Hatteras began to mumble out his usual explanation of duty and the rest of it.

“That won’t wash,” interrupted Walker.  “What is it?  A woman?”

“Good Heaven, no!” cried Hatteras suddenly.  It was plain that that explanation was at all events untrue.  “Jim, I’ve a good mind to tell you all about it.”

“You have got to,” said Walker.  He stood between Hatteras and the steps.

“I told you how this country fascinated me in spite of myself,” he began.

“But I thought,” interrupted Walker, “that you had got over that since.  Why, man, you are married,” and he came across to Hatteras and shook him by the shoulder.  “Don’t you understand?  You have a wife!”

“I know,” said Hatteras.  “But there are things deeper at the heart of me than the love of woman, and one of those things is the love of horror.  I tell you it bites as nothing else does in this world.  It’s like absinthe that turns you sick at the beginning and that you can’t do without once you have got the taste of it.  Do you remember my first landing?  It made me sick enough at the beginning, you know.  But now—­” He sat down in a chair and drew it close to Walker.  His voice dropped to a passionate whisper, he locked and unlocked his fingers with feverish movements, and his eyes shifted and glittered in an unnatural excitement.

“It’s like going down to Hell and coming up again and wanting to go down again.  Oh, you’d want to go down again.  You’d find the whole earth pale.  You’d count the days until you went down again.  Do you remember Orpheus?  I think he looked back not to see if Eurydice was coming after him but because he knew it was the last glimpse he would get of Hell.”  At that he broke off and began to chant in a crazy voice, wagging his head and swaying his body to the rhythm of the lines:—­

  “Quum subita in cantum dementia cepit amantem
  Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere manes;
  Restilit Eurydicengue suam jam luce sub ipsa
  Immemor heu victusque animi respexit.”

“Oh, stop that!” cried Walker, and Hatteras laughed.  “For God’s sake, stop it!”

For the words brought back to him in a flash the vision of a class-room with its chipped desks ranged against the varnished walls, the droning sound of the form-master’s voice, and the swish of lilac bushes against the lower window panes on summer afternoons.  “Go on,” he said.  “Oh, go on, and let’s have done with it.”

Hatteras took up his tale again, and it seemed to Walker that the man breathed the very miasma of the swamp and infected the room with it.  He spoke of leopard societies, murder clubs, human sacrifices.  He had witnessed them at the beginning, he had taken his share in them at the last.  He told the whole story without shame, with indeed a growing enjoyment.  He spared Walker no details.  He related them in their loathsome completeness until Walker felt stunned and sick.  “Stop,” he said, again, “Stop!  That’s enough.”