THE RETURN OF THE SOUL

By Robert S. Hichens

1896

 "I have been here before, But when, or how, I cannot tell!"

 Rossetti. 

I. 

_Tuesday Night, November 3rd_. 

Theories! What is the good of theories? They are the scourges that lashour minds in modern days, lash them into confusion, perplexity, despair. I have never been troubled by them before. Why should I be troubled bythem now? And the absurdity of Professor Black's is surely obvious. Achild would laugh at it. Yes, a child! I have never been a diary writer. I have never been able to understand the amusement of sitting downlate at night and scrawling minutely in some hidden book every paltryincident of one's paltry days. People say it is so interesting to readthe entries years afterwards. To read, as a man, the _menu_ that I atethrough as a boy, the love-story that I was actor in, the tragedy that Ibrought about, the debt that I have never paid--how could it profit me?To keep a diary has always seemed to me merely an addition to the illsof life. Yet now I have a hidden book, like the rest of the world, and Iam scrawling in it to-day. Yes, but for a reason. 

I want to make things clear to myself, and I find, as others, thatmy mind works more easily with the assistance of the pen. The actualtracing of words on paper dispels the clouds that cluster round mythoughts. I shall recall events to set my mind at ease, to prove tomyself how absurd a man who could believe in Professor Black wouldbe. "Little Dry-as-dust" I used to call him 'Dry'? He is full of wildromance, rubbish that a school-girl would be ashamed to believe in. Yethe is abnormally clever; his record proves that. Still, clever men arethe first to be led astray, they say. It is the searcher who follows thewandering light. What he says can't be true. When I have filled thesepages, and read what I have written dispassionately, as one of theoutside public might read, I shall have done, once for all, with theridiculous fancies that are beginning to make my life a burden. To putmy thoughts in order will make a music. The evil spirit within me willsleep, will die. I shall be cured. It must be so--it shall be so. 

To go back to the beginning. Ah! what a long time ago that seems! As achild I was cruel. Most boys are cruel, I think. My school companionswere a merciless set--merciless to one another, to their masters whenthey had a chance, to animals, to birds. The desire to torture wasin nearly all of them. They loved to bully, and if they bullied onlymildly, it was from fear, not from love. They did not wish theirboomerang to return and slay them. If a boy were deformed, they twittedhim. If a master were kind, or gentle, or shy, they made his life asintolerable as they could. If an animal or a bird came into their power, they had no pity. I was like the rest; indeed, I think that I was worse. Cruelty is horrible. I have enough imagination to do more than knowthat--to feel it. 

Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and womenbrutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing islessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as thetorturer. 

As a child I was cruel by nature, by instinct. I was a handsome, well-bred, gentlemanlike, gentle-looking little brute. My parents adoredme, and I was good to them. They were so kind to me that I was almostfond of them. Why not? It seemed to me as politic to be fond of them asof anyone else. I did what I pleased, but I did not always let themknow it; so I pleased them. The wise child will take care to fosterthe ignorance of its parents. My people were pretty well off, and I wastheir only child; but my chief chances of future pleasure in life werecentred in my grandmother, my mother's mother. She was immenselyrich, and she lived here. This room in which I am writing now was herfavourite sitting-room. On that hearth, before a log fire, such as isburning at this moment, used to sit that wonderful cat of hers--thathorrible cat! Why did I ever play my childish cards to win this house, this place? Sometimes, lately--very lately only--I have wondered, like afool perhaps. Yet would Professor Black say so? I remember, as a boy ofsixteen, paying my last visit here to my grandmother. It bored me verymuch to come. But she was said to be near death, and death leaves greathouses vacant for others to fill. So when my mother said that I hadbetter come, and my father added that he thought my grandmother wasfonder of me than of my other relations, I gave up all my boyish plansfor the holidays with apparent willingness. Though almost a child, I wasnot short-sighted. I knew every boy had a future as well as a present. Igave up my plans, and came here with a smile; but in my heart I hated mygrandmother for having power, and so bending me to relinquish pleasurefor boredom. I hated her, and I came to her and kissed her, and saw herbeautiful white Persian cat sitting before the fire in this room, andthought of the fellow who was my bosom friend, and with whom I longedto be, shooting, or fishing, or riding. And I looked at the cat again. I remember it began to purr when I went near to it. It sat quite still, with its blue eyes fixed upon the fire, but when I approached it Iheard it purr complacently. I longed to kick it. The limitations of itsridiculous life satisfied it completely. It seemed to reproduce in anabsurd, diminished way my grandmother in her white lace cap, with herwhite face and hands. She sat in her chair all day and looked at thefire. The cat sat on the hearthrug and did the same. The cat seemed tome the animal personification of the human being who kept me chainedfrom all the sports and pleasures I had promised myself for theholidays. When I went near to the cat, and heard it calmly purring atme, I longed to do it an injury. It seemed to me as if it understoodwhat my grandmother did not, and was complacently triumphing at myvoluntary imprisonment with age, and laughing to itself at the painsmen--and boys--will undergo for the sake of money. Brute! I did not lovemy grandmother, and she had money. I hated the cat utterly. It hadn't a_sou!_

This beautiful house is not old. My grandfather built it himself. He hadno love for the life of towns, I believe, but was passionately in touchwith nature, and, when a young man, he set out on a strange tour throughEngland. His object was to find a perfect view, and in front of thatview he intended to build himself a habitation. For nearly a year, so Ihave been told, he wandered through Scotland and England, and at lasthe came to this place in Cumberland, to this village, to this very spot. Here his wanderings ceased. Standing on the terrace--then uncultivatedforest--that runs in front of these windows, he found at last what hedesired. He bought the forest. He bought the windings of the river, the fields upon its banks, and on the extreme edge of the steep gorgethrough which it runs he built the lovely dwelling that to-day is mine. 

This place is no ordinary place. It is characteristic in the highestdegree. The house is wonderfully situated, with the ground fallingabruptly in front of it, the river forming almost a horseshoe round it. The woods are lovely. The garden, curiously, almost wildly, laid out, islike no other garden I ever saw. And the house, though not old, is fullof little surprises, curiously shaped rooms, remarkable staircases, quaint recesses. The place is a place to remember. The house is a houseto fix itself in the memory. Nothing that had once lived here could evercome back and forget that it had been here. Not even an animal--not evenan animal. 

I wish I had never gone to that dinnerparty and met the Professor. Therewas a horror coming upon me then. He has hastened its steps. He has putmy fears into shape, my vague wondering into words. Why cannot men leavelife alone? Why will they catch it by the throat and wring its secretsfrom it? To respect reserve is one of the first instincts of thegentleman; and life is full of reserve. 

It is getting very late. I thought I heard a step in the house justnow. I wonder--I wonder if _she_ is asleep. I wish I knew. Day afterday passed by. My grandmother seemed to be failing, but almostimperceptibly. She evidently loved to have me near to her. Like most olddying people, in her mind she frantically clutched at life, that couldgive to her nothing more; and I believe she grew to regard me as thepersonification of all that was leaving her. My vitality warmed her. Sheextended her hands to my flaming hearthfire. She seemed trying to livein my life, and at length became afraid to let me out of her sight. One day she said to me, in her quavering, ugly voice--old voices are sougly, like hideous echoes:

"Ronald, I could never die while you were in the room. So long as youare with me, where I can touch you, I shall live. "

And she put out her white, corrugated hand, and fondled my warm boy'shand. 

How I longed to push her hand away, and get out into the sunlight andthe air, and hear young voices, the voices of the morning, not of thetwilight, and be away from wrinkled Death, that seemed sitting on thedoorstep of that house huddled up like a beggar, waiting for the door tobe opened!

I was bored till I grew malignant. I confess it. And, feeling malignant, I began to long more and more passionately to vent myself on someone orsomething. I looked at the cat, which, as usual, was sitting before thefire. 

Animals have intuitions as keen as those of a woman, keener than thoseof a man. They inherit an instinct of fear of those who hate them from along line of ancestors who have suffered at the hands of cruel men. They can tell by a look, by a motion, by the tone of a voice, whetherto expect from anyone kindness or malignity. The cat had purredcomplacently on the first day of my arrival, and had hunched up herwhite, furry back towards my hand, and had smiled with her calm, light-blue eyes. Now, when I approached her, she seemed to gatherherself together and to make herself small. She shrank from me. Therewas--as I fancied--a dawning comprehension, a dawning terror in her blueeyes. She always sat very close to my grandmother now, as if she soughtprotection, and she watched me as if she were watching for an intentionwhich she apprehended to grow in my mind. 

And the intention came. 

For, as the days went on, and my grandmother still lived, I began togrow desperate. My holiday time was over now, but my parents wrotetelling me to stay where I was, and not to think of returning to school. My grandmother had caused a letter to be sent to them in which she saidthat she could not part from me, and added that my parents would neverhave cause to regret interrupting my education for a time. "He will bepaid in full for every moment he loses, " she wrote, referring to me. 

It seemed a strange taste in her to care so much for a boy, but she hadnever loved women, and I was handsome, and she liked handsome faces. Thebrutality in my nature was not written upon my features. I had smiling, frank brown eyes, a lithe young figure, a gay boy's voice. My movementswere quick, and I have always been told that my gestures were neverawkward, my demeanour was never unfinished, as is the case so often withlads at school. Outwardly I was attractive; and the old woman, who hadmarried two husbands merely for their looks, delighted in feeling thatshe had the power to retain me by her side at an age when most boysavoid old people as if they were the pestilence. 

And then I pretended to love her, and obeyed all her insufferablytiresome behests. But I longed to wreak vengeance upon her all the same. My dearest friend, the fellow with whom I was to have spent my holidays, was leaving at the end of this term which I was missing. He wrote tome furious letters, urging me to come back, and reproaching me for myselfishness and lack of affection. 

Each time I received one I looked at the cat, and the cat shrank nearerto my grandmother's chair. 

It never purred now, and nothing would induce it to leave the room whereshe sat. One day the servant said to me:

"I believe the poor dumb thing knows my mistress can't last very muchlonger, sir. The way that cat looks up at her goes to my heart. Ah! thembeasts understand things as well as we do, I believe. "

I think the cat understood quite well. It did watch my grandmother ina very strange way, gazing up into her face, as if to mark the changingcontours, the increasing lines, the down-droop of the features, thatbespoke the gradual soft approach of death. It listened to the sound ofher voice; and as, each day, the voice grew more vague, more weak andtoneless, an anxiety that made me exult dawned and deepened in its blueeyes. Or so I thought. 

