“I seal you mine, Pudgie!” he said.

Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue.

I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing.  Benlian’s breath came in little flutters, many seconds apart.  He had a little clock on the table.  Twenty minutes passed, and half an hour.  I was a little disappointed, really, that the statue wasn’t going to move; but Benlian knew best, and it was filling quietly up with him instead.  Then I thought of those zigzag bunches of lightning they draw on the electric-belt advertisements, and I was rather glad after all that the statue wasn’t going to move.  It would have been a little cheap, that ... vulgar, in a sense....  He was breathing a little more sharply now, as if in pain, but his eyes never moved.  A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the hooting of the tugs wouldn’t disturb Benlian....

Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened.  Benlian had suddenly moved.  He’d set himself forward in his chair, and he seemed to be strangling.  His mouth was wide open, and he began to make long harsh “Aaaaah-aaaah’s!” I shouldn’t have thought passing yourself was such agony....

And then I gave a scream—­for he seemed to be thrusting himself back in his chair again, as if he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to pass himself at all.  But just you ask anybody:  When you get yourself just over half-way passed, the other’s dragged out of you, and you can’t help yourself.  His “Aaaaahs!” became so loud and horrid that I shut my eyes and stopped my ears....  Minutes that lasted; and then there came a high dinning that I couldn’t shut out, and all at once the floor shook with a heavy thump.  When all was still again I opened my eyes.

His chair had overturned, and he lay in a heap beside it.

I called “Benlian!” but he didn’t answer....

He’d passed beautifully; quite dead.  I looked up at the statue.  It was just as Benlian had said—­it didn’t open its eyes, nor speak, nor anything like that.  Don’t you believe chaps who tell you that statues that have been passed into do that; they don’t.

But instead, in a blaze and flash and shock, I knew now for the first time what a glorious thing that statue was!  Have you ever seen anything for the first time like that?  If you have, you never see very much afterwards, you know.  The rest’s all piffle after that.  It was like coming out of fog and darkness into a split in the open heavens, my statue was so transfigured; and I’ll bet if you’d been there you’d have clapped your hands, as I did, and chucked the tablecloth over the Benlian on the floor till they should come to cart that empty shell away, and patted the statue’s foot and cried:  “Is it all right, Benlian?”

I did this; and then I rushed excitedly out into the street, to call somebody to see how glorious it was....