‘Take it away! take it away!—­Tear it up!—­Burn it!’

His agitation was so unnatural,—­from whatever cause it arose!—­ that, fearing the recurrence of the attack from which he had just recovered, I did as he bade me.  I tore the sheet of paper into quarters, and, striking a match, set fire to each separate piece.  He watched the process of incineration as if fascinated.  When it was concluded, and nothing but ashes remained, he gave a gasp of relief.

‘Lessingham,’ I said, ’you’re either mad already, or you’re going mad,—­which is it?’

’I think it’s neither.  I believe I am as sane as you.  It’s—­it’s that story of which I was speaking; it—­it seems curious, but I’ll tell you all about it—­some day.  As I observed, I think you will find it an interesting instance of a singular survival.’  He made an obvious effort to become more like his usual self.  ’It is extremely unfortunate, Atherton, that I should have troubled you with such a display of weakness,—­especially as I am able to offer you so scant an explanation.  One thing I would ask of you,—­to observe strict confidence.  What has taken place has been between ourselves.  I am in your hands, but you are my friend, I know I can rely on you not to speak of it to anyone,—­and, in particular, not to breathe a hint of it to Miss Lindon.’

‘Why, in particular, not to Miss Lindon?’

‘Can you not guess?’

I hunched my shoulder.

’If what I guess is what you mean is not that a cause the more why silence would be unfair to her?’

’It is for me to speak, if for anyone.  I shall not fail to do what should be done.—­Give me your promise that you will not hint a word to her of what you have so unfortunately seen?’

I gave him the promise he required.

. . . . . . .

There was no more work for me that day.  The Apostle, his divagations, his example of the coleoptera, his Arabian friend,—­ these things were as microbes which, acting on a system already predisposed for their reception, produced high fever; I was in a fever,—­of unrest.  Brain in a whirl!—­Marjorie, Paul, Isis, beetle, mesmerism, in delirious jumble.  Love’s upsetting!—­in itself a sufficiently severe disease; but when complications intervene, suggestive of mystery and novelties, so that you do not know if you are moving in an atmosphere of dreams or of frozen facts,—­if, then, your temperature does not rise, like that rocket of M. Verne’s,—­which reached the moon, then you are a freak of an entirely genuine kind, and if the surgeons do not preserve you, and place you on view, in pickle, they ought to, for the sake of historical doubters, for no one will believe that there ever was a man like you, unless you yourself are somewhere around to prove them Thomases.

Myself,—­I am not that kind of man.  When I get warm I grow heated, and when I am heated there is likely to be a variety show of a gaudy kind.  When Paul had gone I tried to think things out, and if I had kept on trying something would have happened—­so I went on the river instead.