I had a great deal of morbid imagination at that age, and loved to weavea web of fancies, mostly horrible, around almost everything that enteredinto my life. It pleased me to believe that the cat understood each newintention that came into my mind, read me silently from its placenear the fire, tracked my thoughts, and was terror-stricken as theyconcentrated themselves round a definite resolve, which hardened andtoughened day by day. 

It pleased me to believe, do I say? I did really believe, and do believenow, that the cat understood all, and grew haggard with fear as mygrandmother failed visibly. For it knew what the end would mean for it. 

That first day of my arrival, when I saw my grandmother in her whitecap, with her white face and hands, and the big white cat sittingnear to her, I had thought there was a similarity between them. Thatsimilarity struck me more forcibly, grew upon me, as my time in thehouse grew longer, until the latter seemed almost a reproduction ofthe former, and after each letter from my friend my hate for the twoincreased. But my hate for my grandmother was impotent, and would alwaysbe so. I could never repay her for the _ennui_, the furious, forcedinactivity which made my life a burden, and spurred my bad passionswhile they lulled me in a terrible, enforced repose. I could repay herfavourite, the thing she had always cherished, her feline confidant, who lived in safety under the shadow of her protection. I could wreak myfury on that when the protection was withdrawn, as it must be at last. It seemed to my brutal, imaginative, unfinished boy's mind that themurder of her pet must hurt and wound my grandmother even after she wasdead. I would make her suffer then, when she was impotent to wreak avengeance upon me. I would kill the cat. 

The creature knew my resolve the day I made it, and had even, I shouldsay, anticipated it. 

As I sat day after day beside my grandmother's armchair in the dim room, with the blinds drawn to shut out the summer sunlight, and talked to herin a subdued and reverent voice, agreeing with all the old banalitiesshe uttered, all the preposterous opinions she propounded, all thecommands she laid upon me, I gazed beyond her at the cat, and thecreature was haggard with apprehension. 

It knew, as I knew, that its day was coming. Sometimes I bent down andtook it up on my lap to please my grandmother, and praised its beautyand its gentleness to her And all the time I felt its warm, furry bodytrembling with horror between my hands. This pleased me, and I pretendedthat I was never happy unless it was on my knees. I kept it there forhours, stroking it so tenderly, smoothing its thick white coat, whichwas always in the most perfect order, talking to it, caressing it. 

And sometimes I took its head between my two hands, turned its face tomine, and stared into its large blue eyes. Then I could read all itsagony, all its torture of apprehension: and in spite of my friend'sletters, and the dulness of my days, I was almost happy. 

The summer was deepening, the glow of the roses flushed the garden ways, the skies were clear above Scawfell, when the end at last drew near. My grandmother's face was now scarcely recognizable. The eyes were sunkdeep in her head. All expression seemed to fade gradually away. Hercheeks were no longer fine ivory white; a dull, sickening, yellow palloroverspread them. She seldom looked at me now, but rested entombed in hergreat armchair, her shrunken limbs seeming to tend downwards, as if shewere inclined to slide to the floor and die there. Her lips were thinand dry, and moved perpetually in a silent chattering, as if her mindwere talking and her voice were already dead. The tide of life wasretreating from her body. I could almost see it visibly ebb away. Thefailing waves made no sound upon the shore. Death is uncanny, like allsilent things. 

Her maid wished her to stay entirely in bed, but she would get up, muttering that she was well; and the doctor said it was useless tohinder her. She had no specific disease. Only the years were takingtheir last toll of her. So she was placed in her chair each day by thefire, and sat there till evening, muttering with those dry lips. Thestiff folds of her silken skirts formed an angle, and there the catcrouched hour after hour, a silent, white, waiting thing. 

And the waves ebbed and ebbed away, and I waited too. 

One afternoon, as I sat by my grandmother, the servant entered witha letter for me just arrived by the post. I took it up. It was fromWilloughby, my school-friend. He said the term was over, that he hadleft school, and his father had decided to send him out to America tostart in business in New York, instead of entering him at Oxford as hehad hoped. He bade me good-bye, and said he supposed we should not meetagain for years; "but, " he added, "no doubt you won't care a straw, solong as you get the confounded money you're after. You've taught me oneof the lessons of life, young Ronald--never to believe in friendship. "

As I read the letter I set my teeth. All that was good in my naturecentred round Willoughby. He was a really fine fellow. I honestly andtruly loved him. His news gave me a bitter shock, and turned my heart toiron and to fire. Perhaps I should never see him again; even if I did, time would have changed him, seared him--my friend, in his wonderfulyouth, with the morning in his eyes, would be no more. I hated myself inthat moment for having stayed; I hated still more her who had kept me. For the moment I was carried out of myself. I crushed the letter up inmy burning hand. I turned fiercely round upon that yellow, enigmatic, dying figure in the great chair. All the fury, locked within my heartfor so long, rose to the surface, and drove self-interest away. I turnedupon my grandmother with blazing eyes and trembling limbs. I opened mymouth to utter a torrent of reproachful words, when--what was it?--whatslight change had stolen into the wrinkled, yellow face? I bent overher. The eyes gazed at me, but so horribly! She sat so low in her chair;she looked so fearful, so very strange. I put my fingers on her eyelids;I drew them down over the eyeballs: they did not open again. I felt herwithered hands: they were ice. Then I knew, and I felt myself smiling. Ileaned over the dead woman. There, on the far side of her, crouched thecat. Its white fur was all bristling; its blue eyes were dilated; on itsjaws there were flecks of foam. 

I leaned over the dead woman and took it in my arms. 

*****

That was nearly twenty years ago, and yet to-night the memory of thatmoment, and what followed it, bring a fear to my heart which I mustcombat. I have read of men who lived for long spaces of time hauntedby demons created by their imagination, and I have laughed at them andpitied them. Surely I am not going to join in their folly, in theirmadness, led to the gates of terror by my own fancies, half-confirmed, apparently, by the chance utterances of a conceited Professor--a man offads, although a man of science. 

That was twenty years ago. After to-night let me forget it. Afterto-night, do I say? Hark! the birds are twittering in the dew outside. The pale, early sun-shafts strike over the moors. And I am tired. To-morrow night I will finish this wrestle with my own folly; I willgive the _coup de grāce_ to my imagination.. But no more now. My brainis not calm, and I will not write in excitement. 

II. 

_Wednesday Night, November 4th_. 

Margot has gone to bed at last, and I am alone. This has been a horribleday--horrible; but I will not dwell upon it. 

After the death of my grandmother, I went back to school again. ButWilloughby was gone, and he could not forgive me. He wrote to me once ortwice from New York, and then I ceased to hear from him. He died out ofmy life. His affection for me had evidently declined from the day whenhe took it into his head that I was only a money-grubber, like therest of the world, and that the Jew instinct had developed in me at anabnormally early age. I let him go. What did it matter? But I was alwaysglad that I had been cruel on the day my grandmother died. I neverrepented of what I did--never. If I had, I might be happier now. 

I went back to school. I studied, played, got into mischief and out ofit again, like other boys; but in my life there seemed to be an eternalcoldness, that I alone, perhaps, was conscious of. My deed of cruelty, of brutal revenge on the thing that had never done me injury, hadseared my soul. I was not sorry, but t could not forget; and sometimesI thought--how ridiculous it looks written down!--that there was a powerhidden somewhere which could not forget either, and that a penalty mighthave to be paid. Because a creature is dumb, must its soul die when itdies? Is not the soul, perhaps--as _he_ said--a wanderer through manybodies?

But if I did not kill a soul, as I killed a body, the day my grandmotherdied, where is that soul now? That is what I want to arrive at, that iswhat I must arrive at, if I am to be happy. 

I went back to school, and I passed to Oxford. I tasted the strange, unique life of a university, narrow, yet pulsating, where the youth, that is so green and springing, tries to arm itself for the battle withthe weapons forged by the dead and sharpened by the more elderly amongthe living. I did well there, and I passed on into the world. And thenat last I began to understand the value of my inheritance; for all thathad been my grandmother's was now mine. My people wished me to marry, but I had no desire to fetter myself. So I took the sponge in my strong, young hands, and tried to squeeze it dry. And I did not know that I wassad--I did not know it until, at the age of thirty-three, just seventeenyears after my grandmother died, I understood the sort of thinghappiness is. Of course, it was love that brought to me understanding. I need not explain that. I had often played on love; now love began toplay on me. I trembled at the harmonies his hands evoked. 

I met a young girl, very young, just on the verge of life and ofwomanhood. She was seventeen when I first saw her, and she was valsingat a big ball in London--her first ball. She passed me in the crowdof dancers, and I noticed her. As she was a _debutante_ her dress wasnaturally snow-white. There was no touch of colour about it--not aflower, not a jewel. Her hair was the palest yellow I had almost everseen--the colour of an early primrose. Naturally fluffy, it nearlyconcealed the white riband that ran through it, and clustered intendrils and tiny natural curls upon her neck. Her skin was whiter thanivory--a clear, luminous white. Her eyes were very large and china-bluein colour. 

This young girl dancing passed and repassed me, and my glance restedon her idly, even cynically. For she seemed so happy, and at that timehappiness won my languid wonder, if ingenuously exhibited. To be happyseemed almost to be mindless. But by degrees I found myself watchingthis girl, and more closely. Another dance began. She joined it withanother partner. But she seemed just as pleased with him as with herformer one. She would not let him pause to rest; she kept him dancingall the time, her youth and freshness spoken in that gentle compelling. I grew interested in her, even acutely so. She seemed to me like thespirit of youth dancing over the body of Time. I resolved to know her. Ifelt weary; I thought she might revive me. The dance drew to an end, and I approached my hostess, pointed the girl out, and asked for anintroduction. Her name was Margot Magendie, I found, and she was anheiress as well as a beauty. 

I did not care. It was her humanity that drew me, nothing else. 

But; strange to say, when the moment for the introduction arrived, and Istood face to face with Miss Magendie, I felt an extraordinary shrinkingfrom her. I have never been able to understand it, but my blood rancold, and my pulses almost ceased to beat. I would have avoided her; aninstinct within me seemed suddenly to cry out against her. But it wastoo late: the introduction was effected; her hand rested on my arm. 

