Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England









The Mystery of a Turkish Bath, by Rita.



________________________________________________________________________

Under the pseudonym "Rita" E M Gollan wrote some seventy novels of

which this is one.  It is a rather penetrating book about the

supernatural.  It starts off with a somewhat unusual situation, at least

in literature, with a group of ladies in the turkish bath of a large and

luxurious hotel by the sea, in England, the sort of hotel to which

people go to be cured of illnesses, on the recommendation of their

doctors.  It is some time in the late nineteenth century.



An extraordinarily beautiful woman appears one day in the turkish bath,

and the women already in there are quite fascinated by her.  But there

is another guest in the hotel, a Colonel Estcourt, who, it turns out had

known this woman since childhood.  Indeed it had been expected that they

would one day wed, but instead she had gone off and married an elderly,

but fabulously wealthy, Russian prince.



Various demonstrations of her occult powers make the guests, both men

and women, realise that the beautiful Princess is someone with very

special gifts, which one or two of them would like to learn more about.

But in the very process of the ensuing teach-in, more things happen

than had been bargained for, and both the Colonel and the Princess end

up lifeless.  The Mystery deepens.



If you like this sort of thing it is a very good novel, but if you are

not happy to read about the occult, you should leave it severely alone.



________________________________________________________________________

THE MYSTERY OF A TURKISH BATH, BY RITA.







CHAPTER ONE.



THE FIRST ROOM.



"I take them for rheumatic gout," said a slight, dark-haired woman to

her neighbour, as she leant back in a low lounging-chair, and sipped

some water an attendant had just brought her.  "You would not suppose I

suffered from such a complaint, would you?"--and she held up a small

arched foot, with a scarcely perceptible swelling in the larger joint.

She laughed somewhat affectedly, and the neighbour, who was fat and

coarse, and had decided gouty symptoms herself, looked at her with

something of the contempt an invalid elephant might be supposed to

bestow on a buzzing fly.



"You made that remark the last time you were here," she said; "and I

told you, if you suffered from a suppressed form of the disease, it

would be all the worse for you.  Much better for it to come out--my

doctor says."



There was no doubt about the disease having "come out" in the person of

the speaker.  It had "come out" in her face, which was brilliantly

rubicund; in her hands, and ankles and feet, which were a distressful

spectacle of "knobs" and "bumps" of an exaggerated phrenological type--

perhaps also in her temper, which was fierce and fiery as her

complexion, as most of the frequenters of the Baths knew, and the

attendants also, to their cost.



The small, dark lady, with the arched feet, lapsed into sulky silence,

and let her eyes wander over the room to see if anyone she knew was

there.



The Baths were of an extensive and sumptuous description--fitted up with

almost oriental luxury and comfort, and attached to a monster hotel,

built by an enterprising Company of speculators, at an English winter

resort, in Hampshire.



The Company had proudly hoped that lavish expenditure, a beautiful

situation, and the disinterested recommendation of fashionable

physicians, would induce English people to discover that there were

spots and places in their own land as healthy and convenient as

Auvergne, or Wiesbaden, or the Riviera.  But though the coast views were

fine, and the scenery picturesque, and the monster hotel itself stood on

a commanding eminence, surrounded by darkly-beautiful pine woods, and

was fitted up with every luxury of modern civilisation, including every

specimen of Bath that human ingenuity had devised, the Company looked

blankly at the returns on their balance-sheet, and one or two Directors

murmured audible complaints at special Board meetings, against the

fashionable physicians who had not acted up to their promises, or proved

deserving of the substantial bonus which had been more than hinted at,

as a reward for recommended patients.



On this December morning, some half-dozen ladies, of various ages and

stability of person, and all suffering, in a greater or less degree,

from various fashionable complaints--such as neuralgia, indigestion,

rheumatism, or its aristocratic cousin, rheumatic-gout--were in Room

Number One of the Turkish Bath.



The female form is generally supposed to be "divine," and poets and

painters have, from time immemorial, rhapsodised over "beauty

unadorned."  It is probable that such poets and painters have never been

gratified by such a vision of feminine charms as Room Number One

presented.



Light and airy garments were, certainly, to be seen, but not--forms.  It

was, of course, a question of taste, as to whether the fat women, or the

thin women, looked the worst--probably the former, if one might judge by

the two samples of the lady who had arched feet, and the lady who had

_not_.



Both were staying at the hotel, and were respectively named--Mrs

Masterman, and Mrs Ray Jefferson.  Mrs Masterman was a widow.  Mrs

Ray Jefferson had a husband.  He was an American, blessed with many

dollars, amassed on the strength of an "Invention."  When Mr Jefferson

spoke of the Invention, people usually supposed it to be of a mechanical

nature.  As they became more familiar with him, they learnt that it was

something "Chemical."  No one quite knew what, but it became associated

in their minds with "vats" and "boilers," and large works somewhere

"down Boston way."  There could be no doubt of the excellence of the

Invention, because Mr Ray Jefferson said it was known, and used all

over Europe, and its success was backed by dollars to an apparently

unlimited extent.  The Inventor and his wife had sumptuous rooms, but

they were not averse to mixing with their "fellow-man," or rather

"woman,"--for Mrs Jefferson rejoiced in the possession of certain

Parisian _toilettes_, and was not selfish enough to keep them only for

the eyes of her lord and master.



She was grudgingly but universally acknowledged to be the best-dressed

woman in the hotel--except, of course, when she was in the Turkish

Baths, which unfortunately reduced its frequenters to one level of

apparelling, a garment which made up in simplicity for any lack of

elegance.



The shape was always the same--viz., short in the skirt, low in the

neck, and bare as to sleeves.  The material was generally pink cotton,

or white with a red border.



Mrs Jefferson was quite American enough to have "notions" on dress,

more or less original and extravagant.  Finding her companion was

unusually silent this morning, she gave up her thoughts to the devising

of a special toilet for the Bath.



These garments were so hideous, she told herself, that it was no wonder

people looked such guys in them.  Still there was no reason why she

should not have something _chic_ and novel for herself--something which

should arouse the envy of, and make the wearer appear quite different

to, the other women.



The choice of style was easy enough--something Grecian and artistic--but

the material discomposed her.  It was hardly possible to have a bath of

this description without one's garment getting into a moist and clinging

condition--leaving alone the after processes of shampooing, _douche_,

and plunge.  So silk, or satin, or woollen material was out of the

question, and cotton was common, not to say vulgar.



She knitted her brows with a vigour demanded by so absorbing a subject:

the white head-cloth fell off, and she felt that her fringe was all out

of curl and lay straight on her forehead in most unbecoming fashion.

That also would have to be considered in the question of costume--a

head-dress which should combine use and ornament.  The idea of having

only a wet, white rag on one's head!  No wonder people looked "objects!"

Perhaps it would be better to coil the hair about the brow and have no

fringe, or at least only a few loose locks that would look equally well,

straight or curled.



As Mrs Ray Jefferson was taking all this trouble about her personal

appearance, when that appearance would only gratify the sight of a few

members of her own sex who were generally too much taken up with their

own ailments or complaints to care what their fellow-sufferers looked

like, it shows the fallacy of a popular superstition that women only

care to dress for men.  Believe me, no--they dress for critics, the

critics of their own sex, who with one contemptuous glance can sweep a

_toilette_ into insignificance, and make its wearer miserable, or, by

some envious approbation, are reluctantly compelled to bestow on it the

seal of success.



Is it for men, think you, that those delicate _nuances_ and tints and

shades are harmonised and put together?  Such a conceit is only

pardonable in a set of beings who possess not the delicate faculty of

"detail," and who, with a limited knowledge of even cardinal colours,

describe the graces and beauties of a _toilette_ by saying the wearer

had on something white, or something black, or something red, but "it

suited her down to the ground."  A few misguided individuals have even

been known to take refuge in the remark (made historic now by comic

papers) that "they never look _under_ the table," when asked what

certain ladies had on.  But this is trifling, and only applicable to

dinner parties.



