The night wore on, and De Castro in the intervals of his talk kept pulling out his watch. It was evident that he wanted to be going, but was reluctant to leave me there. For my part, I frequently rose to go, but on getting a sign from D'Arcy that he wished me to stay I sat down again. At last D'Arcy said,
'You had better go now, De Castro, you have kept that hansom outside for more than an hour and a half; and besides, if you stay till daylight our friend here will stay longer, for I want to talk with him alone.'
De Castro got up with a laugh that seemed genuine enough, and left us.
D'Arcy, who was still on the sofa, then lapsed into a silence that became after a while rather awkward. He lay there, gazing abstractedly at the fireplace.
'Some of my friends call me, as you heard De Castro say the other night, Haroun-al-Raschid, and I suppose I am like him in some things. I am a bad sleeper, and to be amused by De Castro when I can't sleep is the chief of blessings. De Castro, however, is not so bad as he seems. A man may be a scandal-monger without being really malignant. I have known him go out of his way to do a struggling man a service.'
'You are a bad sleeper?' I said, in a tone that proclaimed at once that I was a bad sleeper also.
'Yes,' said he, 'and so are you, as I noticed the other night. I can always tell. There is something in the eyes when a man is a bad sleeper that proclaims it to me.'
Then springing up from the divan and laying his hand upon my shoulder, he said, 'And you have a great trouble at the heart. You have had some great loss the effect of which is sapping the very fountains of your life. We should be friends. We must be friends. I asked you to call upon me because we must be friends.'
His voice was so tender that I was almost unmanned.
I will not dwell upon this part of my narrative; I will only say that
I told him something of my story, and he told me his.