The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams

abandoned speech in a subdued rapture; and in a despair at making anything of anything Anthony followed his example. Something very queer seemed to be going on at that house in the country road. The lion—and the butterflies—and the tale Damaris had, with apparent laughter and real indignation, told him of Miss Wilmot and a crowned snake—and the stench she had known there—and Mr. Berringer’s curious collapse.…
    â€œHow is this Mr. Berringer?” he asked suddenly.
    â€œThat was Dr. Rockbotham you saw with me,” Tighe answered. “He said there was no change. But he didn’t give me a very clear idea of what was wrong. He said something about an intermittent suspension of the conscious vital faculties, but it was all very obscure.”
    â€œWell,” Anthony said, as they reached the road leading to the station, “I don’t think I’ll come back with you. A little silent meditation, I fancy, is what I need.” He looked seriously at his companion. “And you?”
    â€œI am going to look at my butterflies, and recollect everything we saw,” Mr. Tighe answered. “It’s the only thing I can do. I was always certain they were true.”
    He shook hands and walked quickly away. Anthony stood and watched him. “And what in God’s own most holy name,” he asked himself, “does the man mean by that? But he’s believed it all along anyhow. O darling, O Damaris my dear, whatever will you do if one day you find out that Abelard was true?”
    Half sadly, he shook his head after Mr. Tighe’s retreating figure, and then wandered off towards the station.

Chapter Four
    THE TWO CAMPS
    But that evening Anthony, lying in a large chair, contemplated Quentin with almost equal bewilderment. For he had never known his friend so disturbed, so almost hysterical with—but what it was with Anthony could not understand. The window of their common sitting-room looked out westward over the houses of Shepherd’s Bush, and every now and then Quentin would look at it, with such anxiety and distress that Anthony found himself expecting he knew not what to enter—a butterfly or a lion perhaps, he thought absurdly. A winged lion—Venice—Saint Mark. Perhaps Saint Mark was riding about over London on a winged lion, though why Quentin should be so worried about Saint Mark he couldn’t think. The lion they had seen (if they had) wasn’t winged, or hadn’t seemed to be. Somewhere Anthony vaguely remembered to have seen a picture of people riding on winged lions—some Bible illustration, he thought, Daniel or the Apocalypse. He had forgotten what they were doing, but he had a general vague memory of swords and terrible faces, and a general vague idea that it all had something to do with wasting the earth.
    Quentin went back to the window, and, standing by one corner, looked out. Anthony picked up a box of matches, and, opening it by accident upside down, dropped a number on the floor. Quentin leapt round.
    â€œWhat was that?” he asked sharply.
    â€œMe,” said Anthony. “Sorry; it was pure lazy stupidity.”
    â€œSorry,” said Quentin in turn. “I seem all on edge to-night.”
    â€œI thought you weren’t very happy,” Anthony said affectionately. “What’s … if there’s anything, I mean, that I can do.…”
    Quentin came back and dropped into a chair. “I don’t know what’s got me,” he said. “It all began with that lioness. Silly of me to feel it like that. But a lioness is a bit unusual. It was a lioness, wasn’t it?” he asked anxiously.
    They had been over this before. And again Anthony, with the best will in the world to say the right thing, found himself hampered by an austere intellectual sincerity. It probably had been, it must have been, a lioness. But it was not the lioness that he had chiefly seen, nor was it a