Mrs Ray Jefferson's thoughts had not prevented her from taking stock of

the other inmates of the room.  One or two were lying on couches, but

most of them seemed to prefer the low comfortable chairs, that were like

rocking-chairs without the rockers.



No one spoke.  They looked solemn and suffering, and appeared intent

merely on the symptoms of distilled moisture on the visible portion of

their persons.



"I think," said Mrs Jefferson, "I shall go into the second room.  I can

stand some more heat."



She made the remark, abstractedly, in the direction of her neighbour,

who only looked at her in a bored and ill-tempered fashion, as befitted

one who had gout without arched feet to display as compensation.



"You and I are the only hotel people here," went on Mrs Jefferson, as

she took up the glass of water and the head-cloth preparatory to moving

away.  Then she laughed again as she looked at her companion's flushed

countenance and generally distressed appearance.  "What a comfort," she

said, "that we won't look quite such objects at dinner-time!  I always

find a bath improves my complexion, don't you?"



Mrs Markham gave an impatient grunt.  "As if it mattered what one looks

like in a bath!" she said.  "Do you Americans live in public all your

lives?  You seem to be always thinking of your clothes, or your looks!"



Mrs Jefferson opened her lips to reply with suitable indignation, but

the words were cut short by a gasp of astonishment, and lost themselves

in one wondering, long-drawn monosyllable--"My--!"



The gouty sufferer also looked up, and in the direction of the doorway,

and though she said nothing, her eyes expressed as much surprise as was

compatible with a sluggish temperament, and a disposition to cavil at

most things and persons that were presented to her notice.



The object on which the two pairs of feminine eyes rested was only the

figure of a woman standing between the thick oriental curtains that

partitioned off the dressing from the shampooing and douche rooms.



A woman--but a woman so beautiful that she held even her own sex dumb

with admiration.  She was tall, but not too tall for perfect grace; and

slender, but with the slenderness of some young pictured goddess.  She

was dark, too, but with a pale clear skin that was more lovely than any

dead blonde whiteness; and to crown her charms, she had long rippling

hair of jet black hue that was parted from her brow and fell like a veil

to her delicate arched feet, and through which the serious, darkly--

glowing eyes looked straight at the wondering faces before her.



The pause she made before entering was brief, but not so brief that

every eye there had not scanned enviously and wonderingly her perfect

beauty--from the clear-cut, exquisite face and bare, beautifully--shaped

arms, to the graceful ankles, gleaming white as sculptured marble

through the veiling hair.



Mrs Jefferson first recovered speech.



"Who is she?" she whispered eagerly.  "Not at our hotel I think.  Looks

like a walking advertisement of a new hair restorer.  She'd be a fortune

to them if she'd have her photograph taken so!"



The newcomer meanwhile advanced and took one of the chairs near Mrs

Jefferson.  That lady suffered strongly from the curiosity that is

characteristic of her admirable nation.  She re-seated herself for the

purpose of studying the strange vision, and, not being in the least

degree afflicted with English reticence, she set the ball of

conversation going by an immediate remark:



"Had any of these baths before?"



The person addressed looked at her with grave and serious eyes.



"No," she said; and her voice was singularly clear and sweet, but with

something foreign in the slow accentuation of words.  "I only arrived at

this hotel last night."



"Oh!" said Mrs Jefferson, "is that so?  I thought I hadn't seen you

before.  Come for your health?"



"Yes," said the stranger, accepting a glass of water from the attendant,

who had just come forward.



"Not gout, I suppose?" suggested Mrs Jefferson, conscious that there

were arched feet in the world even more exquisite in shape and size than

her own.



"Gout!  Oh, no!" said the stranger, smiling faintly.  "They say my

nerves are not strong.  I sleep badly, I am easily startled, and easily

fatigued."  She paused a moment, and one delicate hand, glittering with

rings, pushed back the dark weight of rippling hair from her brow.  "I

have had a great mental shock," she said, quietly.  "Such things require

time... one cannot easily forget..."



Her eyes had grown dreamy and abstracted.  The hand that had pushed back

her heavy hair fell on her lap.  She looked at it and its shining rings,

and Mrs Jefferson's sharp glance followed hers.  Was there a plain gold

circlet among that glittering array?--was the beautiful stranger wife or

maiden?



"If any man saw her now!" she thought involuntarily.  "My!  I wouldn't

give much for his peace of mind afterwards!  What owls she makes us all

look!"



"Nerves are queer things," she said aloud.  "Can't say I'm much troubled

with them, except here," and she moved her foot explanatorily.  "Just

that joint.  It's agony sometimes.  Suppressed gout, you know.  You

wouldn't think so to look at it, would you?"



"That the gout was--suppressed? certainly I should," answered the

stranger, smiling.  "There is no external sign of it.  I always thought

gout meant large lumps, and swellings of the joints."



"So it does," said Mrs Jefferson, with an involuntary glance at the

moist and crimson sufferer on her right.  "But my form of it is

different.  It is much worse, but no one sympathises with me because it

doesn't _look_ so bad as the other gout."



"It is not often that people do sympathise with illness," said the

beautiful woman.  "When we ourselves are well, we think suffering can't

be so very great after all, and when we are ill we are quite sure no one

else has to bear so much pain.  Human nature is essentially selfish.  It

is a natural incident of living at all that we should estimate our own

life as more important than our neighbours."



"Well," laughed Mrs Jefferson, "if we sacrificed it to them, it might

be a doubtful benefit.  I often thank my stars I wasn't born in the age

of martyrs.  If J. had been, I'm sure the very sight of the rack or the

faggot would have made me swear anything."



"The history of religions is a very curious history," said the stranger

in her low clear tones.  "Looked at dispassionately, it has done very

little for mankind in general, save to prove one fundamental truth that

is more significant than any doctrine or dogma.  That truth is the

inherent need in all humanity of something to worship.  From the highest

to the lowest degrees of civilisation that need has made itself the

exponent of external forms.  It is the kernel of all religions."



"A kernel that is surrounded with a very hard shell," said Mrs

Jefferson glibly.  She liked discussions, and was accustomed to say she

could talk on any subject--having indeed come from a country where women

did talk on any subject, whether they were acquainted, with it or not.

"I don't think there is much spirituality in any modern religion," she

went on.  "I surmise it's dead.  Science has got the upper hand of

theology and means to keep it.  People are not content now-a-days with

being told `you must believe so and so.'  They want a reason for

believing.  You're not a Romanist, are you?" she added suddenly.



"I--oh no," said the stranger with a faint smile.



"I'm glad of that, for I was just going to say that the Church of Rome

has done more to retard rational and spiritual progress than any other.

I don't believe in the voice of man barring the way to inquiry.  God

made man, and, as far as I have ever been able to learn, He made them

all on one pattern.  The offices and dignities they give themselves

won't make them one whit greater or more important in His eyes."



"You are a democrat, I see," said the beautiful woman, looking gravely

and scrutinisingly at the eager flushed face, with its ruffled damp

curls, and quick restless eyes.



"Well," said Mrs Jefferson, "I don't exactly know what I am.  My views

are liberal on most subjects.  I've travelled a good bit, and I think

that enlarges the mind.  I've just run over to have a look at England.

Our people are laughing at her pretty well.  The Gladstone party have

made a lovely hash of affairs haven't they?  But perhaps you don't care

for politics, being foreign."



"Oh, yes, I do," answered her strange companion.  "And I am specially

interested in English politics," she added.  "Like yourself I was

curious to see a nation who seemed determined to court their own shame,

and to deify the being whose career is signally marked by obloquy and

disaster."



