This dream, of course, I easily explained as due directly to my talks with Julius, but my dread was not so easily dismissed, and that I overcame it finally and consented to attend was due partly to the extraordinary curiosity I felt, and partly to this inexplicable attraction in my deeper self which urged me to see the matter through. Something inevitable about it forced me. Yet, but for the settled conviction that behind the abhorrent proposal lay some earnest purpose of LeVallon’s, not ignoble in itself, I should certainly have refused. For, though saying little, and not taking me fully into his confidence, he did manage to convey the assurance that this thing was not to be carried out as an end, but as a means to an end, in itself both legitimate and necessary. It was, I gathered, a kind of preliminary trial--an attempt that _might_ possibly succeed, even without the presence of the third.
“Sooner or later,” he said, aware that I hesitated, “it must be faced. Here is an opportunity for us, at least. If we succeed, there is no need to wait for--another. It is a question. We can but try.”
The occasion I shall never forget--a still, cold winter’s night towards the middle of December, most of the students already gone down for Christmas, and small chance of the room being occupied. For even in the busiest time before examinations there were few men who cared to avail themselves of the gruesome privilege of night-work, for which special permission, too, was necessary. Julius, in any case, made his preparations well, and the janitor of the grey-stone building on the hill, whose top floor was consecrated to this grisly study of life in death, had surrendered the keys even before we separated earlier in the evening for supper at the door of the post-mortem theatre.
“Upstairs at eleven o’clock,” he whispered, “and if I’m late--the preparations may detain me--go inside and wait. Your presence is necessary to success.” He laid his hand on my shoulder; he looked at me searchingly a moment, almost beseechingly, as though he detected the strain of opposition in me. “And be as sympathetic as you can,” he begged. “At least, do not actively oppose.” Then, as he turned away, “I’ll try to be punctual,” he added, smiling, “but--well, you know as well as I do----!” He shrugged his shoulders and was gone.