Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why. But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose, and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony. They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against itself. You, who suffered so much--who know so well those flames burning at the heart's core--those flames before which all the forces of the man go down like prairie-grass before the fire and wind--you have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love--you have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb: you have removed the curse, and his child--his innocent child--is free.' I replaced the coffin-lid, and screwing it down left the crypt, so buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I really come to this?' Throughout all these proceedings--yes, even amidst that prayer to Heaven, amidst that impassioned appeal to my dead father--had my reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before described. I knocked up the landlord of the 'White Hart,' and, turning into bed, slept my first peaceful sleep since my trouble. To escape awkward questions, I did not in the morning take back the keys to Shales's house myself, but sent them, and walking to Dullingham took the train to London. X BEHIND THE VEIL I When I met my mother at the solicitor's office next day, she was astonished at my cheerfulness and at the general change in me. As we left the office together, she said, 'Everything is now arranged: your aunt and I have decided to accept Lord Sleaford's invitation to go for a cruise in his yacht. We leave to-morrow evening. Lord Sleaford has promised to take me to-morrow afternoon to Mr. Wilderspin's studio, to see the great painter's portrait of me, which is now, I understand, quite finished.' 'Why did you not ask me to accompany you, instead of asking Sleaford?' 'I did not know that you would care to do so.' 'Dear mother,' I said, in a tender tone that startled her, 'you must let me go with you and Sleaford to the studio.' She consented, and on the following afternoon I called at my aunt's house in Belgrave Square. The hall was full of portmanteaux, boxes, and packages. Sleaford had already arrived, and was waiting with stolid patience for my mother, who had gone to her room to dress. He began to talk to me about the astonishing gifts of Cyril Aylwin. 'Have you made an appointment with Wilderspin?' I said to my mother, when she entered the room. 'The last time I saw him he seemed to be much occupied with some disturbing affairs of his own.'