In this chapter, Gene travels by train to Leper’s house. As he stops for coffee, he concludes that Leper’s “escape” must have been from spies. The legend of Leper, created in fun at Devon, seems to have come true.
As Gene approaches the house, he notices Leper watching him from a window, not moving even as Gene stands at the front door. When Gene opens the door himself, Leper appears and ushers him into the dining room—the only place, he tells Gene, where “you never wonder what’s going to happen.”
When Gene jokes and lightly teases him, Leper’s response is angry, then despairing. Leper has changed, Gene sees, and he begins to understand that his friend has become mentally unbalanced. The “escape,” Leper explains, was from the Army and a section-eight discharge that would have labeled him a “psycho.”
Laughing hysterically and shouting angrily, Leper tells Gene that his experience has revealed a lot to him about himself and others— especially the “savage underneath” that lurks in Gene. Suddenly, he accuses Gene of deliberately causing Finny’s fall. In response, Gene rises angrily and kicks over Leper’s chair. The noise brings Leper’s mother, and Gene apologizes, saying he will leave, but Leper, still laughing, invites him to stay for lunch.
After the meal, they walk through the snow together, and Gene tries to talk to Leper calmly. The conversation breaks down when Leper begins sobbing uncontrollably, confessing that he is haunted by disturbing images, such as a man’s face on a woman’s body, or the arm of a chair coming to life as a human arm. When Leper tells these frightening details from his psychotic episode in the Army, Gene shouts at his friend to shut up and runs away.
