Then she moved forward with smooth, deliberate footsteps, yet with something almost supernatural in her white face and set, dilated eyes. It was as though she were looking once more through the windows of the world, as though she could see the figures of dead men playing once more their part in the game of life. And she looked always at the Englishman. "Listen," she said, "there is something about you, sir, which I do not understand. Who are you, and where do you come from?" He made no answer. Only he held out his hand as though to keep her away, and drew a little further back. "You shall not escape," she continued, the words leaving her lips with a sort of staccato incisiveness, crisp and emotional. "No! you are here, and you shall answer. Who are you who come here to mock us all; because it is a dead man who speaks with your voice, and looks with your eyes? You will not dare to say that you are Duncan Fitzmaurice!" The figure in the shadows seemed to loom larger and larger. He was no longer shrinking away. "I know nothing of the man of whom you speak!" he declared. "I am a wanderer. I have no name and no home." Madame de Melbain reeled and would have fallen. Then for a moment events seemed to leap forward. White and fainting, she lay in the arms of the man who had sprung to her succour, yet through her half-opened eyes there flashed a strange and wonderful light--a light of passionate and amazing content. He held her, almost roughly, for several moments, yet his lips were pressed to hers with a tenderness almost indescribable. No one of the little group moved. Wrayson felt simply that events, impossible for him to understand, had marched too quickly for him. He stood like a man in a dream, whose limbs are rigid, whose brain alone is working. And the others, too, seemed to have become part of a silent and wonderful tableau. For years after Wrayson carried with him the memory of those few minutes,--the perfume from the woods, faint but penetrating; the shadowy light, the passionate faces of the man and the woman, the woman yielding to a beautiful dream, and the man to a moment of divine madness. Movement, when it came, came from the principal actors in that wonderful scene. Madame de Melbain was alone, supported in Louise's arms, the Englishman's heavy footsteps were already audible, crashing through the undergrowth. Louise pointed to the wood and called out to Wrayson: "Follow him! Don't let him out of your sight! Quick!" Wrayson turned and sped down the avenue. When he reached the wall, he stood there and waited. Presently Duncan came crashing through the wood and vaulted the wall. Wrayson met him in the middle of the hard white road. "We will walk back to the _Lion d'Or_ together," he said calmly, "I have a few things to say to you!" CHAPTER XXIX A SUBSTANTIAL GHOST