"His day is pretty well over, I fancy," said Mrs Jefferson, eagerly

scenting an opportunity for a brilliant display of political knowledge.

"That Irish business has settled him.  They call him the greatest

statesman of the age!  A man at dinner last night was lauding him up to

the skies.  There was quite a battle about him.  We showed, however,

that, putting his talking powers aside, he really is no statesman--only

a grasping selfish old bungler, who cares nothing for his country except

it keeps him in office, and has done nothing really great or good during

his whole career.  They make a fuss about the Education Act, but the

credit of passing that belongs to Foster.  As for the Disestablishment

of the Irish Church, that is a disgraceful business--a robbery of the

dead who had left their money to support a faith they believed in.  He

is responsible--to my thinking--for all the anarchy, confusion and

misery in that poor unhappy Ireland.  I believe," and she leant forward

and dropped her voice, "I believe that at heart the man is more than

half a Romanist.  See how he has favoured the High Church party, and if

ever he gives a clerical appointment it is always to a Ritualist priest.

They don't call themselves _clergymen_ now.  Well," and she drew

herself up once more, "I, for one, wouldn't like to have his sins on my

shoulders.  I should think he ought to be haunted by as many victims as

Napoleon Buonaparte.  What with financial humbug, war taxes--the

blunders of the Alabama business--the disgrace and bloodshed of the

Transvaal affair and the Egyptian war--crowned by the undying and never

to be forgotten shame of Gordon's sacrificed life, I wonder he can lay

down his head at night and sleep.  When he heard of that hero Gordon's

death he should have taken a pistol and blown out his blundering brains.

But perhaps," she added more calmly, "he was afraid of meeting his

victims until he couldn't help himself.  However, he might have gone

into one of those `retreats' his favourite Ritualists are so fond of,

and spared England any more blunders and follies."



"You are very bitter against him," said the stranger calmly.  "Be sure

that his own actions will also be his own avengers.  Life would be made

much more tolerable if we would only keep that fact before us.  To my

mind there is no backbone or support in a religion that teaches

irresponsibility.  That is the great fault of you Christians.  Your

faith is not a thing you take hold of, and grasp and act upon.  Hence

your many national disasters.  You shelve your future, or what you call

your salvation, on the merits of a Sacrifice, and think yourselves

relieved of all further trouble.  In the world, and in society, religion

is a tabooed subject--it is only kept for Sundays and for churches.  I

believe your clergy know no more of the _real_ doctrines of

Christianity, those deep and _mystical_ truths underlying the teachings

of Christ, than the child at his mother's knee.  I have been to your

great cathedrals and churches.  I saw only lip-service and routine.  I

heard only stale maxims, weak explanations of the allegories and

parables that fill your Biblical records; flowing rhetoric and vague

expressions of some undefinable joy and glory in an equally undefinable

Hereafter, that was sometimes described as a place, and sometimes as a

state.  That was all.  I feel such things cannot long stand against the

tide of advancing thought.  Modern Christianity is not the Sermon on the

Mount, and has little title to the name of its founder.  It has not a

feather's weight of importance in the minds of the worldly, the

fashionable, the pleasure-seeking; its sentiment is extinct, save in a

few faithful ignorant hearts, who adore what they cannot comprehend, and

live in a state of hope that all will come right in some vague future."



The beautiful eyes had grown sad and thoughtful.  They rested on the

eager wondering face before her, yet seemed to look through and beyond

it, as the eyes of one who sees a vision that is mere airy nothingness

to the surrounding crowd.



"It will come right," she went on slowly and dreamily, "but not as men

think, and not because the religion of earth teaches fear of punishment

and hope of reward as the basis of spiritual faith.  No.  Something

higher and holier and deeper than any motive of self-safety will perfect

what is best in man and eliminate what is vile."



"If that is so," interposed Mrs Jefferson, glibly, as she rose from her

chair to proceed to the Second Room--"I guess man will want a pretty

long time to `perfect' in.  I don't see how he's going to do it here."



"I did not say `here,'" answered the stranger, in her slow, calm way, as

she, too, rose and prepared to follow the little American.  "For what,

think you, are the ages of Eternity intended?--sleep and dreams?"



Mrs Jefferson gave a little shudder.  "I surmise we're getting a little

too deep," she said.  "Let's keep to Gladstone and the Irish Question

while the thermometer's at 110."







CHAPTER TWO.



THE SECOND ROOM.



The second room differed in no way from the first, except in the matter

of heat.



The beautiful stranger floated in--her face all the lovelier for the

faint rosy flush that glowed through the clear skin.  If Mrs Ray

Jefferson's admiration was envious, at least it was genuine.  She had

never really believed in perfect feminine beauty before--beauty that

shone supreme without the aid of dress and frippery--but here it was--a

glowing and palpable fact.  The simple white drapery with its border of

scarlet floated with the grace of its own perfect simplicity around that

perfect form, and never was royal mantle more splendid than the rippling

hair that crowned her head and fell in its luxuriance of curls and waves

to her feet.  As they again seated themselves side by side, Mrs

Jefferson remembered that she was not yet acquainted with the

nationality of the stranger.  She hastened to repair the error of such

ignorance.



"You speak English wonderfully for a foreigner," she said; "it would

puzzle anyone to make out where you were raised--Russian, I surmise?"



"No," said the stranger, quietly, "though I have lived there a great

deal.  It was my husband's country."



Mrs Jefferson looked radiant.  She was married, then.  That was

something to have learnt.  "_Was_,"--she said quickly, "Is he not living

then?"



"No."  The beautiful face grew a shade paler.  "I would rather not talk

about it," she said.  "His death was very tragic and terrible."



"I'm sorry," said the little American, with ready contrition; "don't

think I'm curious," she added, suddenly, "but one doesn't see a woman

like you every day.  I surmise you'll make a sensation in the hotel."



"I have my own private rooms here," was the quiet response.  "I shall

not mix with the other visitors."



"Oh," cried Mrs Jefferson, her face clouding, "I call that cruel.

There are really some very good people here--titles, if you like them--

money, if you care for that--one or two geniuses--a musician and a poet

who are working for a future generation, because they can't get

appreciated here--and the usual crowd of mediocrities.  Oh, you really

must come to our evenings; they'd amuse you immensely.  We're quite

dependent on ourselves for society.  This is the dullest of dull holes,

still we manage to get a bit spry not and then.  Now, you--why, if you'd

only show yourself to be looked at, you'd be doing the whole hotel a

good turn."



The stranger shook her head.  "Society never amuses me," she said.  "It

has nothing to offer that can rival the charms of books, art, and

solitude.  I possess all three."



Mrs Jefferson opened her eyes wide.  "The first and the last," she

said, "are comprehensible as travelling companions, but what about the

middle one?"



"In my train I have a blind musician, whose equal I have never met, and

a boy sculptor whose genius will one day astonish the world.  For

myself, I paint and I write, and I have a store of books that will

outlast the longest limit of companionship.  Can you tell me what better

things the world will give?"



Mrs Ray Jefferson murmured something vaguely about amusement and

distraction.  She was growing more and more perplexed about this

beautiful Mystery.  Anyone who travelled about with a train of

attendants must surely be a princess at the very least.



"Amusement!"--the stranger smiled.  "Does society ever _really_ give us

that?  We have to smile when we are bored--to tell polite falsehoods

every hour--to eat and drink when we would rather fast--to awake all

sorts of evil passions in other people's minds if we are better-looking

or better dressed, or more admired; and have them aroused in our own if

we are _not_?  Does a ball amuse?  Does a dinner-party?  Does even a

comedy, after the first quarter of an hour?  I can answer for myself in

the negative, at all events."



