But the door opened. Confusedly Kennaston was aware of brilliantly-lighted rooms beyond, of the chatter of gay people, of thin tinkling music, and, more immediately, of two lackeys, much be-powdered as to their heads, and stately in new liveries of blue-and-silver. Confusedly he noted these things, for the woman had paused in the bright doorway, and all the loveliness of Ettarre was visible now to him, and she had given a delighted cry of recognition. “La, it is Horvendile! and we are having the same dream again!” This much he heard and saw as her hand went out gladly toward him. Then as she touched him the universe seemed to fold about Felix Kennaston, just as a hand closes, and he was sitting at the writing-table in the library, with a gleaming scrap of metal before him. * * * * * He sat thus for a long while. “I can make nothing of all this. I remember of course that I saw Muriel Allardyce stand very much like that, in the doorway of the Royal Hotel, at the Green Chalybeate—and how many years ago, good Lord!... And equally of course the most plausible explanation is that I am losing my wits. Or, else, it may be that I am playing blindfold with perilous matters. Felix Kennaston, my friend, the safest plan—the one assuredly safe plan for you—would be to throw away this devil’s toy, and forget it completely.... And, I will, too—the very first thing to-morrow morning—or after I have had a few days to think it over, any way....” But even as he made this compact it was without much lively faith in his promises. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ _Book Third_ ══════════════════════ “Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of long day. “Come, as thou cam’st a thousand times, A messenger from lovelier climes, To smile on our drear world, and be As kind to others as to me!” ══════════════════════ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I They Come to a High Place HE was looking down at the most repulsive old woman he had ever seen. Hers was the abhorrent fatness of a spider; her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency of dough. She sat upon the stone pavement, knitting; her eyes, which raised to his unblinkingly, were black, secretive, and impersonally malevolent; and her jaws stirred without ceasing, in a loose chewing motion, so that the white hairs, rooted in the big mole on her chin, twitched and glittered in the sunlight. “But one does not pay on entering,” she was saying. “One pays as one goes out. It is the rule.”