When the night of the dinner arrived, I greeted Mister Utterson at the door along with the doctor's other guests. I bid him a good evening and received his hat and coat, but as I watched him talk with the other men, I no longer felt the urge to share the truth of the doctor's condition, and I was no longer sure that he was a man who could cope with the truth in either case.

I helped to serve the dinner, and then with approval from the doctor, I left the rest of the evening in the more than capable hands of my staff and retired to my bed. Once there, I engaged in my most common pastime: that of staring at the ceiling until sleep finally claimed me. I did not know what happened to the doctor when he took whatever he took and changed into whatever it was that Mister Hyde actually was, but for all my darkest imaginings, on some of those nights, I longed for the oblivion that such a metamorphosis would bring. Since the first night that I saw and heard the argument between two men issuing from the mouth of only one, I had often thought of why my master had been driven to such an extreme, but over time I had come to an accommodation, if not an understanding. It was the result of pressure. We all have our places and our roles to which we must adhere. How wonderful it would be, therefore, to have some way of sloughing it all off, of leaving behind the person society knew and emerging, renewed, and with no boundaries. It was not my place to be able to make such a change, but oh! It was attractive.

I lay in bed that night and imagined what it would be like to throw off the fetters for the freedom of a Hyde, and slipped easily into my first dreamless sleep in many months.