I was actually trembling. She did not appear to notice it. The bandplayed a valse, and the inexplicable horror that had seized me lostitself in the gay music. It never returned until lately. 

I seldom enjoyed a valse more. Our steps suited so perfectly, and herobvious childish pleasure communicated itself to me. The spirit of youthin her knocked on my rather jaded heart, and I opened to it. That wasbeautiful and strange. I talked with her, and I felt myself younger, ingenuous rather than cynical, inclined even to a radiant, thoughfoolish, optimism. She was very natural, very imperfect in worldlyeducation, full of fragmentary but decisive views on life, quiteunabashed in giving them forth, quite inconsiderate in summoning myadherence to them. 

And then, presently, as we sat in a dim corridor under a rosy hanginglamp, in saying something she looked, with her great blue eyes, rightinto my face. Some very faint recollection awoke and stirred in my mind. 

"Surely, " I said hesitatingly--"surely I have seen you before? It seemsto me that I remember your eyes. "

As I spoke I was thinking hard, chasing the vagrant recollection thateluded me. 

She smiled. 

"You don't remember my face?"

"No, not at all. "

"Nor I yours. If we had seen each other, surely we should recollect it. "

Then she blushed, suddenly realizing that her words implied, perhaps, more than she had meant. I did not pay the obvious compliment. Thoseblue eyes and something in their expression moved me strangely; but Icould not tell why. When I said good-bye to her that night, I asked tobe allowed to call. 

She assented. 

That was the beginning of a very beautiful courtship, which gave acolour to life, a music to existence, a meaning to every slightestsensation. 

And was it love that laid to sleep recollection, that sang a lullaby toawakening horror, and strewed poppies over it till it sighed itself intoslumber? Was it love that drowned my mind in deep and charmed waters, binding the strange powers that every mind possesses in flowery garlandsstronger than any fetters of iron? Was it love that, calling up dreams, alienated my thoughts from their search after reality?

I hardly know. I only know that I grew to love Margot, and only lookedfor love in her blue eyes, not for any deed of the past that might bemirrored there. 

And I made her love me. 

She gave her child's heart to my keeping with a perfect confidencethat only a perfect affection could engender. She did love me then. Nocircumstances of to-day can break that fact under their hammers. Shedid love me, and it is the knowledge that she did which gives so much offear to me now. 

For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them werealize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden inevery human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old, crafty, secret murderer. How horrible!

And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the humanenvelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within maybecome altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of death. 

Margot's face is the same face now as it was when I marriedher--scarcely older, certainly not less beautiful. Only the expressionof the eyes has changed. 

For we were married. After a year of love-making, which never tiredeither of us, we elected to bind ourselves, to fuse the two into one. 

We went abroad for the honeymoon, and, instead of shortening it to thefashionable fortnight, we travelled for nearly six months, and werehappy all the time. 

Boredom never set in. Margot had a beautiful mind as well as a beautifulface. She softened me through my affection. The current of my life beganto set in a different direction. I turned the pages of a book of pityand of death more beautiful than that of Pierre Loti. I could hear atlast the great cry for sympathy, which is the music of this strangesuffering world, and, listening to it, in my heart there rang an echo. The cruelty in my nature seemed to shrivel up. I was more gentle than Ihad been, more gentle than I had thought I could ever be. 

At last, in the late spring, we started for home. We stayed for a weekin London, and then we travelled north. Margot had never seen herfuture home, had never even been in Cumberland before. She was fullof excitement and happiness, a veritable child in the ready and ardentexpression of her feelings. The station is several miles from the house, and is on the edge of the sea. When the train pulled up at the waysideplatform the day drew towards sunset, and the flat levels of the beachshone with a rich, liquid, amber light. In the distance the sea wastossing and tumbling, whipped into foam by a fresh wind. The Isle of Manlay far away, dark, mysterious, under a stack of bellying white clouds, just beginning to be tinged with the faintest rose. 

Margot found the scene beautiful, the wind life-giving, the flatsand-banks, the shining levels, even the dry, spiky grass that flutteredin the breeze, fascinating and refreshing. 

"I feel near the heart of Nature in a place like this, " she said, looking up at a seagull that hovered over the little platform, crying tothe wind on which it hung. 

The train stole off along the edge of the sands, till we could see onlythe white streamer of its smoke trailing towards the sun. We turned awayfrom the sea, got into the carriage that was waiting for us, and setour faces inland. The ocean was blotted out by the low grass andheather-covered banks that divided the fields. Presently we plunged intowoods. The road descended sharply. A village, an abruptly winding riversprang into sight. 

We were on my land. We passed the inn, the Rainwood Arms, named aftermy grandfather's family. The people whom we met stared curiously andsaluted in rustic fashion. 

Margot was full of excitement and pleasure, and talked incessantly, holding my hand tightly in hers and asking a thousand questions. Passingthrough the village, we mounted a hill towards a thick grove of trees. 

"The house stands among them, " I said, pointing. 

She sprang up eagerly in the carriage to find it, but it was hidden. 

We dashed through the gate into the momentary darkness of the drive, emerged between great green lawns, and drew up before the big doorway ofthe hall. I looked into her eyes, and said "Welcome!"

She only smiled in answer. 

I would not let her enter the house immediately, but made her come withme to the terrace above the river, to see the view over the Cumbrianmountains and the moors of Eskdale. 

The sky was very clear and pale, but over Styhead the clouds wereboiling up. The Screes that guard ebon Wastwater looked grim and sad. 

Margot stood beside me on the terrace, but her chatter had beensucceeded by silence. And I, too, was silent for the moment, absorbed incontemplation. But presently I turned to her, wishing to see how she wasimpressed by her new domain. 

She was not looking towards the river and the hills, but at the terracewalk itself, the band of emerald turf that bordered it, the stone potsfull of flowers, the winding way that led into the shrubbery. 

She was looking at these intently, and with a strangely puzzled, almoststartled expression. 

"Hush! Don't speak to me for a moment, " she said, as I opened my lips. "Don't; I want to---- How odd this is!"

And she gazed up at the windows of the house, at the creepers thatclimbed its walls, at the sloping roof and the irregular chimney-stacks. 

Her lips were slightly parted, and her eyes were full of an inwardexpression that told me she was struggling with forgetfulness anddesired recollection. 

I was silent, wondering. 

At last she said: "Ronald, I have never been in the North of Englandbefore, never set foot in Cumberland; yet I seem to know this terracewalk, those very flower-pots, the garden, the look of that roof, thosechimneys, even the slanting way in which that great creeper climbs. Isit not--is it not very strange?"

She gazed up at me, and in her blue eyes there was an expression almostof fear. 

I smiled down on her. "It must be your fancy, " I said. 

"It does not seem so, " she replied. "I feel as if I had been herebefore, and often, or for a long time. " She paused; then she said: "Dolet me go into the house. There ought to be a room there--a room--I seemalmost to see it. Come! Let us go in. "

She took my hand and drew me towards the hall door. The servants werecarrying in the luggage, and there was a certain amount of confusion andnoise, but she did not seem to notice it. She was intent on something; Icould not tell what. 

"Do show me the house, Ronald--the drawing-room, and--and--there isanother room I wish to see. "

"You shall see them all, dear, " I said. "You are excited. It is naturalenough. This is the drawing-room. "

She glanced round it hastily. 

"And now the others!" she exclaimed. 

I took her to the dining-room, the library, and the various apartmentson the ground-floor. 

She scarcely looked at them. When we had finished exploring, "Are theseall?" she asked, with a wavering accent of disappointment. 

"All, " I answered. 

"Then--show me the rooms upstairs. "

We ascended the shallow oak steps, and passed first into the apartmentin which my grandmother had died. 

It had been done up since then, refurnished, and almost completelyaltered. Only the wide fireplace, with its brass dogs and its heavyoaken mantelpiece, had been left untouched. 

Margot glanced hastily round. Then she walked up to the fireplace, anddrew a long breath. 

"There ought to be a fire here, " she said. 

"But it is summer, " I answered, wondering. 

"And a chair there, " she went on, in a curious low voice, indicating--Ithink now, or is it my imagination?--the very spot where my grandmotherwas wont to sit. "Yes--I seem to remember, and yet not to remember. "

She looked at me, and her white brows were knit. 

Suddenly she said: "Ronald, I don't think I like this room. There issomething--I don't know--I don't think I could sit here; and I seem toremember--something about it, as I did about the terrace. What can itmean?"

"It means that you are tired and overexcited, darling. Your nerves aretoo highly strung, and nerves play us strange tricks. Come to your ownroom and take off your things, and when you have had some tea, you willbe all right again. "

Yes, I was fool enough to believe that tea was the panacea for anundreamed-of, a then unimaginable, evil. 

I thought Margot was simply an overtired and imaginative child thatevening. If I could believe so now!

We went up into her boudoir and had tea, and she grew more likeherself; but several times that night I observed her looking puzzled andthoughtful, and a certain expression of anxiety shone in her blue eyesthat was new to them then. 

But I thought nothing of it, and I was-happy. Two or three dayspassed, and Mar-got did not again refer to her curious sensation ofpre-knowledge of the house and garden. I fancied there was a slightalteration in her manner; that was all. She seemed a little restless. Her vivacity flagged now and then. She was more willing to be alone thanshe had been. But we were old married folk now, and could not be alwaysin each other's sight. I had a great many people connected with theestate to see, and had to gather up the tangled threads of many affairs. 

The honeymoon was over. Of course we could not always be together. 

Still, I should have wished Margot to desire it, and I could not hidefrom myself that now and then she scarcely concealed a slight impatienceto be left in solitude. This troubled me, but only a little, for she wasgenerally as fond as ever. That evening, however, an incident occurredwhich rendered me decidedly uneasy, and made me wonder if my wife werenot inclined to that curse of highly-strung women--hysteria!

I had been riding over the moors to visit a tenant-farmer who lived atsome distance, and did not return until twilight. Dismounting, I letmyself into the house, traversed the hall, and ascended the stairs. As Iwore spurs, and the steps were of polished oak and uncarpeted, I walkednoisily enough to warn anyone of my approach. I was passing the doorof the room that had been my grandmother's sitting-room, when I noticedthat it stood open. The house was rather dark, and the interior was dimenough, but I could see a figure in a white dress moving about inside. I recognised Margot, and wondered what she was doing, but her movementswere so singular that, instead of speaking to her, I stood in thedoorway and watched her. 

