and significance of these subliminal uprushes, dear Reader, we confess we are, like yourself, unable to understand, without the aid of our Interpreter. We shall, therefore, let him speak.
“When in prison,” writes Shakib, “Khalid was subject to spasms and strange hallucinations. One day, when I was sweating in the effort to get him out of gaol, he sends me word to come and see him. I go; and after waiting a while at the Iron gate, I behold Khalid rushing down the isle like an angry lion. ‘What do you want,’ he growled, ‘why are you here?’ And I, amazed, ‘Did you not send for me?’ And he snapped up, ‘I did; but you should not have come. You should withhold from me your favours.’ Life of Allah, I was stunned. I feared lest his mind, too, had gone in the direction of his health, which was already sorrily undermined. I looked at him with dim, tearful eyes, and assured him that soon he shall be free.
‘And what is the use of freedom,’ he exclaimed, ‘when it drags us to lower and darker depths? Don’t think I am miserable in prison. No; I am not—I am happy. I have had strange visions, marvellous. O my Brother, if you could behold the sloughs, deeper and darker than any prison-cell, into which you have thrown me. Yes, you —and another. O, I hate you both. I hate my best lovers. I hate You—no—no, no, no.’ And he falls on me, embraces me, and bathes my cheeks with his tears. After which he falters out beseechingly, ‘Promise, promise that you will not give me any more money, and though starving and in rags you find me crouching at your door, promise.’
And of a truth, I acquiesced in all he said, seeing how shaken in body and mind he was. But not until I had made a promise under oath would he be tranquillised. And so, after our farewell embrace, he asked me to come again the following day and bring him some books to read. This I did, fetching with me Rousseau’s Emile and Carlyle’s Hero-Worship , the only two books he had in the cellar. And when he saw them, he