"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs Jefferson wonderingly.  "You must be a

strange person, and you look so young.  Why, I should have thought you

were just the age for society?  Don't you care to be admired?"



"Not in the least.  I have learnt the value of men's passions.  A quiet

life is more wholesome and infinitely more contenting than anything

society can offer."



"For a time, perhaps; but it would become dull and monotonous, I should

think."



"Never, if you have the mind to appreciate it.  The companionship I

value will always come to me.  I do not need to seek it in the world."



"You are fortunate," said Mrs Jefferson, somewhat sarcastically.

"Ordinary mortals have to take what they can get.  Still, I suppose such

things are only a matter of personal disposition.  If one has the mood

for enjoyment, one can find it anywhere; if not--well, a funeral or a

comedy would be equally amusing."



"I suppose," said the stranger, quietly, "you have the mood."



"Well, I'm blessed with a pretty fair capacity for enjoying all that

comes in my way," said the little American, frankly.  "I like studying

human nature, even though I'm not clever enough to describe it.  It's

like the critics, you know, who find it so powerful easy to cut up a

book, yet couldn't write one themselves to save their lives.  Phew-ew!

how hot it is here!  How do you contrive to look so cool?"



"I can stand a great deal of heat," answered the other, tranquilly.  "I

have Eastern blood in my veins, on my mother's side.  Is that the

hottest room?" she added, nodding in the direction of the third doorway.



"Yes.  I suppose you won't go there?  I never dare put my nose inside.

It's enough to scorch the skin off you."



"I don't suppose it can be hotter than the rooms in the East," answered

the stranger, as she rose and moved towards it.  She stood for a moment

looking in, then turned back and smiled at her late companion.  "Oh, I

can bear it," she said, and disappeared from sight.



The little American pouted and looked disturbed.  "What a shame!  I had

ever so many more things to ask her," she said, "and to think, after

all, I don't know her name, or even to what country she belongs, and I

did so want the whole story pat for the _table d'hote_ dinner

to-night...  Ready to be shampooed?--oh, yes, Morrison; I'm just about

`done through;' I'm glad you can take me first."



She rose abruptly and followed the attendant past the flushed and

perspiring groups who were still comparing notes as to different

ailments and degrees of moisture, occasionally holding out their arms

for mutual inspection.



"I wonder," she said to herself, "how that one woman manages to look so

different.  Why, we get uglier and uglier, and she only more and more

beautiful.  Perhaps she's a Rosicrucian!"



------------------------------------------------------------------------







CHAPTER THREE.



THE COOLING ROOM.



A long room, down the centre of which ran a row of couches; on either

side were the dressing-rooms, curtained off from the main apartment by

curtains of dark Oriental blue, bordered with dull red.  In the large

bay window stood the dressing-tables and mirrors.



Mrs Ray Jefferson had it all to herself, as, wrapped in an enormous

sheet of Turkish towelling, she emerged from the processes of shampooing

and douche.  She laid herself down on one of the couches, and the

attendant, Morrison, threw another Turkish wrap over her, and left her

to the enjoyment of the coffee she had ordered, and which was placed on

one of the numerous small tables scattered about.



According to all rules of the baths, she should have rested calmly and

patiently on that couch, until such time as she was cool enough to don

her ordinary attire, but the little American, was of a restless and

impatient disposition, and of all things hated to be inactive.



The attendant had scarcely left the room before she raised herself to a

sitting position, and took a survey of her appearance in one of the

mirrors.  It did not appear to be very satisfactory.  She turned

abruptly away and reached some magazines from an adjoining table.  Armed

with these she once more sought her couch, and after tossing two or

three contemptuously aside, she at last seemed to find one periodical

that interested her.  She grew so absorbed in its contents, that she

scarcely heard the entrance of the beautiful woman who had so interested

her, and who now took the next couch to her own, and lay down in an

attitude of indolent grace that was quite in keeping with her

appearance.



"You seem interested," she remarked, as she glanced at the absorbed face

of her neighbour.



Mrs Jefferson looked up sharply.  "Well," she said, turning the

magazine round to read its title.  "This is about the queerest story I

ever read.  I wish people wouldn't write improbabilities that no one can

swallow."



"The question is rather what is an improbability?" answered her

companion.  "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive

what is new.  A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at

the telegraph and the telephone.  Still further back, who would have

believed that railways would exist above ground and under ground, and

mock at the difficulties of rivers and mountains?  What have you

discovered strange enough to be called `improbable'?"



"Oh! it's a story of a man who gets out of his own body and does all

sorts of queer things, and then goes back to it again, just when he

pleases.  Finally, he falls in love with a woman as queer as himself,

and finding he has a rival, he just gets rid of him by force of

will-power.  However, the day they are to be married, the woman is found

dead in her bed.  It appears that she also could get out of her body

when she felt inclined, but she did it once too often, and couldn't get

back in time, so they buried her, at least they buried one of her

bodies; as far as I can make out she had _two_."



"And you think that improbable?" questioned the stranger calmly.



Her beautiful deep eyes were looking straight into the flushed excited

face beside her.  Mrs Ray Jefferson met their gaze, and was conscious

of an odd little unaccountable thrill.



"Certainly I do," she said.  "Who could believe that anyone can jump in

or out of their skin just as the fancy takes them?"



The stranger's beautiful lips grew scornful.  "Oh!" she said, "if you

like to put the subject in that light, it may well look ridiculous and

impossible.  Ignorance is always more or less arrogant.  It is man's

habit to fancy that all creation was made for him.  There are few things

of which he is so utterly ignorant, and of which he thinks so little, as

that mystery of _himself_ incarnated in the temporary prison-house of

flesh and blood.  Did he once realise what he might be--did he ever

raise his eyes from the glow-worm light of earth to the stupendous

glories of the sun of wisdom, he would know better than to cavil at what

you call `improbable.'  For in nature all things are possible, but man

has neither time nor patience to trace out their mysteries, or seek in

their development the key to those mysteries."



"Gracious sakes," muttered Mrs Jefferson to herself in alarm.  "I'm

sure she's a Rosicrucian or something of that sort.  It's interesting,

but uncanny.  I'm quite out of my depth.  I don't know what she means.

Do you really mean to say," she added aloud, "that this story might be

true; that you have two bodies and can slip from one to the other?"



A dark frown crept over the beautiful face.  "You talk as foolishly as a

child," she said with contempt.  "You know nothing of the subject you

are discussing, therefore anything I might say would sound

incomprehensible.  The grossness of the flesh stifles and kills the

subtle workings of the spirit.  To you life is only a pleasure ground,

and the more your own personal satisfaction is obtainable, the more you

cling to its spurious enjoyments.  If you once cut yourself adrift from

such follies, your eyes would be opened, your senses quickened, and you

would recognise possibilities and marvels that now are no more to you

than sunlight to the blind worm that burrows in the ground."  She

stretched out her hand and took the book from the passive hand of her

astounded companion, and glanced rapidly over its pages.



"`Light in Darkness.'  Ah, truly it is needed," she said, her eyes

kindling, her face glowing, until her beauty seemed more than mortal.

"But we shall never reach it till we learn to master the senses, to cut

the chains of worldly prejudice and conventionalism.  They are bold

teachers, these," and she tossed the magazine back to the still silent

critic of its contents.  "You would do well," she said, "to make

yourself acquainted with some of these subjects.  I think you would find

them more interesting than ball-rooms and Paris toilettes."



Mrs Jefferson recovered her tongue at that slight to her beloved

vanities.



"Tastes differ," she said coolly.  "I'm very well content with the world

as it is and with myself as I am.  I don't believe any good ever comes

of prying into subjects we're not intended to know anything about."



"I might ask you," said the stranger, with visible contempt, "how you

are so surely convinced of what we are intended to know, and what not?

There is no hard and fast rule laid down for us that I am aware of."