She was walking, with a very peculiar, stealthy step, around the room, not as if she were looking for anything, but merely as if she wererestless or ill at ease. But what struck me forcibly was this, thatthere was something curiously animal in her movements, seen thus in adim half-light that only partially revealed her to me. I had neverseen a woman walk in that strangely wild yet soft way before. There wassomething uncanny about it, that rendered me extremely discomforted; yetI was quite fascinated, and rooted to the ground. 

I cannot tell how long I stood there. I was so completely absorbed inthe passion of the gazer that the passage of time did not concern mein the least. I was as one assisting at a strange spectacle. This whitething moving in the dark did not suggest my wife to me, although itwas she. I might have been watching an animal, vague, yet purposeful ofmind, tracing out some hidden thing, following out some instinct quiteforeign to humanity. I remember that presently I involuntarily claspedmy hands together, and felt that they were very cold. Perspiration brokeout on my face. I was painfully, unnaturally moved, and a violent desireto be away from this white moving thing came over me. Walking as softlyas I could, I went to my dressing-room, shut the door, and sat down on achair. I never remember to have felt thoroughly unnerved before, but nowI found myself actually shaken, palsied. I could understand how deadlya thing fear is. I lit a candle hastily, and as I did so a knock came tothe door. 

Margot's voice said, "May I come in?" I felt unable to reply, so I gotup and admitted her. 

She entered smiling, and looking such a child, so innocent, so tender, that I almost laughed aloud. That I, a man, should have been frightenedby a child in a white dress, just because the twilight cast a phantomatmosphere around her! I held her in my arms, and I gazed into her blueeyes. 

She looked down, but still smiled. 

"Where have you been, and what have you been doing?" I asked gaily. 

She answered that she had been in the drawing-room since tea-time. 

"You came here straight from the drawing-room?" I said. 

She replied, "Yes. "

Then, with an indifferent air which hid real anxiety, I said:

"By the way, Margot, have you been into that room again--the room youfancied you recollected?"

"No, never, " she answered, withdrawing herself from my arms. "Idon't wish to go there. Make haste, Ronald, and dress. It is nearlydinner-time, and I am ready. " And she turned and left me. 

She had told me a lie. All my feelings of uneasiness and discomfortreturned tenfold. 

That evening was the most wretched one, the only wretched one, I hadever spent with her. 

*****

I am tired of writing. I will continue my task to-morrow. It takes melonger than I anticipated. Yet even to tell everything to myself bringsme some comfort. Man must express himself; and despair must find avoice. 

III. 

_Thursday Night, December 5th_. 

That lie awoke in me suspicion of the child I had married. I began todoubt her, yet never ceased to love her. She had all my heart, and musthave it till the end. But the calm of love was to be succeeded by love'stumult and agony. A strangeness was creeping over Margot. It was as ifshe took a thin veil in her hands, and drew it over and all around her, till the outlines I had known were slightly blurred. Her disposition, which had been so clear cut, so sharply, beautifully defined, standingout in its innocent glory for all men to see, seemed to withdraw itself, as if a dawning necessity for secrecy had arisen. A thin crust ofreserve began to subtly overspread her every act and expression. Shethought now before she spoke; she thought before she looked. It seemedto me that she was becoming a slightly different person. 

The change I mean to imply is very difficult to describe. It was notabrupt enough to startle, but I could feel it, slight though it was. Have you seen the first flat film of waveless water, sent by theincoming tides of the sea, crawling silently up over the wrinkled brownsand, and filling the tiny ruts, till diminutive hills and valleys areall one smooth surface? So it was with Margot. A tide flowed over hercharacter, a waveless tide of reserve. The hills and valleys which Iloved disappeared from my ken. Behind the old sweet smile, the old frankexpression, my wife was shrinking down to hide herself, as one escapingfrom pursuit hides behind a barrier. When one human being knows anothervery intimately, and all the barricades that divide soul from soul havebeen broken down, it is difficult to set them up again without noise anddust, and the sound of thrust-in bolts, and the tap of the hammer thatdrives in the nails. It is difficult, but not impossible. Barricadescan be raised noiselessly, soundless bolts--that keep out the soul--bepushed home. The black gauze veil that blots out the scene drops, andwhen it is raised--if ever--the scene is changed. 

The real Margot was receding from me. I felt it with an impotence ofdespair that was benumbing. Yet I could not speak of it, for at first Icould hardly tell if she knew of what was taking place. Indeed, at thismoment, in thinking it over, I do not believe that for some time she hadany definite cognisance of the fact that she was growing to love meless passionately than of old. In acts she was not changed. That was thestrange part of the matter. Her kisses were warm, but I believed thempremeditated. She clasped my hand in hers, but now there was moremechanism than magic in that act of tenderness. Impulse failed withinher; and she had been all impulse? Did she know it? At that time Iwondered. Believing that she did not know she was changing, I was at thegreatest pains to guard my conduct, lest I should implant the suspicionthat might hasten what I feared. I remained, desperately, the same asever, and so, of course, was not the same, for a deed done defiantlybears little resemblance to a deed done naturally. I was alwaysconsidering what I should say, how I should act, even how I shouldlook. To live now was sedulous instead of easy. Effort took the placeof simplicity. My wife and I were gazing furtively at each other throughthe eye-holes of masks. I knew it. Did she?

At that time I never ceased to wonder. Of one thing I was certain, however--that Margot began to devise excuses for being left alone. Whenwe first came home she could hardly endure me out of her sight. Now shegrew to appreciate solitude. This was a terrible danger signal, and Icould not fail to so regard it. 

Yet something within me held me back from speaking out. I made nocomment on the change that deepened day by day, but I watched my wifefurtively, with a concentration of attention that sometimes left mephysically exhausted. I felt, too, at length, that I was growing morbid, that suspicion coloured my mind and caused me, perhaps, to put a wronginterpretation on many of her actions, to exaggerate and misconstruethe most simple things she did. I began to believe her every lookpremeditated. Even if she kissed me, I thought she did it with apurpose; if she smiled up at me as of old, I fancied the smile to beonly a concealment of its opposite. By degrees we became shy of eachother. We were like uncongenial intimates, forced to occupy the samehouse, forced into a fearful knowledge of each other's personal habits, while we knew nothing of the thoughts that make up the true lives ofindividuals. 

And then another incident occurred, a pendant to the incident ofMargot's strange denied visit to the room she affected to fear. It wasone night, one deep dark night of the autumn--a season to affect even acheerful mind and incline it towards melancholy. Margot and I were nowoften silent when we were together. That evening, towards nine, a dullsteady rain set in. I remember I heard it on the window-panes as we satin the drawing-room after dinner, and remarked on it, saying to her thatif it continued for two or three days she might chance to see the floodsout, and that fishermen would descend upon us by the score. 

I did not obtain much response from her. The dreariness of the weatherseemed to affect her spirits. She took up a book presently, and appearedto read; but, once in glancing up suddenly from my newspaper, I thoughtI caught her gaze fixed fearfully upon me. It seemed to me that she waslooking furtively at me with an absolute terror. I was so much affectedthat I made some excuse for leaving the room, went down to my den, lita cigar, and walked uneasily up and down, listening to the rain on thewindow. At ten Margot came in to tell me she was going to bed. I wishedher good-night tenderly, but as I held her slim body a moment in my armsI felt that she began to tremble. I let her go, and she slipped fromthe room with the soft, cushioned step that was habitual with her. And, strangely enough, my thoughts recurred to the day, long ago, when Ifirst held the great white cat on my knees, and felt its body shrinkfrom my touch with a nameless horror. The uneasy movement of the womanrecalled to me so strongly and so strangely the uneasy movement of theanimal. 

I lit a second cigar. It was near midnight when it was smoked out, and Iturned down the lamp and went softly up to bed. I undressed in the roomadjoining my wife's, and then stole into hers. She was sleeping in thewide white bed rather uneasily, and as I leaned over her, shading thecandle flame with my outspread hand, she muttered some broken words thatI could not catch. I had never heard her talk in her dreams before. Ilay down gently at her side and extinguished the candle. 

But sleep did not come to me. The dull, dead silence weighed uponinstead of soothing me. My mind was terribly alive, in a ferment;and the contrast between my own excitement and the hushed peace of myenvironment was painful, was almost unbearable. I wished that a windfrom the mountains were beating against the window-panes, and therain lashing the house in fury. The black calm around was horrible, unnatural. The drizzling rain was now so small that I could not evenhear its patter when I strained my ears. Margot had ceased to mutter, and lay perfectly still. How I longed to be able to read the soul hiddenin her sleeping body, to unravel the mystery of the mind which I hadonce understood so perfectly! It is so horrible that we can never openthe human envelope, take out the letter, and seize with our eyes uponits every word. Margot slept with all her secrets safeguarded, althoughshe was unconscious, no longer watchful, on the alert. She was sosilent, even her quiet breathing not reaching my ear, that I feltimpelled to stretch out my hand beneath the coverlet and touch hers everso softly. I did so. 

Her hand was instantly and silently withdrawn. She was awake, then. 

"Margot, " I said, "did I disturb you?"

There was no answer. 

The movement, followed by the silence, affected me very disagreeably. 

I lit the candle and looked at her. She was lying on the extreme edgeof the bed, with her blue eyes closed. Her lips were slightly parted. Icould hear her steady breathing. Yet was she really sleeping?

I bent lower over her, and as I did so a slight, involuntary movement, akin to what we call a shudder, ran through her body. I recoiled fromthe bed. An impotent anger seized me. Could it be that my presence wasbecoming so hateful to my wife that even in sleep her body trembled whenI drew near it? Or was this slumber feigned? I could not tell, but Ifelt it impossible at that moment to remain in the room. I returned tomy own, dressed, and descended the stairs to the door opening on to theterrace. I felt a longing to be out in the air. The atmosphere of thehouse was stifling. 

