“Perhaps you think of morphia as a pleasure?” he added.  “Think of it, instead, as a tyrant—­that tortures the mind if held to, and the body if cast off.”  Urged by the darkness and the silence of his companion, the rein of his speech had loosened.  In that moment he was not Chilcote the member for East Wark, whose moods and silences were proverbial, but Chilcote the man whose mind craved the relief of speech.

“You talk as the world talks—­out of ignorance and self-righteousness,” he went on.  “Before you condemn Lexington you should put yourself in his place—­”

“As you do?” the other laughed.

Unsuspecting and inoffensive as the laugh was, it startled Chilcote.  With a sudden alarm he pulled himself up.

“I—?” He tried to echo the laugh, but the attempt fell flat.  “Oh, I merely speak from—­from De Quincey.  But I believe this fog is shifting—­I really believe it is shifting.  Can you oblige me with a light?  I had almost forgotten that a man may still smoke though he has been deprived of sight.”  He spoke fast and disjointedly.  He was overwhelmed by the idea that he had let himself go, and possessed by the wish to obliterate the consequences.  As he talked he fumbled; for his cigarette-case.

His bead was bent as he searched for it nervously.  Without looking up, he was conscious that the cloud of fog that held him prisoner was lifting, rolling away, closing back again, preparatory to final disappearance.  Having found the case, he put a cigarette between his lips and raised his hand at the moment that the stranger drew a match across his box.

For a second each stared blankly at the other’s face, suddenly made visible by the lifting of the fog.  The match in the stranger’s hand burned down till it scorched his fingers, and, feeling the pain, he laughed and let it drop.

“Of all odd things!” he said.  Then he broke off.  The circumstance was too novel for ordinary remark.

By one of those rare occurrences, those chances that seem too wild for real life and yet belong to no other sphere, the two faces so strangely hidden and strangely revealed were identical, feature for feature.  It seemed to each man that he looked not at the face of another, but at his own face reflected in a flawless looking-glass.

Of the two, the stranger was the first to regain self-possession.  Seeing Chilcote’s bewilderment, he came to his rescue with brusque tactfulness.

“The position is decidedly odd,” he said.  “But after all, why should we be so surprised?  Nature can’t be eternally original; she must dry up sometimes, and when she gets a good model why shouldn’t she use it twice?” He drew back, surveying Chilcote whimsically.  “But, pardon me, you are still waiting for that light!”

Chilcote still held the cigarette between his lips.  The paper had become dry, and he moistened it as he leaned towards his companion.