“No, no; I felt him. He is there. I could have touched him! But where—but when? Since I came into that room, I have known that it was not necessary for me to go further. I will not fall into his trap. I will not go and look for him outside the castle even though I have seen him outside with my own eyes—even though you saw him with yours.”
All in a moment he seemed to grow perfectly calm, passed his hand across his eyebrows, lighted his pipe and said, as he had so often said before, in happier hours when his reasoning powers, which were yet ignorant of the ties which united him to the Lady in Black, were not disturbed by the tumult of his heart:
“Let us reason it out!”
And he returned on the instant to that argument which had already served us and which he repeated again and again to himself (in order that, he said, he should not be lured away by the outer appearance of things): “Do not look for Larsan in that place where he reveals himself; seek for him everywhere else where he hides himself.”
This he followed up with the supplementary argument:
“He never shows himself where he seems to be except to prevent us from seeing him where he really is.”
And he resumed:
“Ah! the outer appearance of things! Look here, Sainclair! There are moments when, for the sake of reasoning clearly, I want to get rid of my eyes! Let us get rid of our eyes, Sainclair, for five minutes—just five minutes, and, perhaps, we shall see more clearly.”
He seated himself, placed his pipe on the table, buried his face in his hands and said:
“Now, I have no eyes. Tell me, Sainclair—who is within these walls?”