Was it coming to this, then? Did I, a man, shrink with a fantasticcowardice from a woman I loved? The latent cruelty began to stir withinme, the tyrant spirit which a strong love sometimes evokes. I had beenMargot's slave almost. My affection had brought me to her feet, hadkept me there. So long as she loved me I was content to be her captive, knowing she was mine. But a change in her attitude toward me might rousethe master. In my nature there was a certain brutality, a savagery, which I had never wholly slain, although Margot had softened mewonderfully by her softness, had brought me to gentleness by hertenderness. The boy of years ago had developed toward better things, buthe was not dead in me. I felt that as I walked up and down the terracethrough the night in a wild meditation. If my love could not holdMargot, my strength should. 

I drew in a long breath of the wet night air, and I opened my shouldersas if shaking off an oppression. My passion for Margot had not yet drawnme down to weakness; it had raised me up to strength. The faint fearof her, which I had felt almost without knowing it more than once, diedwithin me. The desire of the conqueror elevated me. There was somethingfor me to win. My paralysis passed away, and I turned toward the house. 

And now a strange thing happened. I walked into the dark hall, closedthe outer door, shutting out the dull murmur of the night, and felt inmy pocket for my matchbox. It was not there. I must inadvertently havelaid it down in my dressing-room and left it. I searched about in thedarkness on the hall table, but could find no light. There was nothingfor it, then, but to feel my way upstairs as best I could. 

I started, keeping my hand against the wall to guide me. I gained thetop of the stairs, and began to traverse the landing, still with my handupon the wall. To reach my dressing-room I had to pass the apartmentwhich had been my grandmother's sitting-room. 

When I reached it, instead of sliding along a closed door, as I hadanticipated, my hand dropped into vacancy. 

The door was wide open. It had been shut, like all the other doorsin the house, when I had descended the stairs--shut and locked, as italways was at night-time. Why was it open now?

I paused in the darkness. And then an impulse seized me to walk forwardinto the room. I advanced a step; but, as I did so, a horrible low crybroke upon my ears out of the darkness. It came from immediately infront of me, and sounded like an expression of the most abject fear. 

My feet rooted themselves to the ground. 

"Who's there?" I asked. 

There came no answer. 

I listened for a moment, but did not hear the minutest sound. The desirefor light was overpowering. I generally did my writing in this room, and knew the exact whereabouts of everything in it. I knew that on thewriting-table there was a silver box containing wax matches. It lay onthe left of my desk. I moved another step forward. 

There was the sound of a slight rustle, as if someone shrank back as Iadvanced. 

I laid my hand quickly on the box, opened it, and struck a light. Theroom was vaguely illuminated. I saw something white at the far end, against the wall. I put the match to a candle. 

The white thing was Margot. She was in her dressing-gown, and wascrouched up in an angle of the wall as far away from where I stoodas possible. Her blue eyes were wide open, and fixed upon me with anexpression of such intense and hideous fear in them that I almost criedout. 

"Margot, what is the matter?" I said. "Are you ill?"

She made no reply. Her face terrified me. 

"What is it, Margot?" I cried in a loud, almost harsh voice, determinedto rouse her from this horrible, unnatural silence. "What are you doinghere?"

I moved towards her. I stretched out my hands and seized her. As I didso, a sort of sob burst from her. Her hands were cold and trembling. 

"What is it? What has frightened you?" I reiterated. 

At last she spoke in a low voice. 

"You--you looked so strange, so--so cruel as you came in, " she said. 

"Strange! Cruel! But you could not see me. It was dark, " I answered. 

"Dark!" she said. 

"Yes, until I lit the candle. And you cried out when I was only in thedoorway. You could not see me there. "

"Why not? What has that got to do with it?" she murmured, stilltrembling violently. 

"You can see me in the dark?"

"Of course, " she said. "I don't understand what you mean. Of course Ican see you when you are there before my eyes. "

"But----" I began; and then her obvious and complete surprise at myquestions stopped them. I still held her hands in mine, and theirextreme coldness roused me to the remembrance that she was unclothed. 

"You will be ill if you stay here, " I said. "Come back to your room. "

She said nothing, and I led her back, waited while she got into bed, andthen, placing the candle on the dressing-table, sat down in a chair byher side. 

The strong determination to take prompt action, to come to anexplanation, to end these dreary mysteries of mind and conduct, wasstill upon me. 

I did not think of the strange hour; I did not care that the night wasgliding on towards dawn. I was self-absorbed. I was beyond ordinaryconsiderations. 

Yet I did not speak immediately. I was trying to be quite calm, tryingto think of the best line for me to take. So much might depend upon ourmere words now. At length I said, laying my hand upon hers, which wasoutside the coverlet:

"Margot, what were you doing in that room at such a strange hour? Whywere you there?"

She hesitated obviously. Then she answered, not looking at me:

"I missed you. I thought you might be there--writing. "

"But you were in the dark. "

"I thought you would have a light. "

I knew by her manner that she was not telling me the truth, but I wenton quietly:

"If you expected me, why did you cry out when I came to the door?"

She tried to draw her hand away, but I held it fast, closing, my fingersupon it with even brutal strength. 

"Why did you cry out?"

"You--you looked so strange, so cruel. "

"So cruel!"

"Yes. You frightened me--you frightened me horribly. "

She began suddenly to sob, like one completely overstrained. I liftedher up in the bed, put my arms round her, and made her lean against me. I was strangely moved. 

"I frightened you! How can that be?" I said, trying to control a passionof mingled love and anger that filled my breast. "You know that I loveyou. You must know that. In all our short married life have I ever beeneven momentarily unkind to you? Let us be frank with one another. Ourlives have changed lately. One of us has altered. You cannot say that itis I. "

She only continued to sob bitterly in my arms. I held her closer. 

"Let us be frank with one another, " I went on. "For God's sake let ushave no barriers between us. Margot, look into my eyes and tell me--areyou growing tired of me?"

She turned her head away, but I spoke more sternly:

"You shall be truthful. I will have no more subterfuge. Look me in theface. You did love me once?"

"Yes, yes, " she whispered in a choked voice. 

"What have I done, then, to alienate you? Have I ever hurt you, evershown a lack of sympathy, ever neglected you?"

"Never--never. "

"Yet you have changed to me since--since----" I paused a moment, tryingto recall when I had first noticed her altered demeanour. 

She interrupted me. 

"It has all come upon me in this house, " she sobbed. "Oh! what is it?What does it all mean? If I could understand a little--only a little--itwould not be so bad. But this nightmare, this thing that seems such amadness of the intellect----"

Her voice broke and ceased. Her tears burst forth afresh. Such mingledfear, passion, and a sort of strange latent irritation, I had never seenbefore. 

"It is a madness indeed, " I said, and a sense almost of outrage made myvoice hard and cold. "I have not deserved such treatment at your hands. "

"I will not yield to it, " she said, with a sort of desperation, suddenlythrowing her arms around me. "I will not--I will not!"

I was strangely puzzled. I was torn with conflicting feelings. Love andanger grappled at my heart. But I only held her, and did not speak untilshe grew obviously calmer. The paroxysm seemed passing away. Then Isaid:

"I cannot understand. "

"Nor I, " she answered, with a directness that had been foreign to herof late, but that was part and parcel of her real, beautiful nature. "Icannot understand. I only know there is a change in me, or in you tome, and that I cannot help it, or that I have not been able to help it. Sometimes I feel--do not be angry, I will try to tell you--a physicalfear of you, of your touch, of your clasp, a fear such as an animalmight feel towards the master who had beaten it. I tremble then atyour approach. When you are near me I feel cold, oh! so cold and--andanxious; perhaps I ought to say apprehensive. Oh, I am hurting you!"

I suppose I must have winced at her words, and she is quick to observe. 

"Go on, " I said; "do not spare me. Tell me everything. It is madnessindeed; but we may kill it, when we both know it. "

"Oh, if we could!" she cried, with a poignancy which was heart-breakingto hear. "If we could!"

"Do you doubt our ability?" I said, trying to be patient and calm. "Youare unreasoning, like all women. Be sensible for a moment. You do me awrong in cherishing these feelings. I have the capacity for cruelty inme. I may have been--I have been--cruel in the past, but never to you. You have no right to treat me as you have done lately. If you examineyour feelings, and compare them with facts, you will see theirabsurdity. "

"But, " she interposed, with a woman's fatal quickness, "that will not doaway with their reality. "

"It must. Look into their faces until they fade like ghosts, seen onlybetween light and darkness. They are founded upon nothing; they are bredwithout father or mother; they are hysterical; they are wicked. Think alittle of me. You are not going to be conquered by a chimera, to allow aphantom created by your imagination to ruin the happiness that has beenso beautiful. You will not do that! You dare not!"

She only answered:

"If I can help it. "

A passionate anger seized me, a fury at my impotence against this child. I pushed her almost roughly from my arms. 

"And I have married this woman!" I cried bitterly. I got up. 

Margot had ceased crying now, and her face was very white and calm; itlooked rigid in the faint candle-light that shone across the bed. 

"Do not be angry, " she said. "We are controlled by something inside ofus; there are powers in us that we cannot fight against. "

"There is nothing we cannot fight against, " I said passionately. "Thedoctrine of predestination is the devil's own doctrine. It is thedoctrine set up by the sinner to excuse his sin; it is the coward'sdoctrine. Understand me, Margot, I love you, but I am not a weak fool. There must be an end of this folly. Perhaps you are playing with me, acting like a girl, testing me. Let us have no more of it. "

She said:

"I only do what I must. "

Her tone turned me cold. Her set face frightened me, and angered me, forthere was a curious obstinacy in it. I left the room abruptly, and didnot return. That night I had no sleep. 

I am not a coward, but I find that I am inclined to fear that whichfears me. I dread an animal that always avoids me silently more than ananimal that actually attacks me. The thing that runs from me makes meshiver, the thing that creeps away when I come near wakes my uneasiness. At this time there rose up in me a strange feeling towards Margot. The white, fair child I had married was at moments--only atmoments--horrible to me. I felt disposed to shun her. Something withincried out against her. Long ago, at the instant of our introduction, anunreasoning sensation that could only be called dread had laid holdupon me. That dread returned from the night of our explanation, returneddeepened and added to. It prompted me to a suggestion which I had nosooner made than I regretted it. On the morning following I toldMargot that in future we had better occupy separate rooms. She assentedquietly, but I thought a furtive expression of relief stole for a momentinto her face. 

