The Curate stood in front of the looking-glass and solemnly divested¹ himself of his collar.

 

"I never heard a more fantastic story," said Mrs Mendham from the basket chair. "The man must be mad. Are you sure——."

 

"Perfectly², my dear. I've told you every word, every incident——."

 

"Well!" said Mrs Mendham, and spread her hands. "There's no sense in it."

 

"Precisely³, my dear."

 

"The Vicar," said Mrs Mendham, "must be mad."

 

"This hunchback is certainly one of the strangest creatures I've seen for a long time. Foreign looking, with a big bright coloured face and long brown hair.... It can't have been cut for months!" The Curate put his studs carefully upon the shelf of the dressing-table. "And a kind of staring look about his[Pg 89] eyes, and a simpering smile. Quite a silly looking person. Effeminate."

 

"But who can he be?" said Mrs Mendham.

 

"I can't imagine, my dear. Nor where he came from. He might be a chorister or something of that sort."

 

"But why should he be about the shrubbery ... in that dreadful costume?"

 

"I don't know. The Vicar gave me no explanation. He simply said, 'Mendham, this is an Angel.'"

 

"I wonder if he drinks.... They may have been bathing near the spring, of course," reflected Mrs Mendham. "But I noticed no other clothes on his arm."

 

The Curate sat down on his bed and unlaced his boots.

 

"It's a perfect mystery to me, my dear." (Flick⁴, flick of laces.) "Hallucination is the only charitable——"

 

"You are sure, George, that it was not a woman."

 

"Perfectly," said the Curate.

 

"I know what men are, of course."

 

[Pg 90]

 

"It was a young man of nineteen or twenty," said the Curate.

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