So she hardened her heart once more, and turned away, for she feared to die; but again the ground shook beneath her, and the spray rose high into the air, and then she could bear it no more--whatever it cost her, she must save him--for if he died, what good would her life be to her? 'If one of us must die,' she said, '_I_ will be that one. I am cruel and wicked, as _he_ told me; I have done harm enough!' and bending down, she wound her arms round his unconscious body and drew him gently up to the level above. 'You are safe now,' she whispered; 'you shall not be drowned--for I love you. Sail back to your maiden on the mainland, and be happy; but do not hate me for the evil I have wrought, for suffering and death have come to me in my turn!' The lethargy into which he had fallen left him under her clinging embrace, and the sad, tender words fell almost unconsciously upon his dulled ears; he felt the touch of her hair as it brushed his cheek, and his forehead was still warm with the kiss she had pressed there as he opened his eyes--only to find himself alone. For the fate which the siren had dreaded had come upon her at last; she had loved, and she had paid the penalty for loving, and never more would her wild, sweet voice beguile mortals to their doom. [Illustration] _THE CURSE OF THE CATAFALQUES._ I. Unless I am very much mistaken, until the time when I was subjected to the strange and exceptional experience which I now propose to relate, I had never been brought into close contact with anything of a supernatural description. At least if I ever was, the circumstance can have made no lasting impression upon me, as I am quite unable to recall it. But in the 'Curse of the Catafalques' I was confronted with a horror so weird and so altogether unusual, that I doubt whether I shall ever succeed in wholly forgetting it--and I know that I have never felt really well since. It is difficult for me to tell my story intelligibly without some account of my previous history by way of introduction, although I will to make it as little diffuse as I may. I had not been a success at home; I was an orphan, and, in my anxiety to please a wealthy uncle upon whom I was practically dependent, I had consented to submit myself to a series of competitive examinations for quite a variety of professions, but in each successive instance I achieved the same disheartening failure. Some explanation of this may, no doubt, be found in the fact that, with a fatal want of forethought, I had entirely omitted to prepare myself by any particular course of study--which, as I discovered too late, is almost indispensable to success in these intellectual contests. My uncle himself took this view, and conceiving--not without discernment--that I was by no means likely to retrieve myself by any severe degree of application in the future, he had me shipped out to Australia, where he had correspondents and friends who would put things in my way.