I was deeply angered with her and with myself; yet, now that I knewbeyond question my wife's physical terror of me, I was-half afraid ofher. I felt as if I could not bring myself to lie long hours by her sidein the darkness, by the side of a woman who was shrinking from me, whowas watching me when I could not see her. The idea made my very fleshcreep. 

Yet I hated myself for this shrinking of the body, and sometimeshated her for rousing it. A hideous struggle was going on within me--astruggle between love and impotent anger and despair, between the loverand the master. For I am one of the old-fashioned men who think that ahusband ought to be master of his wife as well as of his house. 

How could I be master of a woman I secretly feared? My knowledge ofmyself spurred me through acute irritation almost to the verge ofmadness. 

All calm was gone. I was alternately gentle to my wife and almostferocious towards her, ready to fall at her feet and worship her or toseize her and treat her with physical violence. I only restrained myselfby an effort. 

My variations of manner did not seem to affect her. Indeed, it sometimesstruck me that she feared me more when I was kind to her than when I washarsh. 

And I knew, by a thousand furtive indications, that her horror of me wasdeepening day by day. I believe she could hardly bring herself to be ina room alone with me, especially after nightfall. 

One evening, when we were dining, the butler, after placing dessert uponthe table, moved to leave us. She turned white, and, as he reached thedoor, half rose, and called him back in a sharp voice. 

"Symonds!" she said. 

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You are going?"

The fellow looked surprised. 

"Can I get you anything, ma'am?"

She glanced at me with an indescribable uneasiness. Then she leaned backin her chair with an effort, and pressed her lips together. 

"No, " she said. 

As the man went out and shut the door, she looked at me again fromunder her eyelids; and finally her eyes travelled from me to a small, thin-bladed knife, used for cutting oranges, that lay near her plate, and fixed themselves on it. She put out her hand stealthily, drew ittowards her, and kept her hand over it on the table. I took an orangefrom a dish in front of me. 

"Margot, " I said, "will you pass me that fruit-knife?"

She obviously hesitated. 

"Give me that knife, " I repeated roughly, stretching out my hand. 

She lifted her hand, left the knife upon the table, and at the sametime, springing up, glided softly out of the room and closed the doorbehind her. 

That evening I spent alone in the smoking-room, and, for the first time, she did not come to bid me good-night. 

I sat smoking my cigar in a tumult of furious despair and love. Thesituation was becoming intolerable. It could not be en-dured. I longedfor a crisis, even for a violent one. I could have cried aloud thatnight for a veritable tragedy. There were moments when I would almosthave killed the child who mysteriously eluded and defied me. I couldhave wreaked a cruel vengeance upon the body for the sin of the mind. Iwas terribly, mortally distressed. 

After a long and painful self-communion, I resolved to make another wildeffort to set things right before it was too late; and when the clockchimed the half-hour after ten I went upstairs softly to her bedroom andturned the handle of the door, meaning to enter, to catch Margot in myarms, tell her how deep my love for her was, how she injured me by herbase fears, and how she was driving me back from the gentleness she hadgiven me to the cruelty, to the brutality, of my first nature. 

The door resisted me: it was locked. I paused a moment, and then tappedgently. I heard a sudden rustle within, as if someone hurried across thefloor away from the door, and then Margot's voice cried sharply:

"Who's that? Who is there?" "Margot, it is I. I wish to speak to you--tosay good-night. "

"Good-night, " she said. "But let me in for a moment. " There was asilence--it seemed to me a long one; then she answered:

"Not now, dear; I--I am so tired. " "Open the door for a moment. " "Iam very tired. Good-night. " The cold, level tone of her voice--for theanxiety had left it after that first sudden cry--roused me to a suddenfury of action. I seized the handle of the door and pressed with all mystrength. Physically I am a very powerful man--my anger and despairgave me a giant's might. I burst the lock, and sprang into the room. Myimpulse was to seize Margot in my arms and crush her to death, it mightbe, in an embrace she could not struggle against. The blood coursed likemolten fire through my veins. The lust of love, the lust of murder even, perhaps, was upon me. I sprang impetuously into the room. 

No candles were alight in it. The blinds were up, and the chillmoonbeams filtered through the small lattice panes. By the farthestwindow, in the yellowish radiance, was huddled a white thing. 

A sudden cold took hold upon me. All the warmth in me froze up. 

I stopped where I was and held my breath. 

That white thing, seen thus uncertainly, had no semblance to humanity. It was animal wholly. I could have believed for the moment that a whitecat crouched from me there by the curtain, waiting to spring. 

What a strange illusion that was! I tried to laugh at it afterwards, butat the moment horror stole through me--horror, and almost awe. 

All desire of violence left me. Heat was dead; I felt cold as stone. Icould not even speak a word. 

Suddenly the white thing moved. The curtain was drawn sharply; themoonlight was blotted out; the room was plunged in darkness--a darknessin which that thing could see!

I turned and stole out of the room. I could have fled, driven by thenameless fear that was upon me. 

Only when the morning dawned did the man in me awake, and I cursedmyself for my cowardice. 

*****

The following evening we were asked to dine out with some neighbours, who lived a few miles off in a wonderful old Norman castle near thesea. During the day neither of us had made the slightest allusion tothe incidents of the previous night. We both felt it a relief to gointo society, I think. The friends to whom we went--Lord and LadyMelchester--had a large party staying with them, and we were, I believe, the only outsiders who lived in the neighbourhood. One of their guestswas Professor Black, whose name I have already mentioned--a little, dry, thin, acrid man, with thick black hair, innocent of the comb, andpursed, straight lips. I had met him two or three times in London, and as he had only just arrived at the castle, and scarcely knew hisfellow-visitors there, he brought his wine over to me when the ladiesleft the dining-room, and entered into conversation. At the moment Iwas glad, but before we followed the women I would have given a year--Imight say years--of my life not to have spoken to him, not to have heardhim speak that night. 

How did we drift into that fatal conversation? I hardly remember. Wetalked first of the neighbourhood, then swayed away to books, then topeople. Yes, that was how it came about. The Professor was speaking ofa man whom we both knew in town, a curiously effeminate man, whose everythought and feeling seemed that of a woman. I said I disliked him, and condemned him for his woman's demeanour, his woman's mind; but theProfessor thereupon joined issue with me. 

"Pity the fellow, if you like, " he uttered, in his rather stridentvoice; "but as to condemning him, I would as soon condemn a tadpole fornot being a full-grown frog. His soul is beyond his power to manage, oreven to coerce, you may depend upon it. "

Having sipped his port, he drew a little nearer to me, and slightlydropped his voice. 

"There would be less censure of individuals in this world, " he said, "if people were only a little more thoughtful. These souls are likeletters, and sometimes they are sealed up in the wrong envelope. Forinstance, a man's soul may be put into a woman's body, or _vice versā_. It has been so in D------'s case. A mistake has been made. "

"By Providence?" I interrupted, with, perhaps, just a _soupēon_ ofsarcasm in my voice. 

The Professor smiled. 

"Suppose we imitate Thomas Hardy, and say by the President of theImmortals, who makes sport with more humans than Tess, " he answered. "Mistakes may be deliberate, just as their reverse may be accidental. Even a mighty power may condescend sometimes to a very practical joke. To a thinker the world is full of apple-pie beds, and cold wetsponges fall on us from at least half the doors we push open. Thesoul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, butpeople will not realize that soul transference from body to body isas much a plain fact as the daily rising of the sun on one half of theworld and its nightly setting on the other. "

"Do you mean that souls pass on into the world again on the death ofthe particular body in which they have been for the moment confined?" Iasked. 

"Precisely: I have no doubt of it. Sometimes a woman's soul goes intoa man's body; then the man acts woman, and people cry against him foreffeminacy. The soul colours the body with actions, the body does notcolour the soul, or not in the same degree. "

"But we are not irresponsible. We can command ourselves. "

The Professor smiled dryly. 

"You think so?" he said. "I sometimes doubt it. "

"And I doubt your theory of soul transference. "

"That shows me--pardon the apparent impertinence--that you have neverreally examined the soul question with any close attention. Do yousuppose that D------ really likes being so noticeably different fromother men? Depend upon it, ' he has noticed in himself what we havenoticed in him. Depend upon it, he has tried to be ordinary, and foundit impossible. His soul manages him as a strong nature manages aweak one, and his soul is a female, not a male. For souls have sexes, otherwise what would be the sense of talking about wedded souls? I haveno doubt whatever of the truth of reincarnation on earth. Souls go onand on following out their object of development. "

"You believe that every soul is reincarnated?"

"A certain number of times. "

"That even in the animal world the soul of one animal passes into thebody of another?"

"Wait a minute. Now we are coming to something that tends to provemy theory true. Animals have souls, as you imply. Who can know themintimately and doubt it for an instant? Souls as immortal--or asmortal--as ours. And their souls, too, pass on. "

"Into other animals?"

"Possibly. And eventually, in the process of development, into humanbeings. "

I laughed, perhaps a little rudely. "My dear Professor, I thought thatold notion was quite exploded in these modern scientific days. "

"I found my beliefs upon my own minute observations, " he said ratherfrigidly. "I notice certain animals masquerading--to some extent--ashuman beings, and I draw my own conclusions. If they happen to fit inat all with the conclusions of Pythagoras--or anyone else, for thatmatter--well and good. If not, I am not much concerned. Surelyyou notice the animal--and not merely the animal, but definiteanimals--reproduced in man. There are men whose whole demeanour suggeststhe monkey. I have met women who in manner, appearance, and evencharacter, were intensely like cats. "

I uttered a slight exclamation, which did not interrupt him. 

"Now, I have made a minute study of cats. Of all animals they interestme the most. They have less apparent intensity, less uttered passion, than dogs, but in my opinion more character. Their subtlety isextraordinary, their sensitiveness wonderful. Will you understand mewhen I say that all dogs are men, all cats women? That remark expressesthe difference between them. "

He paused a moment. 

"Go on--go on, " I said, leaning forward, with my eyes fixed upon hiskeen, puckered face. 

He seemed pleased with my suddenly-aroused interest.. 

