Hereafter owned no longer any concern with myself, the amphibian of two worlds, who had evaded his manifest duties alike on Earth and in Meleager. I remembered with a shudder Fajal's solemn warning as to the dire effects of that youth-bestowing and yet death-dealing fountain wherein I had so often been immersed. Was it really so? Had I in my flight from my kingdom lost that priceless yet elusive endowment, the soul? A faint gleam of hope in the midst of my terror shot suddenly into the mirk of my anguish, when I recalled Anzoni's farewell greeting to myself and his expressed desire for a mutual meeting in the halls of the Hereafter. Ah, but then Anzoni had assumed I was going to meet my fate like a hero, and had no intention of slinking back to Earth! Thus, despite this vague consoling thought, this clutching at a fescue in the whirlpool of my despair, I became obsessed with a fierce longing and determination at all costs to cheat death and to cling to every chance that is vital and physical. Fajal's mission had triumphed. I grew frenzied at the fearful prospect adumbrated for me on this glassy screen; I was frantic to quit the Earth, and equally frantic to stake anything and everything on a second translation to Meleager. I tried to dash the mirror from my hands, only to discover that, like Medea's poisoned coronet, the accursed thing clung to the flesh of my palms and fingers, and refused to be shaken off. In my madness of terror I screamed aloud, and with the glass still adhering like burning wax to my skin I dashed myself against the wall repeatedly till I shattered to atoms the devilish instrument of torture in my ravings. * * * * * I can call to mind nothing further until I returned to sufficient consciousness again to see Dr Wayne's anxious and expectant face bent over me, as I lay prone on the boards surrounded by a mass of glittering fragments and splinters. My hands were cut and bleeding, but already the kind Doctor was tending them with some soothing antiseptic, and the pain was endurable. I allowed myself to be enticed to bed, where I passed the remainder of the day recovering from the double shock of mind and body I had so lately sustained. As usual, Dr Wayne spoke very little, and though his honest face betrayed his keen curiosity over my latest adventure, he asked no questions, and indeed scarcely ventured any comment, except the remark that there was a most peculiar scent of violets in the room, which was odd, seeing it was mid-October. Violets! XI