They sat down unobtrusively in an embrasure. None among the mysterious moving figures seemed to remark them.
"But why are they talking in the dark?" Edward Henry asked behind his hand.
"To begin with, it isn't quite dark," she said. "There's the light of the street-lamp through the window. But it has been found that serious discussions can be carried on much better without too much light.... I'm not joking." (It was as if in the gloom her ears had caught his faint sardonic smile.)
Said the voice of one of the figures:
"Can you tell me what is the origin of the decay of realism? Can you tell me that?"
Suddenly, in the ensuing silence, there was a click, and a tiny electric lamp shot its beam. The hand which held the lamp was the hand [232] of Carlo Trent. He flashed it and flashed the trembling ray in the inquirer's face. Edward Henry recalled Carlo's objection to excessive electricity in the private drawing-room at Wilkins's.
"Why do you ask such a question?" Carlo Trent challenged the inquirer, brandishing the lamp. "I ask you why do you ask it?"
The other also drew forth a lamp and, as it were, cocked it and let it off at the features of Carlo Trent. And thus the two stood, statuesque and lit, surrounded by shadowy witnessers of the discussion.
The door creaked, and yet another figure, silhouetted for an instant against the illumination of the stage, descended into the discussion chamber.
Carlo Trent tripped towards the new-comer, bent with his lamp, lifted delicately the hem of the new-comer's trousers, and gazed at the colour of his sock, which was blue.