And this, too, I may

as well say at once, was equally inexplicable to me. I mean I can only

give you the fact, as fact it was to me.”

The little man left his chair and stood on the mat

before the fire. His diffidence lessened from now onwards, as he lost

himself again in the magic of the old adventure. His eyes shone a

little already as he talked.

“Well,” he went on, his soft voice rising somewhat

with his excitement, “I was in a shop when it came to me first—though

the idea must have been at work for a long time subconsciously to

appear in so complete a form all at once. I was buying socks, I think,”

he laughed, “and struggling with my dreadful French, when it struck me

that the woman in the shop did not care two pins whether I bought

anything or not. She was indifferent whether she made a sale or did not

make a sale. She was only pretending to sell.

“This sounds a very small and fanciful incident to

build upon what follows. But really it was not small. I mean it was the

spark that lit the line of powder and ran along to the big blaze in my

mind.

“For the whole town, I suddenly realised, was

something other than I so far saw it. The real activities and interests

of the people were elsewhere and otherwise than appeared. Their true

lives lay somewhere out of sight behind the scenes. Their busy-ness was

but the outward semblance that masked their actual purposes. They

bought and sold, and ate and drank, and walked about the streets, yet

all the while the main stream of their existence lay somewhere beyond

my ken, underground, in secret places. In the shops and at the stalls

they did not care whether I purchased their articles or not; at the

inn, they were indifferent to my staying or going; their life lay

remote from my own, springing from hidden, mysterious sources, coursing

out of sight, unknown. It was all a great elaborate pretence, assumed

possibly for my benefit, or possibly for purposes of their own. But the

main current of their energies ran elsewhere. I almost felt as an

unwelcome foreign substance might be expected to feel when it has found

its way into the human system and the whole body organises itself to

eject it or to absorb it. The town was doing this very thing to me.

“This bizarre notion presented itself forcibly to my

mind as I walked home to the inn, and I began busily to wonder wherein

the true life of this town could lie and what were the actual interests

and activities of its hidden life.

“And, now that my eyes were partly opened, I noticed

other things too that puzzled me, first of which, I think, was the

extraordinary silence of the whole place. Positively, the town was

muffled. Although the streets were paved with cobbles the people moved

about silently, softly, with padded feet, like cats. Nothing made

noise. All was hushed, subdued, muted. The very voices were quiet,

low-pitched like purring. Nothing clamorous, vehement or emphatic

seemed able to live in the drowsy atmosphere of soft dreaming that

soothed this little hill-town into its sleep. It was like the woman at

the inn—an outward repose screening intense inner activity and purpose.

“Yet there was no sign of lethargy or sluggishness

anywhere about it. The people were active and alert. Only a magical and

uncanny softness lay over them all like a spell.”

Vezin passed his hand across his eyes for a moment

as though the memory had become very vivid. His voice had run off into

a whisper so that we heard the last part with difficulty. He was

telling a true thing obviously, yet something that he both liked and

hated telling.

“I went back to the inn,” he continued presently in

a louder voice, “and dined. I felt a new strange world about me.