"I? I am brainsick!" and he laughed bitterly--"Have you not found that out yet? Much learning hath driven me mad, my friend! Science has led me into such deep wells of dark discovery, that it is no wonder if my senses sometimes reel,--and I believe--at such insane moments--in the Soul!" I sighed heavily. "I think I will go to bed," I answered. "I am tired out,--and absolutely miserable!" "Alas, poor millionaire!" said Lucio gently,--"I am sorry, I assure you, that the evening has ended so disastrously." "So am I!" I returned despondently. "Imagine it!" he went on, dreamily regarding me--"If my beliefs,--my crack-brained theories,--were worth anything,--which they are not--I could claim the only positive existing part of our late acquaintance Viscount Lynton! But,--where and how to send in my account with him? If I were Satan now...." I forced a faint smile. "You would have cause to rejoice!" I said. He moved two paces towards me, and laid his hands gently on my shoulders. "No, Geoffrey"--and his rich voice had a strange soft music in it--"No, my friend! If I were Satan I should probably lament!--for every lost soul would of necessity remind me of my own fall, my own despair,--and set another bar between myself and heaven! Remember,--the very Devil was an Angel once!" His eyes smiled, and yet I could have sworn there were tears in them. I wrung his hand hard,--I felt that notwithstanding his assumed coldness and cynicism, the fate of young Lynton had affected him profoundly. My liking for him gained new fervour from this impression, and I went to bed more at ease with myself and things in general. During the few minutes I spent in undressing I became even able to contemplate the tragedy of the evening with less regret and greater calmness,--for it was certainly no use worrying over the irrevocable,--and, after all, what interest had the Viscount's life for me? None. I began to ridicule myself for my own weakness and disinterested emotion,--and presently, being thoroughly fatigued, fell sound asleep. Towards morning however, perhaps about four or five o'clock, I woke suddenly as though touched by an invisible hand. I was shivering violently, and my body was bathed in a cold perspiration. In the otherwise dark room there was something strangely luminous, like a cloud of white smoke or fire. I started up, rubbing my eyes,--and stared before me for a moment, doubting the evidence of my own senses. For, plainly visible and substantially distinct, at a distance of perhaps five paces from my bed, stood three Figures, muffled in dark garments and closely hooded. So solemnly inert they were,--so heavily did their sable draperies fall about them that it was impossible to tell whether they were men or women,--but what paralysed me with amazement and terror was the strange light that played around and above them,--the spectral, wandering, chill radiance that illumined them like the rays of a faint wintry moon. I strove to cry