How did it happen and was it an hallucination, or was it a device of the devil? he asked himself, half wishing it were the latter, for then he would not feel obliged to follow his suggestion. Then he called himself a brute for thinking for a moment of the devil in connection with Irene, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. “It rhymes, don’t it?” he said, with a laugh, repeating Irene and seen and wondering if he were not getting a little off in his head. How he wished Tom was there to help him. “I’d make a clean breast of the whole business from the will to the well. I wish I had done it before,” he said; but Tom was sweating in his office in Newton over a letter of eight pages to Rena, and Rex was alone to pull through as he could. Throwing himself at last upon the couch he fell asleep and when he awoke the pain in his head was better, but he did not feel greatly rested, his sleep had been so disturbed with visions of the well and the broken glass, and Nannie lying dead upon the pines and a regal-looking woman sitting near her, smiling, gracious and dignified as she always was. He looked at his watch and saw it was half-past five, and knowing dinner would be served in half an hour, and that Mr. McPherson was nearly as punctual as Mrs. Parks, he hurried his toilet and was in the dining-room before Colin, who, when he came, asked where he was all the morning that he did not come in till after lunch and then did not care for any. “With a girl, I suppose,” and he laughed meaningly, while Rex felt suddenly a desire to tell the whole story and see what his host thought of it. “Yes, I was with a girl,” he said, and Colin continued, “Miss Burdick, Miss Irene?” “Yes, with Miss Irene, in the pine-grove.” “What were you doing in the pines?” “I looked in the well and broke the mirror,” Rex answered, with a fearlessness which astonished himself. “Looked in the well! You! Such an idiot! I am surprised that you should go into that tomfoolery,” Mr. McPherson exclaimed, and Rex replied: “No more surprised than I was when I found myself fairly at it. Had I been told a week ago that I could have done it I should have said: ‘Is thy servant a dog?’ but I did it.” “Of course you saw nothing but yourself. You couldn’t,” Colin said, and after hesitating a moment Rex answered, “Yes, I did, I saw half of Miss Burdick’s face and one of her eyes as plainly as I see you.” “Great guns!” and Colin sprang up and began to walk the floor. “You certainly are mad as a March hare and ought to have a doctor. Saw Miss Burdick! The thing is impossible. Look here, nobody ever saw anything except in fancy. Nannie—rest her soul—was thinking of Sandy and afraid she should see him. You were thinking of Miss Burdick and afraid you shouldn’t see her, and—”