He resolutely caught up the candle and peered once more at the face. As steadily and swiftly as change in the aspect of the sky the face had gone on changing. St. George had followed to the chamber an old tottering man; the figure before him was a man of not more than fifty years.
St. George let fall the candle, which flickered down, upright in its socket; and he turned away, his hand across his eyes. Since this was manifestly impossible he must be mad, something in the stuff that he had tasted had driven him mad. He felt strong as a lion, strong enough to lift that prostrate figure and to carry it through the winding passages into the midst of those above stairs, and to beg them in mercy to tell him how the man looked. What would she say? He wondered what Olivia would say. Dinner would be over and they would be in the drawing-room--Olivia and Amory and Antoinette Frothingham; already the white room and the lights and Antoinette's laughter seemed to him of another world, a world from which he had irrevocably passed. Yet there they were above, the same roof covering them, and they did not know that down here in this place of the dead he, St. George, was beyond all question going mad.
With a cry he pulled off Amory's coat, flung it over the unconscious man, and rushed out into the blackness of the corridor. He would not take the light--the man must not die alone there in the dark--and besides he had heard that the mad could see as well in the dark as in the light. Or was it the blind who could see in the dark? No doubt it was the blind. However, he could find his way, he thought triumphantly, and ran on, dragging his hand along the slippery stones of the wall--he could find his way. Only he must call out, to tell them who it was that was lost. So he called himself by name, aloud and sternly, and after that he kept on quietly enough, serene in the conviction that he had regained his self-control, fighting to keep his mind from returning to the face that changed before his eyes, like the appearances in the puppet shows. But suddenly he became conscious that it was his own name that he went shouting through the passages; and that was openly absurd, he reasoned, since if he wanted to be found he must call some one else's name. But he must hurry--hurry--hurry; no one could tell what might be happening back there to that face that changed.