And that's bad, Lena, very bad."
"It's funny," she said thoughtfully. "Bad? I suppose it is. I don't know
that it is. But do you? Do you? You talk as if you didn't believe in
it."
She gazed at him earnestly.
"Do I? Ah! That's it. I don't know how to talk. I have managed to refine
everything away. I've said to the Earth that bore me: 'I am I and you
are a shadow.' And, by Jove, it is so! But it appears that such words
cannot be uttered with impunity. Here I am on a Shadow inhabited
by Shades. How helpless a man is against the Shades! How is one to
intimidate, persuade, resist, assert oneself against them? I have lost
all belief in realities . . . Lena, give me your hand."
She looked at him surprised, uncomprehending.
"Your hand," he cried.
She obeyed; he seized it with avidity as if eager to raise it to his
lips, but halfway up released his grasp. They looked at each other for a
time.
"What's the matter, dear?" she whispered timidly.
"Neither force nor conviction," Heyst muttered wearily to himself. "How
am I to meet this charmingly simple problem?"
"I am sorry," she murmured.
"And so am I," he confessed quickly. "And the bitterest of this
humiliation is its complete uselessness--which I feel, I feel!"
She had never before seen him give such signs of feeling. Across his
ghastly face the long moustaches flamed in the shade.
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