"The boy was silent for a moment, then he stretched out his hand for the cigarettes.
"'You remember nothing else?' I asked him.
"'No,' he said. 'The next thing I remember clearly is deliberately breaking the nursery window because it was raining and mother would not let me go out.'"
There was a moment's tension, then the strain of listening passed and everyone seemed to be speaking at once. The Rector was taking the story seriously.
"Tell me, Grady," he said. "How long do you suppose elapsed between the boy's murder and his breaking the nursery window?"
But a young married woman in the first flush of her happiness broke in between them. She ridiculed the whole idea. Of course the boy was dreaming. She was drawing the majority to her way of thinking when, from the corner where the girl sat, a hollow-sounding voice:
"And the boy? Where is he?"
The tone of the girl's voice inspired horror, that fear that does not know what it is it fears; one could see it on every face; on every face, that is, but the face of the bald-headed little man; there was no horror on his face, he was smiling serenely as he looked the girl straight in the eyes.
"He's a man now," he said.
"Alive?" she cried.