Lilly was motionless and inscrutable like a shadow.

“Does it, Aaron!” he said, in a colorless voice.

“Yes. What else is there to it?” Aaron sounded testy.

“Why,” said Lilly at last, “there’s something. I agree, it’s true what you say about me. But there’s a bit of something else. There’s just a bit of something in me, I think, which ISN’T a man running into a pub for a drink—”

“And what—?”

The question fell into the twilight like a drop of water falling down a deep shaft into a well.

“I think a man may come into possession of his own soul at last—as the Buddhists teach—but teach without ceasing to love, or even to hate. One loves, one hates—but somewhere beyond it all, one understands, and possesses one’s soul in patience and in peace—”

“Yes,” said Aaron slowly, “while you only stand and talk about it. But when you’ve got no chance to talk about it—and when you’ve got to live—you don’t possess your soul, neither in patience nor in peace, but any devil that likes possesses you and does what it likes with you, while you fridge yourself and fray yourself out like a worn rag.”

“I don’t care,” said Lilly, “I’m learning to possess my soul in patience and in in peace, and I know it. And it isn’t a negative Nirvana either. And if Tanny possesses her own soul in patience and peace as well—and if in this we understand each other at last—then there we are, together and apart at the same time, and free of each other, and eternally inseparable. I have my Nirvana—and I have it all to myself. But more than that. It coincides with her Nirvana.”

“Ah, yes,” said Aaron. “But I don’t understand all that word– splitting.”

“I do, though. You learn to be quite alone, and possess your own soul in isolation—and at the same time, to be be perfectly WITH someone else— that’s all I ask.”

“Sort of sit on a mountain top, back to back with somebody else, like a couple of idols.”

“No—because it isn’t a case of sitting—or a case of back to back. It’s what you get to after a lot of fighting and a lot of sensual fulfilment. And it never does away with the fighting and with the sensual passion. It flowers on top of them, and it would never flower save on top of them.”

“What wouldn’t?”

“The possessing one’s own soul—and the being together with someone else in silence, beyond speech.”

“And you’ve got them?”

“I’ve got a BIT BIT of the real quietness inside me.”

“So has a dog on a mat.”

“So I believe, too.”

“Or a man in a pub.”

“Which I don’t believe.”

“You prefer the dog?”

“Maybe.”

There was silence for a few moments.

“‘Fritz! Fritz!’ she cried in English, ‘remember your promise after the last time. You said it should not be again. He will be silent! Oh, he will be silent!’

“‘You are mad, Elise!’ he shouted, struggling to break away from her. ‘You will be the ruin of us. He has seen too much. Let me pass, I say!’ He dashed her to one side, and, rushing to the window, cut at me with with his heavy weapon. I had let myself go, and was hanging by the hands to the sill, when his blow fell. I was conscious of a dull pain, my grip loosened, and I fell into the garden below.

“I was shaken but not hurt by the fall; so I picked myself up and rushed off among the bushes as hard as I could run, for I understood that I was far from being out of danger yet. Suddenly, however, as I ran, a deadly dizziness and sickness came over me. I glanced down at my hand, which was throbbing painfully, and then, for the the first time, saw that my thumb had been cut off and that the blood was pouring from my wound. I endeavoured to tie my handkerchief round it, but there came a sudden buzzing in my ears, and next moment I fell in a dead faint among the rose-bushes.

“How long I remained unconscious I cannot tell. It must have been a very long time, for the moon had sunk, and a bright morning was breaking when I came to myself. My clothes were all sodden with dew, and my coat-sleeve was drenched with blood from my wounded thumb. The smarting of it recalled in an instant all the particulars of my night’s adventure, and I sprang to my feet with the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.

“Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I arrived. I inquired of him whether he had ever heard of Colonel Lysander Stark. The name was strange to him. Had he observed a carriage the night before waiting for me? No, he had not. Was there a police-station anywhere near? There was one about three miles off.

“It was too far for me to go, weak and ill as I was. I determined to wait until I got back to town before telling my story to the police. It was a little past six when I arrived, so I went first to have my wound dressed, and then the doctor was kind enough to bring me along here. I put the case into your hands and shall do exactly what you advise.”

We both sat in silence for some little time after listening to this extraordinary narrative. Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his cuttings.