“Ah, you!” he said at once, and slammed the book shut.

His face, quite thin and finely drawn by nature, an exquisitely delicate face for all its obvious strength, was gorgeously flushed. He had hunted early, I’d missed it. I was for one second completely crushed.

Nevertheless it was tantalizing to see him so enlivened by the low throb of human blood. I could smell the blood too, which gave a curious dimension to being near him. His beauty has always maddened me. I think I idealize him in my mind when I’m not with him; but then when I see him again I’m overcome.

Of course it was his beauty which drew me to him, in my first nights here in Louisiana, when it was a savage, lawless colony, and he was a reckless, drunken fool, gambling and picking fights in taverns, and doing what he could to bring about his own death. Well, he got what he thought he wanted, more or less.

For a moment, I couldn’t understand the expression of horror on his face as he stared at me, or why he suddenly rose and came towards me and bent down and touched my face. Then I remembered. My sun-darkened skin.

“What have you done?” he whispered. He knelt down and looked up at me, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder. Lovely intimacy, but I wasn’t going to admit it. I remained composed in the chair.

“It’s nothing,” I said, “it’s finished. I went into a desert place, I wanted to see what would happen … ”

“You wanted to see what would happen?” He stood up, took a step back, and glared at me. “You meant to destroy yourself, didn’t you?”

“Not really,” I said. “I lay in the light for a full day. The second morning, somehow or other I must have dug down into the sand.”

He stared at me for a long moment, as if he would explode with disapproval, and then he retreated to his desk, sat down a bit noisily for such a graceful being, composed his hands over the closed book, and looked wickedly and furiously at me.

“Why did you do it?”

“Louis, I have something more important to tell you,” I said. “Forget about all this.” I made a gesture to include my face. “Something very remarkable has happened, and I have to tell you the whole tale.” I stood up, because I couldn’t contain myself. I began to pace, careful not to trip over all the heaps of disgusting trash lying about, and maddened slightly by the dim candlelight, not because I couldn’t see in it, but because it was so weak and partial and I like light.

I told him everything—how I’d seen this creature, Raglan James, in Venice and in Hong Kong, and then in Miami, and how he’d sent me the message in London and then followed me to Paris as I supposed he would. Now we were to meet near the square tomorrow night. I explained the short stories and their meaning. I explained the strangeness of the young man himself, that he was not in his body, that I believed he could effect such a switch.