"Cats are as subtle and as difficult to understand as the most complexwoman, and almost as full of intuitions. If they have been well treated, there is often a certain gracious, condescending suavity in theirdemeanour at first, even towards a total stranger; but if that strangeris ill disposed toward them, they seem instinctively to read his soul, and they are in arms directly. Yet they dissemble their fears in a coldindifference and reserve. They do not take action: they merely abstainfrom action. They withdraw the soul that has peeped out, as they canwithdraw their claws into the pads upon their feet. They do not showfight as a dog might, they do not become aggressive, nor do they whineand put their tails between their legs. They are simply on guard, watchful, mistrustful. Is not all this woman?"

"Possibly, " I answered, with a painful effort to assume indifference. 

"A woman intuitively knows who is her friend and who is her enemy--solong, at least, as her heart is not engaged; then she runs wild, Iallow. A woman---- But I need not pursue the parallel. Besides, perhapsit is scarcely to the point, for my object is not to bolster up anabsurd contention that all women have the souls of cats. No; but I havemet women so strangely like cats that their souls have, as I said beforesouls do, coloured their bodies in actions. They have had the very lookof cats in their faces. They have moved like them. Their demeanour hasbeen patently and strongly feline. Now, I see nothing ridiculous in theassumption that such women's bodies may contain souls--in process ofdevelopment, of course--that formerly were merely cat souls, but thatare now gaining humanity gradually, are working their way upwards inthe scale. After all, we are not so much above the animals, and in ourlapses we often become merely animals. The soul retrogrades for themoment. "

He paused again and looked at me. I was biting my lips, and my glass ofwine was untouched. He took my agitation as a compliment, I suppose, forhe smiled and said:

"Are you in process of conversion?"

I half shook my head. Then I said, with an effort: "It is a curious andinteresting idea, of course. But there is much to explain. Now, I shouldlike to ask you this: Do you--do you believe that a soul, if it passeson as you think, carries its memory with it, its memory of former lovesand--and hates? Say that a cat's soul goes to a woman's body, andthat the cat has been--has been--well, tortured--possibly killed, bysomeone--say some man, long ago, would the woman, meeting that man, remember and shrink from him?"

"That is a very interesting and curious problem, and one which I do notpretend to have solved. I can, therefore, only suggest what might be, what seems to me reasonable. 

"I do not believe that the woman would remember positively, but I thinkshe might have an intuition about the man. Our intuitions are, perhaps, sometimes only the fragmentary recollections of our souls, of whatformerly happened to them when in other bodies. Why, otherwise, shouldwe sometimes conceive an ardent dislike of some stranger--charming toall appearance--of whom we know no evil, whom we have never heard of normet before? Intuitions, so called, are often only tattered memories. And these intuitions might, I should fancy, be strengthened, givenbody, robustness, by associations--of place, for example. Cats becomeintensely attached to localities, to certain spots, a particular houseor garden, a particular fireside, apart from the people who may bethere. Possibly, if the man and the woman of whom you speak couldbe brought together in the very place where the torture arid deathoccurred, the dislike of the woman might deepen into positive hatred. It would, however, be always unreasoning hatred, I think, and even quiteunaccountable to herself. Still----"

But here Lord Melchester rose from the table. The conversations brokeinto fragments. I felt that I was pale to the lips. 

We passed into the drawing-room. The ladies were grouped together at oneend, near the piano. Margot was among them. She was, as usual, dressedin white, and round the bottom of her gown there was an edging ofsnow-white fur. As we came in, she moved away from the piano to asofa at some distance, and sank down upon it. Professor Black, who hadentered the room at my side, seized my arm gently. 

"Now, that lady, " he whispered in my ear--"I don't know who she maybe, but she is intensely cat-like. I observed it before dinner. Did younotice the way she moved just then--the soft, yielding, easy manner inwhich she sat down, falling at once, quite naturally, into a charmingpose? And her china-blue eyes are----"

"She is my wife, Professor, " I interrupted harshly. 

He looked decidedly taken aback. 

"I beg your pardon; I had no idea. I did not enter the drawing-roomto-night till after you arrived. I believed that lady was one ofmy fellow-guests in the house. Let me congratulate you. She is verybeautiful. "

And then he mingled rather hastily in the group near the piano. 

The man is mad, I know--mad as a hatter on one point, like so manyclever men. He sees the animal in every person he meets just because hispreposterous theory inclines him to do so. Having given in his adherenceto it, he sees facts not as they are, but as he wishes them to be; buthe shall not carry me with him. The theory is his, not mine. It does nothold water for a moment. I can laugh at it now, but that night I confessit did seize me for the time being. I could scarcely talk; I foundmyself watching Margot with a terrible intentness, and I found myselfagreeing with the Professor to an extent that made me marvel at my ownprevious blindness. 

There was something strangely feline about the girl I had married--thesoft, white girl who was becoming terrible to me, dear though she stillwas and must always be. Her movements had the subtle, instinctive andcertain grace of a cat's. Her cushioned step, which had often struck mebefore, was like the step of a cat. And those china-blue eyes! A suddencold seemed to pass over me as I understood why I had recognisedthem when I first met Margot. They were the eyes of the animal Ihad tortured, the animal I had killed. Yes, but that proved nothing, absolutely nothing. Many people had the eyes of animals--the soft eyesof dogs, the furtive, cruel eyes of tigers. I had known such people. Ihad even once had an affair with a girl who was always called the shotpartridge, because her eyes were supposed to be like those of a dyingbird. I tried to laugh to myself as I remembered this. But I felt cold, and my senses seemed benumbed as by a great horror. I sat like a stone, with my eyes fixed upon Margot, trying painfully to read into her allthat the words of Professor Black had suggested to me--trying, butwith the wish not to succeed. I was roused by Lady Melchester, who cametoward me asking me to do something, I forget now what. I forced myselfto be cheerful, to join in the conversation, to seem at my ease; but Ifelt like one oppressed with nightmare, and I could scarcely withdrawmy eyes from the sofa where my wife was sitting. She was talking nowto Professor Black, who had just been introduced to her; and I felt asudden fury in my heart as I thought that he was perhaps dryly, coldly, studying her, little knowing what issues--far-reaching, it might be, in their consequences--hung upon the truth or falsehood of his strangetheory. They were talking earnestly, and presently it occurred to methat he might be imbuing Margot with his pernicious doctrines, that hemight be giving her a knowledge of her own soul which now she lacked. The idea was insupportable. I broke off abruptly the conversation inwhich I was taking part, and hurried over to them with an impulse whichmust have astonished anyone who took note of me. I sat down on a chair, drew it forward almost violently, and thrust myself in between them. 

"What are you two talking about?" I said, roughly, with a suspiciousglance at Margot. 

The Professor looked at me in surprise. 

"I was instructing your wife in some of the mysteries ofsalmon-fishing, " he said. "She tells me you have a salmon-river runningthrough your grounds. "

I laughed uneasily. 

"So you are a fisherman as well as a romantic theorist!" I said, ratherrudely. "How I wish I were as versatile! Come, Margot, we must be goingnow. The carriage ought to be here. "

She rose quietly and bade the Professor good-night; but as she glancedup at me, in rising, I fancied I caught a new expression in her eyes. A ray of determination, of set purpose, mingled with the gloomy fire oftheir despair. 

As soon as we were in the carriage I spoke, with a strained effort atease and the haphazard tone which should mask furtive cross-examination. 

"Professor Black is an interesting man, " I said. 

"Do you think so?" she answered from her dark corner. 

"Surely. His intellect is really alive. Yet, with all his scientificknowledge and his power of eliciting facts and elucidating them, he isbut a feather headed man. " I paused, but she made no answer. "Do you notthink so?"

"How can I tell?" she replied. "We only talked about fishing. He managedto make that topic a pleasant one. "

Her tone was frank. I felt relieved. 

"He is exceedingly clever, " I said, heartily, and we relapsed intosilence. 

When we reached home, and Margot had removed her cloak, she came up tome and laid her hand on my arm. 

So unaccustomed was her touch now that I was startled. She was lookingat me with a curious, steady smile--an unwavering smile that chilledinstead of warming me. 

"Ronald, " she said, "there has been a breach between us. I have been thecause of it. I should like to--to heal it. Do you still love me as youdid?"

I did not answer immediately; I could not. Her voice, schooled as itwas, seemed somehow at issue with the words she uttered. There was adesperate, hard note in it that accorded with that enigmatic smile ofthe mouth. 

It roused a cold suspicion within me that I was close to a maskedbattery. I shrank physically from the touch of her hand. 

She waited with her eyes upon me. Our faces were lit tremblingly by theflames of the two candles we held. 

At last I found a voice. 

"Can you doubt it?" I asked. 

She drew a step nearer. 

"Then let us resume our old relations, " she said. 

"Our old relations?"

"Yes. "

I shuddered as if a phantom stole by me. I was seized with horror. 

"To-night? It is not possible!"

"Why?" she said, still with that steady smile of the mouth. 

"Because--because I don't know--I---- To-morrow it shall be as of old, Margot--to-morrow. I promise you. "

"Very well. Kiss me, dear. "

I forced myself to touch her lips with mine. 

Which mouth was the colder?

Then, with that soft, stealthy step of hers, she vanished towards herroom. I heard the door close gently. 

I listened. The key was not turned in the lock. 

This sudden abandonment by Margot of the fantastic precautions I hadalmost become accustomed to filled me with a nameless dread. 

That night I fastened my door for the first time. 

IV. 

_Friday Night, November 6th_. 

I fastened my door, and when I went to bed lay awake for hourslistening. A horror was upon me then which has not left me since for amoment, which may never leave me. I shivered with cold that night, thecold born of sheer physical terror. I knew that I was shut up in thehouse with a soul bent on unreasoning vengeance, the soul of the animalwhich I had killed prisoned in the body of the woman I had married. Iwas sick with fear then. I am sick with fear now. 

To-night I am so tired. My eyes are heavy and my head aches. No wonder. I have not slept for three nights. I have not dared to sleep. 

This strange revolution in my wife's conduct, this passionlesschange--for I felt instinctively that warm humanity had nothing to dowith the transformation--took place three nights ago. These three lastdays Mar-got has been playing a part. With what object?

When I sat down to this gray record of two souls--at once dreary andfantastic as it would seem, perhaps, to many--I desired to reassuremyself, to write myself into sweet reason, into peace. 

I have tried to accomplish the impossible. I feel that the wildesttheory may be the truest, after all--that on the borderland of whatseems madness, actuality paces. 