"Oh!" stammered Mrs Jefferson, with some confusion, "I'm sure the Bible

says that somewhere.  `Thus far shalt thou go and no further,' you know.

It is arrogant to attempt to penetrate the mysteries of the other

world.  When we go there we shall know them soon enough."



"How glibly you nineteenth-century Christians talk of the `other

world,'" cried the beautiful woman, with contempt.  She tossed back the

weight of her rich hair and sat up, looking like an inspired prophetess.

"Yet you acknowledge you know nothing of it.  Your priests cannot

explain it, so they take refuge in the plea that inquiry is

presumptuous.  Science cannot explain it.  Reason falters at the

threshold before the stumbling-block of its long-cherished ignorance

whose only legacy has been Fear.  And it is all because you live in

falsehood--because you are false to your _inner_ life, and think only of

the outer; because you are all in chains of superstition--of worldly

bondage, of family prejudices, and, above all, of self-delusion."



"Have you come to preach to us, then?" asked the little American

superciliously.  "There is little use in decrying a private or national

disease unless you are provided with a remedy."



"If an angel from Heaven came down to preach you would not believe!"

said the stranger, growing suddenly calm as she sank back on her pillow.

"No, I have no mission.  I am only one who has looked out on life and

learnt its bitter truths, and seen its vanity and folly repeated, with

scarce a variation, in countless human lives."



"Well," said the American, "the fact of that repetition seems rather as

if it were a law of human lives, don't it?  We find ourselves in this

world, and we must do as others do, and live as others live.  Of course,

I've read of people giving up all sorts of pleasures and comforts in

this life for sake of another, but to me it seems only a mild form of

madness.  For instance, there's this new sect that's sprung up, who are

going to revolutionise all creation--well, I've read heaps of their

books, I've spoken even to some of their members, but I confess

Theosophy seems as much of a jumble as any other creed.  Look at their

priests, their _yogis_, and _chelas_, and such-like humbugs!  They say

their Buddha is as divine as our Christ.  Maybe he is--to them!  But

what strikes me is the absurdity of trying to get into another life

while one has to live this.  Fasting and sitting under a tree, and

starving out all fleshly desires and impulses until the human body,

instead of being handsome and muscular as Nature intended it to be,

becomes a withered skeleton, subsisting on a few beans and a cup of

water.  Why, anybody could see visions and dream dreams, that lived a

life like that even for a year!  But I want to know what's the good of

it?  I suppose if we get out of our natural life before our time, our

place can't be ready for us in our next Karma, or whatever they call it.

So we would martyrise ourselves to no purpose.  These sort of people

seem to me to be trying to steal a march over others, wanting to get a

stage further on the road before the natural term of earth-life is over.

A nice world this would be if we were all at that game."



"You have certainly read to some purpose," said the stranger ironically.

"It is interesting to hear the deepest philosophy that has ever

occupied the human mind summed up and dismissed as ridiculous.  Let me,

however, first point out a few mistakes in your judgment of this new

`sect' as you call it.  In the first place it is not a sect in the

common acceptation of the word, but rather a universal philosophy

embracing all creeds, ranks, and denominations of men.  It lays not the

slightest stress on any of its followers martyrising their bodies as you

so glibly describe.  You might just as well say that the Christian

religion is only carried out by monks and nuns, because certain

enthusiasts prefer to cut themselves adrift from the vanities of life.

In all ages and in all religions there have been such enthusiasts.  Even

the prophets in your own Bible were men of this description, living in

caves, subsisting only on the fruits and seeds of the earth, and giving

themselves up to visions and dreams.  What else have your canonised

Saints done?  Yet they are worshipped by a vast community of

_apparently_ sensible beings, as holy.  It only shows that there are

certain minds capable of penetrating the uselessness of a purely worldly

existence, and finding it too hard to live a double life, that is to

say, spiritual and material (a life only possible to the modern clergy),

they seek refuge in seclusion and leave that outer life to those whom it

satisfies and suits.  As to the selfishness of such isolation, that is a

matter no alien mind can quite determine, for the greatest Example of

the religious life was strangely indifferent to human ties, nor ever

displayed the weakness of human affection for earthly relatives, thus

seeming to show that it is no sin to sacrifice earthly ties for a higher

and holier existence.  The disciples of the great Brotherhood are

voluntary enthusiasts, free from the claims of human relationship, and

offering themselves simply _as_ disciples.  They wrong no one by their

choice.  As for your last remark about endeavouring to steal a march on

our fellow-men by seeking a higher place in the next state of existence,

before we have done with this, I can only ask you to study something of

the laws and doctrines of theosophical philosophy before deciding such

an event is possible."



"Do you know much about them?" asked Mrs Jefferson curiously.



"I know that they teach man the truest sense of his own responsibility.

They prove to him an inexorable law by which he may lift himself from

the level of the brute to the majesty of the God he now blindly

worships."



"But so does Christianity," exclaimed Mrs Jefferson astounded.



For the first time the stranger laughed.



"And is not true Christianity the highest and purest philosophy?" she

said.  "Only it is preached--not practised.  Can you tell me that a

single Christian land in this nineteenth century era is one whit purer

or better in its spiritual or moral character than was Jerusalem a

thousand years ago?  Does it influence commerce, trade, governments,

laws--even civilisation?  If it did, not one rule or law that binds the

rotten fabric of civilised life together would stand for a single

moment.  Why?  Because no one would lie; no one would cheat; no one

would murder, either wholesale because of country prejudices, or retail

because of private animosities.  Everyone would be honest, charitable,

merciful, and unselfish.  You cling to a Faith that is almost barren of

good works.  You propagate it among ignorant savages whom you first rob

of their lands, and then convert with guns and brandy bottles.  How much

of the reception of Christianity is due to the _latter_ I will leave to

the revelations of the first honest missionary whose report is not

indebted to his income from the Society, a prospective pension, and his

own personal weakness for the laudation of his fellow men.  Show me a

human being who can be honest to a conviction in the face of scorn and

mockery, who never sought his _own_ interest in the profession he

embraced, but only the good of others for whom that profession was

ostensibly established; who would speak truth in the Courts of Law, the

House of Legislature, and the _salons_ of Society; who would write--not

for empty praise but from conviction--and follow art simply and purely

to ennoble the mind, not pander to the lust of the eye and the greed of

gold.  Show me such men and such a nation, and I will acknowledge

_there_ Christianity has found its seat and fulfilled the purpose of its

founder!"



"Oh," said the American, shrugging her shoulders with contempt, "of

course, you are talking arrant nonsense!  The thing's impossible.  The

world can't be turned into a monastery, and as long as people live they

will always be overreaching each other, and deceiving each other.  It's

not possible to be perfectly honest, or perfectly truthful."



"Then," said the stranger quietly, as she sank back on her cushions, "do

not blame even the poor _Yogi_ under his tree if he has turned away sick

and disgusted with the shams and vileness, and hypocrisies and evil, of

the so-called civilised world.  Remember that the country that holds him

and thousands as foolish and superstitious, is the country that your

boasted, civilisation has wrested from his race, and that _your_ example

as a Christian nation is ever before his eyes.  Let his conduct

determine it's influence!"



"Well," said Mrs Jefferson, "talk of sermons in stones!  Here's one in

baths!  I should like to know who you are.  Seems to me you know

everything, and have read everything, and seen most everything on the

face of the earth.  So few women begin to think of anything serious till

they've forgotten their looks, that you must excuse my calling you an

anomaly.  Now do tell me you'll change your mind and join us to-night in

the drawing-room.  It's quite as selfish as _Yogaism_ to keep talents

like yours in the background."



The beautiful face grew cold and proud.



"You must pardon me," she said, "if I venture to consider myself the

best judge of what you are pleased to call--talents.  They are not of an

order to benefit a hotel drawing-room."



