“A bit of Virgil,” he said.

“Don’t you know any more?”

“Quem fugis, a, demens? habitarunt di quoque silvas.”

“How nice it sounds. What does it mean?”

“Go on, try. Surely you can do quem fugis?”

“Who flies?”

“What? Fugis. Are you deaf? And quem, accusative.”

“Well? Oh, you fly. Why do you fly?”

He sighed. “Whom do you fly. Now—a, demens.”

“Well, a’s the same as ab. From, away from. Whom do you fly from?”

He stared hard at her. As far as the uncanny light allowed him to see, there was no trace of her minx-like smile.

“It just means ah,” he said calmly, “or oh, if you like. Go on—a, demens.”

“Oh—oh, demon?” she hazarded.

“De-mens.” He carefully separated the syllables. “What’s mens?”

“A month.”

He groaned. “Mind. Demens, out of one’s mind, crazy, insane.”

Stephanie began to laugh. “Oh, you should have been one, especially with that nose. A Roman, I mean.”

“My nose is not Roman. Much too long and sticks out too far.”

“Well, it has a bumpy bridge. Brett—”

“You didn’t see that on a coat,” he observed, rather absently.

“There was a note in your kitchen from your wife—at least, if that’s who Christina is.”

“You read it through?” he asked. “Estimable.”

“I was going to say,” she went on in a much abashed voice, “I think we’re coming to a clearing.”

“I’ve seen it for some time.”

He stared at the white space which broke the line of trees some twenty yards ahead.

“Tell me the rest of the Latin,” said Stephanie irrepressibly, skipping forward. “Or can’t you?” she burst out laughing.

“Ah, crazy, whom do you fly?” he began.

Stephanie stopped dead in her tracks. Brett’s voice failed him.

A man had stepped silently from between the trees and was waiting at the end of the path.

Brett forced himself to carry on walking and speaking. “Even gods have lived in the—”

* * *

About him in the dark he heard voices swelling and fading; close and distant at once, like the voices of sailors talking in a railway carriage as one nods off to sleep. He listened apathetically for a while. Then he thought that he couldn’t be in a train, because—but how did the sailors fit in the cabin? He drifted back to sleep.

Hours later, drowsily half opening his eyes, he saw the sheets and white quilt of his bed bumping away into shadows. Of course, he was not in a train, but in bed in the nursery. He felt the chill of a fever sweat, heard the hiss of the steam kettle in the grate. He could see the fire, but not look at it, because it was so bright that it hurt his eyes. Wavering, elongated figures blotted out its light from time to time. They were his mother and the nurse, and the murmuring voices belonged to them, and they were talking about making him well. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.