‘Well, where were you born—somewhere, I suppose?’
‘It would be a fact worth the telling. The secret of my birth lies here.’ And Dare slapped his breast with his right hand.
‘Literally, just under your shirt-front; or figuratively, in your heart?’ asked Havill.
‘Literally there. It is necessary that it should be recorded, for one’s own memory is a treacherous book of reference, should verification be required at a time of delirium, disease, or death.’
Havill asked no further what he meant, and went to the door. Finding that the rain still continued he returned to Dare, who was by this time sinking down in a one-sided attitude, as if hung up by the shoulder. Informing his companion that he was but little inclined to move far in such a tempestuous night, he decided to remain in the inn till next morning. On calling in the landlord, however, they learnt that the house was full of farmers on their way home from a large sheep-fair in the neighbourhood, and that several of these, having decided to stay on account of the same tempestuous weather, had already engaged the spare beds. If Mr. Dare would give up his room, and share a double-bedded room with Mr. Havill, the thing could be done, but not otherwise.
To this the two companions agreed, and presently went upstairs with as gentlemanly a walk and vertical a candle as they could exhibit under the circumstances.
The other inmates of the inn soon retired to rest, and the storm raged on unheeded by all local humanity.
III.
At two o’clock the rain lessened its fury. At half-past two the obscured moon shone forth; and at three Havill awoke. The blind had not been pulled down overnight, and the moonlight streamed into the room, across the bed whereon Dare was sleeping. He lay on his back, his arms thrown out; and his well-curved youthful form looked like an unpedestaled Dionysus in the colourless lunar rays.
Sleep had cleared Havill’s mind from the drowsing effects of the last night’s sitting, and he thought of Dare’s mysterious manner in speaking of himself. This lad resembled the Etruscan youth Tages, in one respect, that of being a boy with, seemingly, the wisdom of a sage; and the effect of his presence was now heightened by all those sinister and mystic attributes which are lent by nocturnal environment. He who in broad daylight might be but a young chevalier d’industrie was now an unlimited possibility in social phenomena. Havill remembered how the lad had pointed to his breast, and said that his secret was literally kept there. The architect was too much of a provincial to have quenched the common curiosity that was part of his nature by the acquired metropolitan indifference to other people’s lives which, in essence more unworthy even than the former, causes less practical inconvenience in its exercise.