Was he wearing a mask?
Was anyone wearing a mask?
Was anyone anything?
This wood of witchery, in which men's faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and turned into other people.

That tragic self-confidence which he had felt when he believed that the Marquis was a devil had strangely disappeared now that he knew that the Marquis was a friend.

He felt almost inclined to ask after all these bewilderments what was a friend and what an enemy.

Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed?
The Marquis had taken off his nose and turned out to be a detective.

Might he not just as well take off his head and turn out to be a hobgoblin?
Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light?
Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforeseen, and always forgotten.