Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/137

Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit "I really do not think that it is necessary," he said.

Basil took his arm out of the fur coat, threw it over the chair again, and put his hands in his pockets.

"Oh," he said, with emphasis. "Oh—you don't think it necessary. Then"—and he added the words with great clearness and deliberation—"then, Mr. Ellis Shorter, I can only say that I would like to see you without your whiskers."

And at these words I also rose to my feet, for the great tragedy of my life had come. Splendid and exciting as life was in continual contact with an intellect like Basil's, I had always the feeling that that splendor and excitement were on the borderland of sanity. He lived perpetually near the vision of the reason of things which makes men lose their reason. And I felt of his insanity as men feel of the death of friends with heart disease. It might come anywhere, in a field, in a hansom-cab, looking at a sunset, smoking a cigarette. It had come now. At the very moment of delivering a judgment for the 121