And, still, the terror of it all, the dreadful thought of death,

pressed ever behind her sentences. For flames shot through her voice

out of black smoke and licked at his soul.

And they communicated with one another, it seemed to

him, by a process of swift telepathy, for his French could never have

compassed all he said to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what

she said to him was like the recital of verses long since known. And

the mingled pain and sweetness of it as he listened were almost more

than his little soul could hold.

“Yet I came here wholly by chance–-” he heard himself saying.

“No,” she cried with passion, “you came here because

I called to you. I have called to you for years, and you came with the

whole force of the past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and

I claim you.”

She rose again and moved closer, looking at him with

a certain insolence in the face—the insolence of power.

The sun had set behind the towers of the old cathedral and the

darkness rose up from the plain and enveloped them. The music of the

band had ceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung motionless, but the

chill of the autumn evening rose about them and made Vezin shiver.

There was no sound but the sound of their voices and the occasional

soft rustle of the girl’s dress. He could hear the blood rushing in his

ears. He scarcely realised where he was or what he was doing. Some

terrible magic of the imagination drew him deeply down into the tombs

of his own being, telling him in no unfaltering voice that her words

shadowed forth the truth. And this simple little French maid, speaking

beside him with so strange authority, he saw curiously alter into quite

another being. As he stared into her eyes, the picture in his mind grew

and lived, dressing itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree of

reality he was compelled to acknowledge. As once before, he saw her

tall and stately, moving through wild and broken scenery of forests and

mountain caverns, the glare of flames behind her head and clouds of

shifting smoke about her feet. Dark leaves encircled her hair, flying

loosely in the wind, and her limbs shone through the merest rags of

clothing. Others were about her, too, and ardent eyes on all sides cast

delirious glances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only,

one whom she held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some

tempestuous orgy to the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led

circled about a great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over the

scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces and

forms crowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one she held by

the hand he knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape upon the throne

he knew to be her mother.

The vision rose within him, rushing to him down the

long years of buried time, crying aloud to him with the voice of memory

reawakened… . And then the scene faded away and he saw the clear

circle of the girl’s eyes gazing steadfastly into his own, and she

became once more the pretty little daughter of the innkeeper, and he

found his voice again.

“And you,” he whispered tremblingly—”you child of

visions and enchantment, how is it that you so bewitch me that I loved

you even before I saw?”

She drew herself up beside him with an air of rare dignity.

“The call of the Past,” she said; “and besides,” she

added proudly, “in the real life I am a princess–-“

“A princess!” he cried.

“–-and my mother is a queen!”

At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight

tore at his heart and swept him into sheer ecstasy. To hear that sweet

singing voice, and to see those adorable little lips utter such things,

upset his balance beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms

and covered her unresisting face with kisses.

But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he

felt that she was soft and loathsome, and that her answering kisses

stained his very soul…. And when, presently, she had freed herself

and vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the

wall in a state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her

yielding body, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already

dimly realised must prove his undoing.

And from the shadows of the old buildings into which

she disappeared there rose in the stillness of the night a singular,

long-drawn cry, which at first he took for laughter, but which later he

was sure he recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat.

For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall,

alone with his surging thoughts and emotions. He understood at length

that he had done the one thing necessary to call down upon him the

whole force of this ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had

acknowledged the tie of olden days, and had revived it. And the memory

of that soft impalpable caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came

back to him with a shudder. The girl had first mastered him, and then

led him to the one act that was necessary for her purpose. He had been

waylaid, after the lapse of centuries—caught, and conquered.

Dimly he realised this, and sought to make plans for

his escape. But, for the moment at any rate, he was powerless to manage

his thoughts or will, for the sweet, fantastic madness of the whole

adventure mounted to his brain like a spell, and he gloried in the

feeling that he was utterly enchanted and moving in a world so much

larger and wilder than the one he had ever been accustomed to.

The moon, pale and enormous, was just rising over

the sea-like plain, when at last he rose to go.