"How did you know that? . . . About the door handle? Sylvia could not have seen it. . . ." He added: "And she could not have known what I was thinking. . . . She had her back to the door. . . . And to me. . . . Looking at me in the glass. . . . She was not even aware of what had happened. . . . So she could not have seen the handle move!"
Levin hesitated:
"I . . ." he said. "Perhaps I ought not to have said that. . . . You've told us. . . . That is to say, you've told . . ." He was pale in the sunlight. He said: "Old man . . . Perhaps you don't know. . . . Didn't you perhaps ever, in your childhood? . . ."
Tietjens said:
"Well . . . what is it?"
"That you talk . . . when you're sleeping!" Levin said.
Astonishingly, Tietjens said:
"What of that? . . . It's nothing to write home about! With the overwork I've had and the sleeplessness. . . ."
Levin said, with a pathetic appeal to Tietjens' omniscience:
"But doesn't it mean . . . We used to say when we were boys . . . that if you talk in your sleep . . . you're . . . in fact a bit dotty?"