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. Her slanting rays drew

all the houses into new perspective, so that their roofs, already

glistening with dew, seemed to stretch much higher into the sky than

usual, and their gables and quaint old towers lay far away in its

purple reaches.

The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He

moved softly, keeping to the shadows; but the streets were all deserted

and very silent; the doors were closed, the shutters fastened. Not a

soul was astir. The hush of night lay over everything; it was like a

town of the dead, a churchyard with gigantic and grotesque tombstones.

Wondering where all the busy life of the day had so utterly

disappeared to, he made his way to a back door that entered the inn by

means of the stables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved. He

reached the courtyard safely and crossed it by keeping close to the

shadow of the wall. He sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as

the old men did when they entered the salle a manger. He was

horrified to find himself doing this instinctively. A strange impulse

came to him, catching him somehow in the centre of his body—an impulse

to drop upon all fours and run swiftly and silently. He glanced upwards

and the idea came to him to leap up upon his window-sill overhead

instead of going round by the stairs. This occurred to him as the

easiest, and most natural way. It was like the beginning of some

horrible transformation of himself into something else. He was

fearfully strung up.

The moon was higher now, and the shadows very dark

along the side of the street where he moved. He kept among the deepest

of them, and reached the porch with the glass doors.

But here there was light; the inmates,

unfortunately, were still about. Hoping to slip across the hall

unobserved and reach the stairs, he opened the door carefully and stole

in. Then he saw that the hall was not empty. A large dark thing lay

against the wall on his left. At first he thought it must be household

articles. Then it moved, and he thought it was an immense cat,

distorted in some way by the play of light and shadow. Then it rose

straight up before him and he saw that it was the proprietress.

What she had been doing in this position he could

only venture a dreadful guess, but the moment she stood up and faced

him he was aware of some terrible dignity clothing her about that

instantly recalled the girl’s strange saying that she was a queen. Huge

and sinister she stood there under the little oil lamp; alone with him

in the empty hall. Awe stirred in his heart, and the roots of some

ancient fear.