Sentiments beyond speech surged up in Turnbull and silenced him for a space just long enough to be painful. Then he said with his old gaiety: “I vote we talk a little first; I don't want to murder the first man I have met for ten million years.”
“I know what you mean,” answered the other. “It has been awful. For a mortal month I have been alone with God.”
Turnbull started, and it was on the tip of his tongue to answer: “Alone with God! Then you do not know what loneliness is.”
But he answered, after all, in his old defiant style: “Alone with God, were you? And I suppose you found his Majesty's society rather monotonous?”
“Oh, no,” said MacIan, and his voice shuddered; “it was a great deal too exciting.”
After a very long silence the voice of MacIan said: “What do you really hate most in your place?”
“You'd think I was really mad if I told you,” answered Turnbull, bitterly.
“Then I expect it's the same as mine,” said the other voice.
“I am sure it's not the same as anybody's,” said Turnbull, “for it has no rhyme or reason. Perhaps my brain really has gone, but I detest that iron spike in the left wall more than the damned desolation or the damned cocoa. Have you got one in your cell?”
“Not now,” replied MacIan with serenity. “I've pulled it out.”