It is a case, alas!

I can do little to alleviate.”

Dr. Silence spoke gravely and with sadness in his voice.

“And what do you make of the Frenchman in the

train?” I asked further—”the man who warned him against the place, a cause du sommeil et a cause des chats? Surely a very singular

incident?”

“A very singular incident indeed,” he made answer

slowly, “and one I can only explain on the basis of a highly improbable

coincidence—”

“Namely?”

“That the man was one who had himself stayed in the

town and undergone there a similar experience. I should like to find

this man and ask him. But the crystal is useless here, for I have no

slightest clue to go upon, and I can only conclude that some singular

psychic affinity, some force still active in his being out of the same

past life, drew him thus to the personality of Vezin, and enabled him

to fear what might happen to him, and thus to warn him as he did.

“Yes,” he presently continued, half talking to himself, “I suspect

in this case that Vezin was swept into the vortex of forces arising out

of the intense activities of a past life, and that he lived over again

a scene in which he had often played a leading part centuries before.

For strong actions set up forces that are so slow to exhaust

themselves, they may be said in a sense never to die. In this case they

were not vital enough to render the illusion complete, so that the

little man found himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the

present and the past; yet he was sufficiently sensitive to recognise

that it was true, and to fight against the degradation of returning,

even in memory, to a former and lower state of development.

“Ah yes!” he continued, crossing the floor to gaze

at the darkening sky, and seemingly quite oblivious of my presence,

“subliminal up-rushes of memory like this can be exceedingly painful,

and sometimes exceedingly dangerous. I only trust that this gentle soul

may soon escape from this obsession of a passionate and tempestuous

past. But I doubt it, I doubt it.”

His voice was hushed with sadness as he spoke, and

when he turned back into the room again there was an expression of

profound yearning upon his face, the yearning of a soul whose desire to

help is sometimes greater than his power.

.