“I won’t argue the matter, Arbuthnot; it is of no use.  I repeat that I am mad, and Bastin is mad.”

“How about me?  I also saw and experienced these things.  Am I mad, too?”

“You ought to be, Arbuthnot.  If it isn’t enough to drive a man mad when he sees himself exactly reproduced in an utterly impossible moving-picture show exhibited by an utterly impossible young woman in an utterly impossible underground city, then I don’t know what is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, starting.

“Mean?  Well, if you didn’t notice it, there’s hope for you.”

“Notice what?”

“All that envoy scene.  There, as I thought, appeared Yva.  Do you admit that?”

“Of course; there could be no mistake on that point.”

“Very well.  Then according to my version there came a man, still young, dressed in outlandish clothes, who made propositions of peace and wanted to marry Yva, who wanted to marry him.  Is that right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, and didn’t you recognise the man?”

“No; I only noticed that he was a fine-looking fellow whose appearance reminded me of someone.”

“I suppose it must be true,” mused Bickley, “that we do not know ourselves.”

“So the old Greek thought, since he urged that this should be our special study.  ‘Know thyself,’ you remember.”

“I meant physically, not intellectually.  Arbuthnot, do you mean to tell me that you did not recognise your own double in that man?  Shave off your beard and put on his clothes and no one could distinguish you apart.”

I sprang up, dropping my pipe.

“Now you mention it,” I said slowly, “I suppose there was a resemblance.  I didn’t look at him very much; I was studying the simulacrum of Yva.  Also, you know it is some time since—­I mean, there are no pier-glasses in Orofena.”

“The man was you,” went on Bickley with conviction.  “If I were superstitious I should think it a queer sort of omen.  But as I am not, I know that I must be mad.”

“Why?  After all, an ancient man and a modern man might resemble each other.”

“There are degrees in resemblance,” said Bickley with one of his contemptuous snorts.  “It won’t do, Humphrey, my boy,” he added.  “I can only think of one possible explanation—­outside of the obvious one of madness.”

“What is that?”

“The Glittering Lady produced what Bastin called that cinematograph show in some way or other, did she not?  She said that in order to do this she loosed some hidden forces.  I suggest that she did nothing of the sort.”

“Then whence did the pictures come and why?”

“From her own brain, in order to impress us with a cock-and-bull, fairy-book story.  If this were so she would quite naturally fill the role of the lover of the piece with the last man who had happened to impress her.  Hence the resemblance.”