‘You had forgotten?’ Her cheeks flamed; her eyes sparkled.  ’You must pardon my stupidity for not having understood that the imitation was of that general kind which is never meant to be acted on.’

She was half way to the door before I stopped her,—­I had to take her by the shoulder to do it.

‘Miss Grayling!—­You are hard on me.’

’I suppose I am.—­Is anything harder than to be intruded on by an undesired, and unexpected, guest?’

’Now you are harder still.—­If you knew what I have gone through since our conversation of last night, in your strength you would be merciful.’

‘Indeed?—­What have you gone through?’

I hesitated.  What I actually had gone through I certainly did not propose to tell her.  Other reasons apart I did not desire to seem madder than I admittedly am,—­and I lacked sufficient plausibility to enable me to concoct, on the spur of the moment, a plain tale of the doings of my midnight visitor which would have suggested that the narrator was perfectly sane.  So I fenced,—­or tried to.

‘For one thing,—­I have had no sleep.’

I had not,—­not one single wink.  When I did get between the sheets, ‘all night I lay in agony,’ I suffered from that worst form of nightmare,—­the nightmare of the man who is wide awake.  There was continually before my fevered eyes the strange figure of that Nameless Thing.  I had often smiled at tales of haunted folk, —­here was I one of them.  My feelings were not rendered more agreeable by a strengthening conviction that if I had only retained the normal attitude of a scientific observer I should, in all probability, have solved the mystery of my oriental friend, and that his example of the genus of copridae might have been pinned,—­by a very large pin!—­on a piece—­a monstrous piece!—­of cork.  It was, galling to reflect that he and I had played together a game of bluff,—­a game at which civilisation was once more proved to be a failure.

She could not have seen all this in my face; but she saw something—­because her own look softened.

‘You do look tired.’  She seemed to be casting about in her own mind for a cause.  ‘You have been worrying.’  She glanced round the big laboratory.  ’Have you been spending the night in this—­ wizard’s cave?’

‘Pretty well’

‘Oh!’

The monosyllable, as she uttered it, was big with meaning.  Uninvited, she seated herself in an arm-chair, a huge old thing, of shagreen leather, which would have held half a dozen of her.  Demure in it she looked, like an agreeable reminiscence, alive, and a little up-to-date, of the women of long ago.  Her dove grey eyes seemed to perceive so much more than they cared to show.

’How is it that you have forgotten that you asked me to come?—­ didn’t you mean it?’

‘Of course I meant it.’

‘Then how is it you’ve forgotten?’

‘I didn’t forget.’

’Don’t tell fibs.—­Something is the matter,—­tell me what it is.—­ Is it that I am too early?’