It happened, he said, while he slept; and he had strictly enjoined on me that if I saw him falling asleep I was to walk straight out of the place. "There are some things I won't ask even a pal to go through." That meant that during his sleep those tufts of his eyebrows disappeared and that terrifying strength descended on him again. But what happened _before_ then? Was the actual and physical change simultaneous with the inner and mental one, or was it merely a confirmation that came afterwards? _Had_ he changed in every respect but form and feature even as I had talked to him? It frightened me to think that he had; but the more I thought of it the more it looked like it.
For there had taken place a struggle within him that had but increased in intensity as the minutes had passed. I remembered the gravity with which he had pondered my suggestion that for the stuff of his novels he had been too directly to heaven, too straight to hell. I don't pretend to know any more about heaven and hell than anybody else, but I have the ordinary man's conception of the difference between good and evil, better and worse, and these principles, it seemed to me, had contended in him. And he had striven to throw the weight of his personal will into the worthier scale. There were things he did not wish to re-do, episodes he did not wish to re-live. He had even wept that he must be dislodged from that rock of his life to which his forty-five years had brought him.... But what had followed? Suddenly a wicked chuckle. Violent expressions had crept into his speech. A glitter had awakened in his eyes, as if, since the thing must be gone through with, devilry and defiance were a more manly part than weeping. "Well, if there's no help for it, let's be thorough one way or the other," I could have imagined him grimly saying....
And if this was so, what did it mean but that he _had_ actually grown younger before my very eyes? I was merely shown, invisibly and a little in advance, what the whole world would realise when his sleep had smoothed out a few more wrinkles, given a newer gloss to his hair and an added brightness to his eyes....
And in that case why had I come to see Madge Aird? What could Madge do? What could anybody do? If the thing was true it was inescapable. He _must_ go back. Not one single stage could be avoided. Beyond these episodes which he dreaded lay others that perhaps he need not dread, and others beyond those, and others beyond those ... until he attained sixteen....