Page:E Nesbit - Man and Maid (1906).djvu/72

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where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply went to sleep; and I woke up—and there was a light, and I heard some one say: ‘They’re only wax,’ and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of the wax people, till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was trying to find my railway reading-lamp that I’d got near me, he began to scream, and the night watchman came running. And now he thinks every one in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food beside him while he’s asleep. It’s horrible. I can’t help feeling as if it were my fault, somehow.”

“Of course it’s not,” said Rose. “Poor Vincent! Do you know I never really liked him.” There was a pause. Then she said: “But how was it you weren’t frightened?”

“I was,” he said, “horribly frightened. I—I—it sounds idiotic, but I thought I should go mad at first—I did really: and yet I had to go through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the Catacombs, the people who died for—for things, don’t you know, died in such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm—and believing