“I am going now to the railway station, by the shortest way from here, to meet a friend from England,” I said, for all answer to his unexpected proposal. I hoped that something informing could come of it. As we stood on the curbstone waiting for a tramcar to pass, he remarked gloomily—
“I like what you said just now.”
“Do you?”
We stepped off the pavement together.
“The great problem,” he went on, “is to understand thoroughly the nature of the curse.”
“That’s not very difficult, I think.”
“I think so too,” he agreed with me, and his readiness, strangely enough, did not make him less enigmatical in the least.
“A curse is an evil spell,” I tried him again. “And the important, the great problem, is to find the means to break it.”
“Yes. To find the means.”
That was also an assent, but he seemed to be thinking of something else. We had crossed diagonally the open space before the theatre, and began to descend a broad, sparely frequented street in the direction of one of the smaller bridges. He kept on by my side without speaking for a long time.