Include any details about profession, mood,
personality, and anything about the relationship
between the two characters and how they feel about

each other.



I put him back, conscious at his touch of a certain icy pang along my blood. “Come, sir,” said I.
“You forget that I have not yet the pleasure of your acquaintance. Be seated, if you please.” And I
showed him an example, and sat down myself in my customary seat and with as fair an imitation of
my ordinary manner to a patient, as the lateness of the hour, the nature of my preoccupations, and
the horror I had of my visitor, would suffer me to muster. 2
“I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanyon,” he replied civilly enough. “What you say is very well founded; and
my impatience
has shown its heels to my politeness. I come here at the instance of your colleague, Dr. Henry
Jekyll, on a piece of
business of some moment; and I understood....” He paused and put his hand to his throat, and I
could see, in spite
of his collected manner, that he was wrestling against the approaches of the hysteria—“I
understood, a drawer....” 3
But here I took pity on my visitor’s suspense, and some perhaps on my own growing curiosity. 4
“There it is, sir,” said I, pointing to the drawer, where it lay on the floor behind a table and still
covered with the sheet. 5
He sprang to it, and then paused, and laid his hand upon his heart: I could hear his teeth grate with
the convulsive action of his jaws; and his face was so ghastly to see that I grew alarmed both for his
life and reason. 6
“Compose yourself,” said I. 7
He turned a dreadful smile to me, and as if with the decision of despair, plucked away the sheet. At
sight of the contents, he uttered one loud sob of such immense relief that I sat petrified. And the
next moment, in a voice that was already