Every remembrance of my mind confirms the truth first suggested to me byProfessor Black. 

I know Margot's object now. 

The soul of the creature that I tortured, that I killed, has passed intothe body of the woman whom I love; and that soul, which once slept inits new cage, is awake now, watching, plotting perhaps. Unconsciously toitself, it recognises me. It stares out upon me with eyes in whichthe dull terror deepens to hate; but it does not understand why itfears--why, in its fear, it hates. Intuition has taken the place ofmemory. The Change of environment has killed recollection, and has leftinstinct in its place. 

Why did I ever sit down to write? The recalling of facts has set theseal upon my despair. 

Instinct only woke in Margot when I brought her to the place the soulhad known in the years when it looked out upon the world from the bodyof an animal. 

That first day on the terrace instinct stirred in its sleep, opened itseyes, gazed forth upon me wonderingly, inquiringly. 

Margot's faint remembrance of the terrace walk, of the flower-pots, ofthe grass borders where the cat had often stretched itself in the sun, her eagerness to see the chamber of death, her stealthy visits to thatchamber, her growing uneasiness, deepening to acute apprehension, and finally to a deadly malignity--all lead me irresistibly to oneconclusion. 

The animal's soul within her no longer merely shrinks away in fear ofme. It has grown sinister. It lies in ambush, full of a cold, a stealthyintention. 

That curious, abrupt change in Margot's demeanour from avoidance toinvitation marked the subtle, inward development of feeling, the silentpassage from sensation only towards action. 

Formerly she feared me. Now I must fear her. 

The soul, Crouching in its cage, shows its teeth. It is compassing mydestruction. 

The woman's body twitches with desire to avenge the death of theanimal's. 

I feel that it is only waiting the moment to spring; and the inherentlove of life breeds in me a physical fear of it as of a subtle enemy. For even if the soul is brave, the body dreads to die, and seems atmoments to possess a second soul, purely physical, that cries outchildishly against pain, against death. 

Then, too, there is a cowardice of the imagination that can shake thestrongest heart, and this resurrection from the dead, from the murdered, appals my imagination. That what I thought I had long since slain shouldhave companioned me so closely when I knew it not!

I am sick with fear, physical and mental. 

Two days ago, when I unlocked my bedroom door in the morning, and sawthe autumn sunlight streaming in through the leaded panes of the hallwindows, and heard the river dancing merrily down the gully among thetrees that will soon be quite bare and naked, I said to myself: "Youhave been mad. Your mind has been filled with horrible dreams, that havetransformed you into a coward and your wife into a demon. Put them awayfrom you. "

I looked across the gully. A clear, cold, -thin light shone upon thedistant mountains. The cloud stacks lay piled above the Scawfellrange. The sky was a sheet of faded turquoise. I opened the window fora moment. The air was dry and keen. How sweet it was to feel it on myface!

I went down to the breakfast-room. Mar-got was moving about it softly, awaiting me. In her white hands were letters. They dropped upon thetable as she stole up to greet me. Her lips were set tightly together, but she lifted them to kiss me. 

How close I came to my enemy as our mouths touched! Her lips were colderthan the wind. 

Now that I was with her, my momentary sensation of acute relief desertedme. The horror that oppressed me returned. 

I could not eat--I could only make a pretence of doing so; and my handtrembled so excessively that I could scarcely raise my cup from thetable. 

She noticed this, and gently asked me if I was ill. 

I shook my head. 

When breakfast was over, she said in a low, level voice:

"Ronald, have you thought over what I said last night?"

"Last night?" I answered, with an effort. 

"Yes, about the coldness between us. I think I have been unwell, unhappy, out of sorts. You know that--that women are more subject tomoods than men, moods they cannot always account for even to themselves. I have hurt you lately, I know. I am sorry. I want you to forgiveme, to--to"--she paused a moment, and I heard her draw in her breathsharply--"to take me back into your heart again. "

Every word, as she said it, sounded to me like a sinister threat, andthe last sentence made my blood literally go cold in my veins. 

I met her eyes. She did not withdraw hers; they looked into mine. Theywere the blue eyes of the cat which I had held upon my knees years ago. I had gazed into them as a boy, and watched the horror and the fear dawnin them with a malignant triumph. 

"I have nothing to forgive, " I said in a broken, husky voice. 

"You have much, " she answered firmly. "But do not--pray do not bearmalice. "

"There is no malice in my heart--now, " I said; and the words seemed likea cowardly plea for mercy to the victim of the past. 

She lifted one of her soft white hands to my breast. 

"Then it shall all be as it was before? And to-night you will come backto me?"

I hesitated, looking down. But how could I refuse? What excuse could Imake for denying the request? Then I repeated mechanically:

"To-night I will come back to you. "

A terrible, slight smile travelled over her face. She turned and leftme. 

I sat down immediately. I felt too unnerved to remain standing. I wasgiving way utterly to an imaginative horror that seemed to threaten myreason. In vain I tried to pull myself together. My body was in a coldsweat. All mastery of my nerves seemed gone. 

I do not know how long I remained there, but I was aroused by theentrance of the butler. He glanced towards me in some obvious surprise, and this astonishment of a servant acted upon me almost like a scourge. I sprang up hastily. 

"Tell the groom to saddle the mare, " I said. "I am going for a rideimmediately. "

Air, action, were what I needed to drive this stupor away. I must getaway from this house of tears. I must be alone. I must wrestle withmyself, regain my courage, kill the coward in me. 

I threw myself upon the mare, and rode out at a gallop towards the moorsof Eskdale along the lonely country roads. 

All day I rode, and all day I thought of that dark house, of thatwhite creature awaiting my return, peering from the windows, perhaps, listening for my horse's hoofs on the gravel, keeping still the longvigil of vengeance. 

My imagination sickened, fainted, as my wearied horse stumbled alongthe shadowy roads. My terror was too great now to be physical. It was aterror purely of the spirit, and indescribable. 

To sleep with that white thing that waited me! To lie in the dark by it!To know that it was there, close to me!

If it killed me, what matter? It was to live and to be near it, with it, that appalled me. 

The lights of the house gleamed out through the trees. I heard the soundof the river. 

I got off my horse and walked furtively into the hall, looking round me. 

Margot glided up to me immediately, and took my whip and hat from mewith her soft, velvety white hands. I shivered at her touch. 

At dinner her blue eyes watched me. 

I could not eat, but I drank more wine than usual. 

When I turned to go down to the smoking-room, she said: "Don't be verylong, Ronald. "

I muttered I scarcely know what words in reply. It was close on midnightbefore I went to bed. When I entered her room, shielding the light ofthe candle with my hand, she was still awake. 

Nestling against the pillows, she stretched herself curiously and smiledup at me. 

"I thought you were never coming, dear, " she said. 

I knew that I was very pale, but she did not remark it. I got into bed, but left the candle still burning. 

Presently she said:

"Why don't you put the candle out?"

I looked at her furtively. Her face seemed to me carved in stone, it wasso rigid, so expressionless. She lay away from me at the extreme edge ofthe bed, sideways, with her hands toward me. 

"Why don't you?" she repeated, with her blue eyes on me. 

"I don't feel sleepy, " I answered slowly. 

"You never will while there is a light in the room, " she said. 

"You wish me to put it out?"

"Yes. How odd you are to-night, Ronald! Is anything the matter?"

"No, " I answered; and I blew the light out. 

How ghastly the darkness was!

I believed she meant to smother me in my sleep. I knew it. I determinedto keep awake. 

It was horrible to think that, as we lay there, she could see me all thetime as if it were daylight. 

The night wore on. She was quite silent and motionless. I lay listening. 

It must have been towards morning when I closed my eyes, not because Iwas sleepy, but because I was so tired of gazing at blackness. 

Soon after I had done this there was a stealthy movement in the bed. 

"Margot, are you awake?" I instantly cried out sharply. 

The movement immediately ceased. There was no reply. 

When the light of dawn stole in at the window she seemed to be sleeping. 

*****

Last night I did not close my eyes once. She did not move. 

She means to tire me out, and she has the strength to do it. To-night Ifeel so intensely heavy. Soon I must sleep, and then----

Shall I seek any longer to defend myself? Everything seems soinevitable, so beyond my power, like the working of an inexorablejustice bent on visiting the sin of the father upon the child. For wasnot the cruel boy the father of the man?

And yet, is this tragedy inevitable? It cannot be. I will be a man. Iwill rise up and combat it. I will take Margot away from this housethat her soul remembers, in which its body so long ago was tortured andslain, and she will--she must forget. 

Instinct will sleep once more. It shall be so. I will have it so. I willstrew poppies over her soul. I will take her far away from here, faraway, to places where she will be once more as she has been. 

To-morrow we will go. To-morrow----

*****

Ah, that cry! Was it my own? I am suffocating! What was that? The horrorof it! The pen has fallen from my hand. I must have slept; and I havedreamed. In my dream she stole upon me, that white thing! Her velvetyhands were on my throat. The soul stared out from her eyes, the soul ofthe cat! Even her body, her woman's body, seemed to change at the momentof vengeance. She slowly strangled me, and as the breath died from me, and my failing eyes gazed at her, she was no longer woman at all, butsomething lithe and white and soft. Fur enveloped my throat. Those handswere claws. That breath on my face was the breath of an animal. The bodyhad come back to companion the soul in its vengeance, the body of----

Ah, it was too horrible!

Can vengeance for the dead bring with it resurrection of the dead?

Hark! There is a voice calling to me from upstairs. 

"Ronald, are you never coming? I am tired of waiting for you. Ronald!"

"Yes. "

"Come to me!"

"And I must go. "

*****

Just at the glimmer of dawn the first pale shaft of the sun struckacross a bed upon which lay the huddled and distorted corpse of a man. His head was sunk down in the pillows. His eyes, that could not see, stared towards the rising light. And from the open window of the chamberof death a woman in a white wrapper leaned out, watching eagerly withwide blue eyes the birds as they darted to and fro, rested on theclimbing creepers, or circled above the gorge through which the riverran. Her set lips smiled. She looked like one calm, easy, and at peace. Presently an unwary sparrow perched on the trellis beneath the windowjust within her reach. Her white hand darted down softly, closed on thebird. She vanished from the window. 

Can the dead hear? Did he catch the sound of her faint, continuouspurring as she crouched with her prey upon the floor?