“The face of this dark angel was beautiful and proud. His forehead was broad and low and slightly overhanging, giving him a stern and brooding expression, but although I was afraid of him I loved him, and felt an irresistible longing to put myself in his power. We were now alone together in the room, which had suddenly grown dark, and he seized me. I struggled, but in his grasp I was helpless as a young bird in the clutches of a boy. He stripped me naked and rubbed my body over with some kind of ointment that left no mark. And somehow I knew he was going to send me down into hell, and that after a while I should return again to earth, but that I should be his for ever. “‘I shall not be tortured?’ I asked him, and he answered in a deep voice, ‘There are no tortures such as you are thinking of.’ “‘When I come back,’ I said, ‘I shall have forgotten all I saw there; I shall think I have been only dreaming. Can you not mark me in some way?’ “He placed me in front of the mirror that was at one end of the room, and which seemed to shine in the dark as with fire. And in the glass I saw over my right breast a red flush, and upon this a white streak, broad and long as his fore-finger. He took my hand, and suddenly the room I was in seemed to be dropping. Down and down it rushed, so rapidly that the walls glowed red hot, but because of the ointment with which I had been covered I felt nothing. And we seemed to be sinking down through a bottomless sea that hissed in steam against the walls. Then the speed increased a thousandfold and I lost consciousness. “I do not know what interval had elapsed, but it was evening and I was back again in the room, our parlour at home. My father was kneeling down and calling upon me in desperation to pray to God before it was too late――to pray――to pray. But I would not pray. Mrs. Carroll was there and she was crying. Then a voice said aloud above our heads, ‘It was all only a dream,’ and for a little we believed this; and then all at once I knew the voice was lying. My father read in my face what was passing in my mind, and his own face grew white as paper. But I knew; and I exulted and wept at the same moment. I tore away my shirt from my breast. ‘Look――look! It is his mark!’ “A loud cry rang through the room, and I awoke, bathed in perspiration, to the silence and darkness of night. I could hear George breathing quietly in his sleep. Then I got up and lit the gas and looked to see if the mark were indeed there upon my breast, but there was nothing.” * * * * *