’I say you are a thief!—­a thief, Robert Holt, a thief!  You came through a window for your own pleasure, now you will go through a window for mine,—­not this window, but another.’  Where the jest lay I did not perceive; but it tickled him, for a grating sound came from his throat which was meant for laughter.  ’This time it is as a thief that you will go,—­oh yes, be sure.’

He paused, as it seemed, to transfix me with his gaze.  His unblinking eyes never for an instant quitted my face.  With what a frightful fascination they constrained me,—­and how I loathed them!

When he spoke again there was a new intonation in his speech,—­ something bitter, cruel, unrelenting.

‘Do you know Paul Lessingham?’

He pronounced the name as if he hated it,—­and yet as if he loved to have it on his tongue.

‘What Paul Lessingham?’

’There is only one Paul Lessingham!  The Paul Lessingham,—­the great Paul Lessingham!’

He shrieked, rather than said this, with an outburst of rage so frenzied that I thought, for the moment, that he was going to spring on me and rend me.  I shook all over.  I do not doubt that, as I replied, my voice was sufficiently tremulous.

’All the world knows Paul Lessingham,—­the politician,—­the statesman.’

As he glared at me his eyes dilated.  I still stood in expectation of a physical assault.  But, for the present, he contented himself with words.

‘To-night you are going through his window like a thief!’

I had no inkling of his meaning,—­and, apparently, judging from his next words, I looked something of the bewilderment I felt.

’You do not understand?—­no!—­it is simple!—­what could be simpler?  I say that to-night—­to-night!—­you are going through his window like a thief.  You came through my window,—­why not through the window of Paul Lessingham, the politician—­the statesman.’

He repeated my words as if in mockery.  I am—­I make it my boast!—­ of that great multitude which regards Paul Lessingham as the greatest living force in practical politics; and which looks to him, with confidence, to carry through that great work of constitutional and social reform which he has set himself to do.  I daresay that my tone, in speaking of him, savoured of laudation,—­ which, plainly, the man in the bed resented.  What he meant by his wild words about my going through Paul Lessingham’s window like a thief, I still had not the faintest notion.  They sounded like the ravings of a madman.

As I continued silent, and he yet stared, there came into his tone another note,—­a note of tenderness,—­a note of which I had not deemed him capable.

’He is good to look at, Paul Lessingham,—­is he not good to look at?’

I was aware that, physically, Mr Lessingham was a fine specimen of manhood, but I was not prepared for the assertion of the fact in such a quarter,—­nor for the manner in which the temporary master of my fate continued to harp and enlarge upon the theme.