"If only you could always be your true self—this self."
Chesney said nothing. He was lighting another cigarette—leaning over and holding it to the lamp clumsily.
"Oh, poor dear! You can't do it that way; here's your other hand," she said, smiling and releasing the hand she held. Chesney closed his eyes for a moment. Dreamily he said:
"Won't you tell me that story? You tell such lovely stories when you're in the mood."
"I can't think of one somehow. You tell me one."
In that thick dreamy voice, his dry lips cleaving together now and then, he began to speak.
"Once there was a man who was shut by his arch enemy into a dark dungeon. This enemy's name was Bios." (Sophy knew no Greek, and somehow it pleased him to fling out to her this clue to the parable that he was inventing, knowing that she could not use it.) "Bios shut the man up in his foul dungeon. But worse than the darkness and the stone walls was the legend of the place. It was told that out of the crevices there came a horrid Thing like a winged scorpion, with steely horns and a sting of living fire. And in the darkness this Thing would dart upon the prisoner in that dungeon, and drive him round and round. By the light of its fiery sting he could see just enough to run from it but not to escape. This man thought: 'I will not run from this Thing until I die from exhaustion. I will bare my breast to it and die at once, from its sting.' Pour me out a bit more champagne, there's a dear girl."
"Did—did Gaynor say that champagne was good to take with that medicine?"
"Yes—yes"—impatiently. "Don't you want to hear the end of my story?"
"Of course—but—yes, go on."