She held out her hand to him.

‘Well? Friends?’

He took her hand. Kissing it, he replied: ‘Friends. Thank you, Gabrielle.’

He left, looking at her still and wondering that she could remain so beautiful. Stirring within him he could feel a strange emotion, perhaps more awesome, he thought, than good old-fashioned love itself.

WHO KNOWS?

I

My God! I can’t believe it! At last, at long last, I am actually going to put down in black and white what happened to me! That’s if I am able! If I dare! The whole story is so weird, so impossible to explain, so … crazy!

If I were not absolutely certain of what I saw and sure that there is no gap in the chain of events I am about to relate, if I were not totally convinced that there is no possibility of a mistake about what happened, I would simply think it was a hallucination or that I had been fooled by some sort of strange illusion. And when all is said and done, who knows anyway?

I am at present in a psychiatric clinic but I came here voluntarily as a precautionary measure because I was afraid. Only one other human being knows my history and that is the doctor here. I am going to write it down, though quite why, I am not sure. Perhaps to get it off my chest. The weight of it on my mind all the time is practically unbearable. It’s a waking nightmare. These are the facts.

I have always been something of a loner, a bit dreamy, you might say, but well-meaning, unambitious, with no particular animosity towards my fellow human beings and fairly content with my lot. I have always lived alone because of a certain creeping unease I feel in the presence of other people. I don’t know how to explain it. I am not averse to seeing people – I mean, I go out and eat with friends and so forth but if I feel they have been near me for any prolonged period of time, even the closest begin to get so much on my nerves that I have this overwhelming, increasingly urgent desire to see them gone or to go off and be by myself.

It is actually more than a desire. It is a real need, something absolutely essential to me. If I were forced to stay in company, and if I had to stay not so much listening as simply hearing the conversation of other people, I know that some kind of accident would happen to me. I’m not sure what exactly. Who knows, after all? I’d probably faint, I suppose, yes, that’s it, I’d pass out!