should have time to make certain of funking it. So I hid there, too. And I put on my big black capuchon, and sat down right in one of the waxwork groups-- they couldn't see me from the gallery where you walk. And after they put the lights out I simply went to sleep. And I woke up--and there was a light, and I heard someone say:
"They're only wax," and it was Vincent. He thought I was one of the wax people till I looked at him; and I expect he thought I was one of them even then, poor chap. And his match went out, and while I was trying to find my railway reading lamp that I'd got near me he began to scream. And the night-watchman came running. And now he thinks everyone in the asylum is made of wax, and he screams if they come near him. They have to put his food near him while he's asleep. It's horrible. I can't help feeling as if it were my fault somehow.'
'Of course it's not,' said Rose. 'Poor Vincent! Do you know, I never really liked him.'
There was a pause. Then she said:
'But how was it you weren't frightened?'
'I was,' he said, 'horribly frightened. It--it--sounds idiotic, but I was really. And yet I had to go through with it. And then I got among the figures of the people in the Catacombs, the people who died for--for things, don't you know, died in such horrible ways. And there they were, so calm--and believing it was all right. So I thought about what they'd gone through. It sounds awful rot, I know, dear, but I expect I was sleepy. Those wax people, they sort of seemed as if they were alive, and were telling me there wasn't anything to be frightened about. I felt as if I was one of them--and they were all my friends, and they'd wake me if anything went wrong. So I just went to sleep.'
'I think I understand,' she said. But she didn't.
'And the odd thing is,' he went on, 'I've never been afraid of the dark since. Perhaps his calling me a coward had something to do with it.'
'I don't think so,' said she. And she was right. But she would never have understood how, nor why.
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