’And, here, Mr Champnell, I wish to point out, and to emphasise the fact, that I am not prepared to positively affirm what portion of my adventures in that extraordinary, and horrible place, was actuality, and what the product of a feverish imagination.  Had I been persuaded that all I thought I saw, I really did see, I should have opened my lips long ago, let the consequences to myself have been what they might.  But there is the crux.  The happenings were of such an incredible character, and my condition was such an abnormal one,—­I was never really myself from the first moment to the last—­that I have hesitated, and still do hesitate, to assert where, precisely, fiction ended and fact began.

’With some misty notion of testing my actual condition I endeavoured to get off the heap of rugs on which I reclined.  As I did so the woman at my side laid her hand against my chest, lightly.  But, had her gentle pressure been the equivalent of a ton of iron, it could not have been more effectual.  I collapsed, sank back upon the rugs, and lay there, panting for breath, wondering if I had crossed the border line which divides madness from sanity.

’"Let me get up!—­let me go!” I gasped.

’"Nay,” she murmured, “stay with me yet awhile, O my beloved.”

‘And again she kissed me.’

Once more Mr Lessingham paused.  An involuntary shudder went all over him.  In spite of the evidently great effort which he was making to retain his self-control his features were contorted by an anguished spasm.  For some seconds he seemed at a loss to find words to enable him to continue.

When he did go on, his voice was harsh and strained.

’I am altogether incapable of even hinting to you the nauseous nature of that woman’s kisses.  They filled me with an indescribable repulsion.  I look back at them with a feeling of physical, mental, and moral horror, across an interval of twenty years.  The most dreadful part of it was that I was wholly incapable of offering even the faintest resistance to her caresses.  I lay there like a log.  She did with me as she would, and in dumb agony I endured.’

He took his handkerchief from his pocket, and, although the day was cool, with it he wiped the perspiration from his brow.

’To dwell in detail on what occurred during my involuntary sojourn in that fearful place is beyond my power.  I cannot even venture to attempt it.  The attempt, were it made, would be futile, and, to me, painful beyond measure.  I seem to have seen all that happened as in a glass darkly,—­with about it all an element of unreality.  As I have already remarked, the things which revealed themselves, dimly, to my perception, seemed too bizarre, too hideous, to be true.