"Oh!" said Mrs Jefferson, feeling somewhat snubbed.  "I'm sure people

would be delighted to hear you talk, even if you did rub some of their

pet foibles the wrong way.  I've quite enjoyed this morning, I assure

you.  You've diverted my thoughts from my own ailments, and stimulated

my digestion.  I feel like eating lunch for once.  And that reminds me I

must begin to dress.  My fringe takes a quarter of an hour to arrange."



She rose from the couch, her Turkish towelling drapery flowing far

behind her small figure.  Then she disappeared into her dressing-room.



When she emerged from thence, her fringe artistically curled, her face

becomingly tinged with pearl-powder, her dress and appointments all

combining to give her small person importance, and show a due regard to

the exigencies of fashion, she found the couch which the mysterious

stranger had occupied was vacant.  She loitered about in the hope of

seeing her emerge from one of the dressing-boxes, but she was

disappointed, and as the luncheon gong was sounding through the hotel

she reluctantly took her way through the carpeted corridors and turned

into the main entrance, her mind in a curious condition of perplexity

and excitement.







CHAPTER FOUR.



CONJECTURES.



Mrs Ray Jefferson, irrespective of a toilet of ruby velvet cut _en

coeur_, and a display of diamonds calculated to make men thoughtful on

the subject of speculation, and women envious on the subject of

husbandly generosity (even when connected with Chemicals), was quite the

feature of the Hotel drawing-room that night.  She was full of her

adventure of the morning, and her description of the beautiful stranger

lost nothing from the picturesque language in which she clothed her

narrative.



"It's very odd the Manager won't tell us her name," she rattled on.

"I've done my level best to find out, but it's no good.  I suppose she

pays too well for him to risk betraying her.  I'm sure she's a Russian

Princess; she has a suite with her, and carries musicians and sculptors,

and heaven knows who else, in her train."



It may be noticed that Mrs Ray Jefferson had only heard of _a_ sculptor

and _a_ musician, but she drifted into plurality by force of that

irresistible tendency to exaggerate trifles which seems inherent in

women who are given to scandal even in its mildest form.



People from all parts of the room gathered round her.  A few seemed

inclined to doubt her description of the stranger's personal charms, but

when she applied to Mrs Masterman for confirmation, that lady, who was

known to have a strict regard for truth in its most uncompromising form,

emphatically agreed with her.



"Beautiful!  I should think she was beautiful," she said, in her usual

surly fashion.  "But,"--and then came a series of those curious and

condemnatory phrases with which a woman invariably finishes her praise

of another woman's beauty, and which are too well known to be repeated.



"I did my best to try and persuade her to join us," continued Mrs

Jefferson, after duly agreeing with Mrs Masterman that perhaps the

stranger's hair was a shade too black, and her height too tall, and her

complexion too pale--and that there _was_ something uncanny in the

expression of the dark wild eyes, "more like the eyes of a horse than a

human being," was Mrs Masterman's verdict.  "But nothing would induce

her.  She says Society is all a sham.  That we don't really amuse

ourselves or enjoy ourselves, however much we pretend to!  My word!

doesn't she give it hot to everything.  Policy, religion, diplomacy,

worldliness, theology, art.  It seems to me she knows everything, and

has studied human life more accurately than the wisest philosopher I've

ever heard of."



"And did you discuss all those subjects during the course of a Turkish

Bath?" said a voice near her.



Mrs Jefferson started.  The gentleman who had spoken was a recent

arrival.  She only knew him as Colonel Estcourt.  He was a singularly

interesting-looking man, home from India on sick leave, and the maidens,

and wives, and widows, of this polyglot assemblage at the Hotel were all

inclined to admiration of his physical perfections, and to

dissatisfaction at a certain coldness and disdainfulness of themselves,

which, to use their mildest form of reproach, was "odd and unmilitary."



Mrs Jefferson started slightly.  "Oh, it's you, Colonel," she said.

"Yes, we did talk about all those subjects, and I surmise if all of you

people here heard her carry on against the way you live your lives,

you'd feel rather small."



"Did you?" asked Mrs Masterman unkindly.



The bath had not improved _her_ complexion, and her left foot was

paining her excessively.  These two facts had not combined to sweeten

the natural acerbity of her temper.  Mrs Ray Jefferson did not heed the

question, or the smile it provoked on one or two feminine lips.



"I should like to know who she is," she persisted.  "She's been in India

too.  I suppose you never met her, Colonel Estcourt?  No one could

forget her who had!"



That cold impassive face changed ever so slightly.  "India," he said,

"is a somewhat vague term, and covers a somewhat large area for a

possible meeting-place.  Your description, Mrs Jefferson, is

tantalising in the extreme to a male mind, but I fail to recognise its

charming original as any personal acquaintance."



"I suppose so," said the little American, discontentedly.  "I'm just

dying to know who she is, and therefore no one can tell me.  Seems I

shall have to call her `the Mystery,' until she condescends to throw off

this _incognita_ business."



"But we are sure to see her," interposed Orval Molyneux, the young poet.

"She must go out sometimes, I suppose."



"If you'll take my advice," said Mrs Jefferson brusquely, "you won't

try to see her, for it's my belief that she's not the woman any man can

look at and forget, and you poets are mostly impressionable."



"Such a warning is only adding zest to temptation," said Colonel

Estcourt, with a grave smile.  "You _really_ have aroused my curiosity

in no small degree.  But perhaps the mysterious beauty may not be so

obdurate as you imagined.  Why should she not show herself among us?  It

is contrary to all known rules of Nature for a beautiful woman to hide

herself from the admiration her charms would exact.  When those charms

are coupled with mental gifts of so diverse and unusual a nature as Mrs

Jefferson has described, the probability is that seclusion is only a

whim, unless indeed--"



He broke off abruptly.  A certain look of disturbance and perplexity

came into his deep grey eyes.



"Unless what?" queried Mrs Jefferson, sharply.  "You look as if you saw

a vision.  Unless she's committed a crime, were you going to say?  She

talked of some tragedy--something that had upset her life, and affected

her mental equilibrium."



"She said--that?"  His face grew suddenly very pale.  The firm mouth

quivered beneath the fair thick moustache that shaded it.



"Yes," said Mrs Jefferson.  "Do tell, Colonel.  What is it you suspect?

A mystery--a secret crime?  My, that would be interesting."



"Suspect!" he said, almost fiercely.  "How should I suspect?  What do

you mean?  I was only wondering if indeed she possessed one of those

rare minds, sufficient for their own happiness, and living an inner life

of which the world knows nothing, and which, even if it knew, it could

not comprehend."



"Ah," said Mrs Jefferson, quickly.  "Now this gets interesting.  That's

just the sort of way she talked, and I confess I got a bit out of my

depth.  But you, Colonel, you've come from the very land of it all.  Do

sit down and explain.  Is the world going to be turned upside down?  Are

we to have a new religion, or rather an old one brought to light, that

will upset what we've been hugging as truth for the last eighteen

hundred years.  We've been pretty crazy over spiritualism on our side of

the water, but I guess this new philosophy can just make our mediums and

_seance_-givers take a back seat.  Isn't that so?"



"My dear madam," answered Colonel Estcourt, gravely, "you really must

not call upon me to expound the doctrines of the East to the scoffers of

the West.  I know a little--a very little--of this school of philosophy;

but I am not vain enough to attempt an explanation of its profound

wisdom.  The mysteries of Nature demand the deepest and most earnest

consideration of the human mind.  Do you think I could presume to rattle

off a few explanations or give the key to certain problems just to

satisfy the vague curiosity of an idle hour.  I will only say one

thing--it is a thing that cannot be too often repeated and thoroughly

kept in memory.  Every life has to live out itself, and work out for

_itself_ the higher mysteries that are shut within its own

consciousness.  No one can do that for it, any more than they could take

its love, or its sorrows, or its misfortunes away, and bear them in its

place.  If humanity took that truth to heart, and lived according to the

higher instead of the lower instincts, the world would be a very

different place."



