Why should they go on? Because they could not choose but go on. They were compelled to go on. If they spoke of other things, their thoughts and their talk wandered back to this same subject. As may always happen when two persons are engaged on the subject and absorbed in it, their faces assumed the same expression--that of one who searches and finds not. With such a face the alchemist was accustomed every day to enter his laboratory, hoping against hope, beaten back every evening, returning in the morning. But with a difference--for the alchemist knew what he wanted to find out, and these two were in search of they knew not what. They went together, in the vain hope of finding or hearing something more, to call upon the lady of the Commercial Road. She was most gratified to be recognised as a cousin of this young lady; she desired nothing better than to talk of the family and its misfortunes. But she threw no more light upon the story, knowing, in fact, less than they themselves knew. They left her; they agreed once more that it was absurd to continue a quest so hopeless; they agreed once more to lock up the book. Next day they took it out and laid their heads together again. “How long is this going to last?” Constance asked. “I don’t know,” Leonard replied wearily. “Are we possessed? Are we bewitched?” “Are we two persons who do not believe in possession or in witchcraft, yet are really possessed--I don’t know by whom, or why, or anything at all about it--but if there is not possession, then the old stories mean nothing.” “We might make a wax image, and call it by the name of the witch, and stick pins in it----” “If we knew the name of the witch. Why, it seems as if we could speak and think of nothing else. If one were superstitious----” “If,” echoed the other doubtfully, “one were superstitious----” “It might seem like part of the hereditary misfortunes; yet why should I share in your sorrows?” Here she blushed because she remembered how, before the misfortunes were even heard of, she had been invited to share in the good fortune. But Leonard observed nothing. The quest left no room for any thoughts of love. “No,” he replied gravely, “you must not share in our troubles. Constance, I, too, ask myself every day how long this will last. Why cannot I throw off the sense of being driven on against my own will in a search which must be hopeless?” “Yes, I, too, am driven, but it is to follow you. What does it mean? Is it imagination of a morbid kind?” She paused. Leonard made no reply. “After all,” she continued, “there is nothing to do but to accept the situation, and to go on and see what happens.” Leonard groaned. “Suppose,” he said, with a wintry smile, “that we are doomed to go on day after day till the end of things, just as that old man has walked up and down his terrace day after day for seventy years. What a fearful tramp! What a monotony! What a life!”