He shook his head—­it was as though he shivered—­and relapsed into silence again.

“You shouldn’t think about things like that,” Mary said.

He looked up at her almost shrewdly.  “Think!” he repeated.  “I got no need to think.  I know.”

“Know—­what?”

“Ah!” he said, and gat brooding.  “I’m alive, I am,” he said, at last; “but I been better off once.  There’s no way of tellin’ it, ’cos it don’t’ fit into words.  Words wasn’t meant to show such things.  But I wasn’t just a limpin’, squintin’ little welsher; I was something that could feel the meaning of things and the reason for them, just like you can feel ’eat and cold.  Could feel and know things such as nobody can’t feel or know till ‘e’s done with this rotten bustle of livin’ and doin’ things.  That’s what I know, Miss; that’s what I found out when I died in that there ’orspital.”

Mary stared at him; a brief vivacity was in his face as he spoke, a tone of certainty in his voice.

“But,” she cried, “you’re alive.”

“Ay,” he said.  “I’m alive.  That’s the doin’ of that Fish.  He’s the man; proddin’ and workin’ away there in that big room of his with the bottles and machines, and bits of dead men on the tables.  ’E thinks I’m a bit touched in the brain, but I know, I do!  I remember all right that mornin’, with the grey sky showin’ over the wire blinds and the noise of the carts just beginnin’ in the streets.  There was sparkles in my eyes, flashes and colors, you know, and a feelin’ as if I was all wet with warm water.  I couldn’t see at first, but by an’ by I put up my ’and and cleared my eyes—­all pins and needles, my ’and was.  Then I got on my elbow, and saw—­the room and the bottles and all, and me naked on a table under a big light.  An’ against the wall, at the other side o’ the room, there was ’im—­Fish—­in a white-rubber gown and a face like chalk, shakin’ an’ sweatin’ an’ starin’ at me.  His eyes were all big an’ flat; an’ I lay there an’ looked at him, while he bit his lips an’ got a hold on himself.  At last ’e come over to me. ‘’Ow are you feeling?’ ’e says.  I’d been thinking.  ’You devil, you’ve brought me back,’ I shouted.  He was shakin’ still like a flag in the wind.  ‘Yes,’ he says, ’unless I’m mad, I’ve brought you back.’  I ’adn’t the strength to do no more than lie still; so I just watched ’im while ’e got brandy and drank it from the bottle.  Oh, I remember; I remember the whole thing.  That Fish can fool you an’ old Pond, but there’s no foolin’ me.  I know!”

He leaned forward and spat; the gesture emphasised the hard deliberation of his speech.  The look he gave her now was much more assured than her own.

“We must be getting back,” Mary said uneasily.  She remembered what Professor Fish had mentioned of Smith’s delusions.  But the strangeness and assurance of what he had said were not in accord with what she knew of unstable minds.