, was aware of a dream slowly drifting into consciousness—­of an experience that grew more vivid as it progressed.  Some one was in the room; he moved uneasily, lifted his head, and saw indistinctly a figure in the shadows standing near the smouldering fire.  It was not his servant; and suddenly his dream mingled with what he saw, and his heart began to throb.

“Ferrier!” he called, under his breath.  The figure turned, but in his blindness and semi-consciousness he did not recognize it.

“I want to speak to you,” he said, in the same guarded, half-whispered voice.  “Of course, I had no right to do it, but—­”

His voice dropped and his eyelids closed.

Lankester advanced from the fire.  He saw Marsham was not really awake, and he dreaded to rouse him completely, lest it should only be to the consciousness of pain.  He stooped over him gently, and spoke his name.

“Yes,” said Marsham, murmuring, without opening his eyes.  “There’s no need for you to rub it in.  I behaved like a beast, and Barrington—­”

The voice became inarticulate again.  The prostration and pallor of the speaker, the feebleness of the tone—­nothing could have been more pitiful.  An idea rushed upon Lankester.  He again bent over the bed.

“Don’t think of it any more,” he said.  “It’s forgotten!”

A slight and ghastly smile showed on Marsham’s lip as he lay with closed eyes.  “Forgotten!  No, by Jove!” Then, after an uneasy movement, he said, in a stronger and irritable voice, which seemed to come from another region of consciousness: 

“It would have been better to have burned the paper.  One can’t get away from the thing.  It—­it disturbs me—­”

“What paper?” said Lankester, close to the dreamer’s ear.

“The Herald,” said Marsham, impatiently.

“Where is it?”

“In that cabinet by the fire.”

“Shall I burn it?”

“Yes—­don’t bother me!” Evidently he now thought he was speaking to his valet, and a moan of pain escaped him.  Lankester walked over to the cabinet and opened the top drawer.  He saw a folded newspaper lying within it.  After a moment’s hesitation he lifted it, and perceived by the light of the night-lamp that it was the Herald of August 2—­the famous number issued on the morning of Ferrier’s death.  All the story of the communicated article and the “Barrington letter” ran through his mind.  He stood debating with himself, shaken by emotion.  Then he deliberately took the paper to the fire, stirred the coals, and, tearing up the paper, burned it piece by piece.