5

One day Chiffan said something very disturbing to his Phoebe. He had been unusually moody, silent and distraught for some time, and excessively gentle with her, never saying an absurd thing. Then late one afternoon, as they sat together in their loggia that looked out upon the tennis courts where they had been entertaining half a dozen friends, he broached his trouble.

"This can't go on," he said.

"We're happy!" she answered, astonished.

"Rud," he said.

"You are still troubled about him!"

"I am troubled about the whole world. On his account. We have made a sort of God of him…"

"Isn't that enough?" she asked as he paused.

"It's too much. To all intents and purposes, Phoebe, he is mad. Characteristics in him that used to be amusing are becoming monstrous and evil. He discovers danger everywhere. This infernal secret police of his is arresting people, making them vanish, killing them…Because he is afraid…"

"But what can you do?" asked Phoebe.

"I ought to do something. I don't know what, but I ought to do something. In a way I am responsible for him. I was his impressario. In those old days I launched him on the world."

"But nowadays you hardly ever see him. He avoids you."

"I ought to see him. I ought to know more about him. Now I get all these queer things about him at second hand. I don't know what is happening to him. I don't know whether he is going mad or simply getting loose. Sometimes I think he's just an imaginative egotist, who has escaped from all restraint. Maybe he is what many men might prove to be with the escapement off. I—in a sort of way—was his escapement…I ought to have stuck closer to him…

"He used to listen to me. If I went to him now and spoke plainly…He might be sulky but he would take it in.

"Maybe I am the only person alive able to recall him to his former self."