また或る時には、彼はまったくの他人を演じてみせ、別の方法で家に入ってみては、泥棒のような気分にひたるのであった。自分の家を壊して侵入するのだが、それは今夜私と一緒にやった行動のようなものであった。明け方近くになる頃、私は「ぜったいに死なない男」という奇妙な自信を捨て去った。それから戸口のところにいる彼と握手をかわすと、最後の霧のかたまりが漂うなか、夜明けの切れ目から射す光が階段を照らし、この世の果てのように見える凹凸のある通りが浮かび上がった。
And at other times he would play the stranger exactly in the opposite sense, and would enter by another way, so as to feel like a thief and a robber. He would break and violate his own home, as he had done with me that night. It was near morning before I could tear myself from this queer confidence of the Man Who Would Not Die, and as I shook hands with him on the doorstep the last load of fog was lifting, and rifts of daylight revealed the stairway of irregular street levels that looked like the end of the world.