"But," objected a pretty feminine voice in the back-ground, "what about

the obligations of position and society?  I suppose the `higher

instinct' would tell us that amusements are a waste of time--vanity and

vexation in fact--yet even they have a good result, they give

employment, and help other folk to live.  And it's a pleasant relief to

be gay and frivolous.  It's awfully fatiguing to be grave and good.

Just look at us on Sundays.  We're all more or less cross and

disagreeable, and I'm sure no clergyman could honestly say that he

wasn't heartily sick of droning and intoning that same eternal form

embodied in the Church Service."



"The higher life," said Colonel Estcourt, gravely, "is not a matter of

form.  Far from it.  It is an unceasing and inexhaustible pursuit; it

has infinite gradations, and is full of infinite possibilities.  Its

tendency is to elevate all that is best, and eliminate all that is

worst, in man."



"Oh!" cried Mrs Jefferson with rapture, "I'm sure you ought to meet my

`Mystery.'  That's just her sort of talk.  I must say it sounds

beautiful; but I shouldn't think it was practicable.  It's a very hard

thing to change people's ideas.  When they've held them a certain time

they get used to them, and don't like the trouble of altering."



"True," said Colonel Estcourt, "and therein lies the secret of all the

misery and mistakes that have made the world what it is.  The few

enthusiasts and propagandists have always been confronted by that

mountain of inertness, prejudice, and indolence, which the aggregate

portion of all nations oppose to anything newer, or wiser, or better

than the sloth and ignorance of the past."



"Well," laughed Mrs Jefferson, "let's see what this new era will bring

about.  There's a grand opening for it, and it has this advantage--

people are much more dissatisfied with old creeds, and much more eager

for new, than they have ever been.  The reins are slack, if only there's

a firm and judicious hand to seize them."



"Suppose," drawled Mr Ray Jefferson, who had the rare virtue of being

an admirable listener to any controversy or discussion.  "Suppose, my

dear, we have a game of poker."



"Agreed," laughed his wife.  "This meeting's adjourned, Colonel

Estcourt.  Will you join us."



He shook his head.  "No," he said, "I'm going out on the terrace to

smoke."



"And meditate on the Unknown?" queried the little American.  "Perhaps

you'll see her at her window.  I wish you luck."



He did not answer, but his brow clouded and his face grew anxious and

absorbed.  In his heart those light words echoed with a thrill of

mingled pain and dread.  "If it should be," he said to himself.  "My

God--if it should be she?"







CHAPTER FIVE.



"LOVE."



The stars were gleaming above the dusky pine trees.  The soft December

air, mild as spring on that sheltered coast, scarcely stirred the

drooping boughs that overshadowed the terrace.  Colonel Estcourt lit his

cigar, and began to pace with slow and thoughtful steps beneath the many

lighted windows of the great building.  Mrs Jefferson's words haunted

him, despite his efforts to dispel them.  One of those windows belonged

to the room where this strange and beautiful woman might even now be

seated.  Why did he picture to himself the pale exquisite face--the full

dark eyes--the lovely rippling hair--as if they were charms already

recognised and remembered.  Why?--save that when he had heard their

description they had struck home to his memory with a shock of pain, and

a feverish dread that longed yet feared to find itself realised.  To and

fro--to and fro--he paced the terraced walk, and again and again his

eyes sought that long line of light above his head.



There was a strange stillness in the brooding air--that mysterious hush,

which is the music of night's gentle footsteps, and insensibly its

soothing influence stole over the unquiet of his restless thoughts--the

warring powers of soul and sense grew silent and at rest.



Then something--a sound sweet as song--yet without the vibratory passion

of a human voice--seemed to float out of the darkness and hold his ear

enchained like a spell.  It was the divinest beauty of music, divinely

interpreted, and it seemed to him as he listened that all the discord

and woe and misery that oppressed his earthly senses, disappeared and

died away into the very perfection of peace.



He stood there quite silent--quite motionless--waiting, so it seemed to

himself, for some fuller revelation to which these exquisite sounds were

but a prelude.



It was a matter of no surprise when he quietly lifted his dreamy glance

to the stone balcony above, and saw there, in the soft glow of light

from the rooms beyond, the fair form of the woman he had expected to

see.



A faint tremor of fear and apprehension thrilled his heart, but it died

away as a low remembered voice stole through the space that parted him

from a visible form he had never thought to see again.



"I told you we should meet.  But I scarcely thought it would be so soon.

Will you come up here, or shall I join you?"



The voice and greeting roused him.  He bared his head and bent low to

the speaker in a deeper homage than that of conventional courtesy.



"Is it really you, Princess?  And may I be permitted to join you?"



The mute sign of assent showed him also a flight of steps leading up

from the terrace to the balcony.  A moment, and he was by her side.



No ordinary greeting passed between them.  Perhaps none could have

conveyed what that long silent gaze did; seeming to go straight to the

heart of each, full of memories that time had softened, but sad with the

sadness that is in all deep human love.



"A strange meeting-place," she said.  "Yet why more strange than the

mountains of the East, or the lonely plains of the Desert, the steppes

of Russia, or the house-tops of Damascus?"



"You read my thoughts, as ever," he said.  "I must confess that it

seemed strange to see you here, treading the narrow path of English

conventionalism, after--after--"



"I know," she said.  "But life is full of the unexpected.  You do not

ask how these five years have been spent.  The years that have changed

the dreamy enthusiastic girl into a woman such as you see before you."



"I do not ask," he said, his voice vibrating beneath an emotion he could

not conceal, "because it can be no pleasure to me to learn.  Do you

forget what I told you?  Do you think that the memory of these five

years is a pleasant one for me?  Against my prayers, against my

warnings, you chose your own life.  Are you free--now?"



"No," she said, in a strange stifled voice, "never _that_--never while I

wear the shackles of humanity!"  She sank suddenly down in a low seat,

and buried her face in her hands.  "Oh," she cried, faintly, "if I could

tell you--if I only dared; but I cannot!  My bondage is deeper--my

chains are heavier.  Sometimes I think those years were only a dream--a

horrible, frightful dream--but then, again, I _know_ they were not."



"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice sharp with terror, for this

shame and remorse that convulsed her, and made her one with the common

weakness of her common womanhood, was something altogether different to

the supremacy she had always shown in her proud girlhood.



"I cannot tell you," she said, "I dare not."



"Do you forget," he said, severely, "that if I _wish_ to know, I shall

learn it?"



"Not now," she said, suddenly, and raised her face and looked calmly,

yet not defiantly, back at him with her great, sad, and most lovely

eyes.  "I have passed beyond your power," she went on.  "Beyond most

human influence, I might say--" then she shuddered and her eyes sank

again.  "But oh!" she cried, "at what a cost!--at what a cost!"



He felt as if his heart grew suddenly chill and stony.  "I believe you

are right," he said; "my power is gone--yours is the strongest now."



He was silent for a few moments.  "One question only," he then said; "I

don't wish to pry into your past.  It is enough that we have met--for

that would never have taken place if you had not needed me.  So much I

know.  Your marriage--was it as I foretold?"



"It was worse," she said, bitterly--"a million times worse!  Body and

soul, how I have suffered!  And yet, as I told you then, _it had to

be_."



"I did not believe it then," he said stormily; "I refuse to believe it

now.  Your misery was self-created.  You voluntarily degraded yourself.

What result could there be?  Only suffering and shame."



