“Never.”
“But you are very like him.”
“I can account for that. I took to staring at him on a bridge at midnight; the likeness must have grown from that.”
“You are not speaking seriously.”
“Indeed I am.”
“Tell me of your father and mother.”
But I shook my head.
“Indeed, I would rather not. I am not at all fond of speaking of myself, though by a strange irony it never may appear so.”
“What may not appear so?”
The words caused us to look towards the door, and there, just within it, stood Vestasian—the subject of Philemon’s doubts and fears.