"The good of others," she answered mournfully.  "You cannot see it yet;

but I know--it was foretold me.  I did my work there.  Sometimes I hope

it is finished; but I do not know.  One can never tell; at any time the

summons may come again.  God help me if it does."



"Is your life in danger, then?" he asked, and again that chill and

horror seemed to thrill the pulses of his beating heart.



"My life!"  She lifted her eyes and looked back at his with something

intensely mournful in her gaze.  "As if _that_ mattered!  What is my

life to me now, any more than it was then?  Did I count the cost--did I

call it a sacrifice?  Life--the mere material actual life of the body--

has never weighed with me for one moment.  And yet," she added, in a

dull, strange voice, "I failed at the crucial test!  Failed!--I, who had

denied to myself all woman's weakness, all mortal love, all fleshly

vanities--failed!  I am no more now than the veriest beginner on the

path.  I, who deemed myself so wise!"



Then she rose and came close to him, and laid her white hand on his arm.

"That," she said, "is why I needed you again.  You can help me--you can

tell me where and how I failed."



That light touch thrilled his veins like sorcery.  He bent his head and

passionately kissed the white, soft hand.  "You failed, oh, my Princess!

because you are still mortal woman.  Thank Heaven for it!  You failed

because memory and love were still strong in your heart.  You failed--

and I am by your side once more.  Oh, let the past be forgotten!  Brief

is life, but love is its Paradise, and into that Paradise our feet once

strayed.  Fate stayed them on the threshold.  But now--now--"



She raised her white face.  "Do not deceive yourself," she said.  "You

have always loved me too well--but I--"



"Only _let_ me love you!" he whispered passionately.  "It is honour

enough.  All the wide earth holds no other woman such as you.  Having

once known you, there has never been a disloyal thought within my heart.

Read it--see for yourself."



"I read it," she said, "even while the music was sounding in your ears,

as you stood on the terrace there below; even while you moved amidst

that chattering, flippant throng, and heard what they said of me.  No,

dear friend.  You have nothing in that great frank, loyal soul to hide.

But I--there is something that whispers I shall only bring you

suffering.  I am not for mortal love.  True, I cannot see beyond, but

Fear meets me on the threshold.  The hour I gave myself to you would

bring you an evil I dimly realise.  I cannot foretell, and I cannot

avert it; but it is there.  It lurks like a hidden foe where our lives

should join...  No, no!--do not tempt me.  Happiness is not for me, as

we count it on the earth plane."



"And in the next I may lose you altogether.  Oh listen--listen, and let

the woman defy the priestess.  Give me your love, and, even with Death

as its bridal gift I shall receive it as the deepest joy of earth."



"There," she said sadly, "speaks the mortal.  Passion sways your senses.

You too will lose your powers--and for what?--a few brief years of

joy--a longer darkness--then the old weary round--the old sad effort to

climb the long stairway from the bottom rung that once you proudly

spurned.  It was not this that Channa taught us in the sweet peace of

our youth--it was not this for which our souls thirsted, and to which

our faces were set."



"Channa is dead, and to the dead all is peace.  Even he said that Life's

one good gift was Love."



"True, but not selfish love.  `The feet of the soul must be washed in

the blood of the heart.'  Love to all humanity--to the poor--the sad--

the suffering.  Love, even to the Fate that gives us sorrow and

misfortune.  Love to the eternal and immutable.  Love for all that is

purest and best in each life with which we mingle.  Such a love is not

sensual--not earthly.  It gives without necessity of return; it is the

soul's devotion, not the heart's impulse.  But you are not content with

loving me, you claim mine in return, and so far as I have lost or you

have gained a firmer foothold since last we met, so far you can compel

my lower nature to answer yours.  We have loved before, and unhappy was

our fate.  Once more we meet, and your cry is still for me.  And I--"



She ceased; her arms fell to her side.  Her face, lovely beyond all mere

mortal loveliness, looked back to his yearning, passionate gaze.  Had

she been temptress, devil, saint, there could have been but one answer

from the throbbing heart and leaping pulse of manhood.  He caught her to

his heart, and his lips drank from hers the sweetness that only earthly

passion drains from earthly love.



She did not resist.  She lay there like a white lily in the moonlight,

but her lips were cold as marble and her eyes held the mute sorrow of

despair, not the rapture of a granted joy.



------------------------------------------------------------------------







CHAPTER SIX.



ENCHANTMENT.



When a proud woman yields to the entreaties of a lover, she yields with

a grander humility, a more complete self-surrender, than one to whom

coquetry and conquests are natural attributes of vanity.



The Princess Zairoff, to whom men's admiration was as familiar as the

air of Heaven, who possessed rank and wealth and loveliness such as

dower few women, had yet never granted to one human being a sign of

tenderness, or unveiled, so to speak, the deep strange depths of her

strange nature, to any beseechment.



But now, for one brief hour she threw back the portals of emotion.  She

was a woman, pure and simple.  The man beside her was the one man in the

world to whom her memory had been faithful.  Boy and girl they had known

each other in years long past.  As boy and girl they had shared in the

same tastes, and been penetrated with the same desires for the Mystic

and the Unknown.



Living in a remote part of India under very careless guardianship, and

with no one to care for their pursuits, or remark them, they had made

the acquaintance of a learned and somewhat mysterious native, and from

his lips they first heard some hints of the wonders that nature reveals

to the earnest student.  As time went on they were separated--the boy

was sent to England, the girl remained in the East.  When they met again

he was a young lieutenant in an infantry regiment stationed at one of

the most popular stations of a popular Presidency, and she was the

reigning queen of the same station.  Again fate parted them.  Two years

went by.  Their next meeting was in Egypt, where she was travelling with

her guardian.



Julian Estcourt had learnt his heart's secret by then, but there was a

coldness, a strangeness, about the girl who had been his boyhood's

friend that kept him back from anything bearing the imputation of

love-making.



Much as they were together, long and frequent as were their talks, those

talks were yet curiously impersonal for their age and sex, and, however

much the young man's heart might throb with its hidden passion, there

yet lay between them a barrier, a restraint, light, yet strangely

strong, and his lips never dared betray the secret of his long-cherished

devotion.



Another separation--another meeting.  Time had worked changes in both.

She was a beautiful woman, proud, cold, queenly--he had acquired

strength of character, loftier ideals, and a sense of the value of

intellectual gifts, which had kept him singularly free from and

indifferent to, the temptations of the senses.  He had learnt to drink

mental stimulants with avidity.  He had made one or two brilliant

successes in literature, and was looked upon as a supremely "odd fish,"

by his brother officers.



That third meeting decided his fate.  He spoke out his love, spurred on

by a rivalry he had good cause to dread, but spoke to no purpose.

Calmly, though with a sorrow she did not attempt to disguise, she told

her old playmate and friend that her choice was made.  She was going to

marry the old, vicious, and fabulously wealthy Russian Prince, Fedor

Ivanovitch Zairoff.  She made no pretence of caring for the man whom,

out of a host of suitors, she had selected to wed.  When her young lover

stormed and upbraided her she only raised those wonderful stag-like eyes

to his face and said:



"I have a reason, Julian.  I cannot explain it.  I dare not say more.

Believe me I could not make you happy, _it would not be permitted_."



And having long ago learnt that arguments were utterly useless before

_that_ formula, he had to stand aside--to crush back a strong and

unconquerable passion--to see her pass from his sight and knowledge--and

to bear his life as best he could, with that feeling in his heart of

having staked all on one throw, and lost, that makes so many men

desperate and vicious.  That it did not make Julian Estcourt so was

entirely due to great strength of moral character, and a belief in the

responsibilities with which life is charged, and for the abuse of which

it is destined to suffer in future states or conditions, as well as in

its present.



If such belief were universally accepted and pursued, we should soon

cease to hear those ridiculous and humiliating phrases with which

popular favourites are extenuated for the reckless and disgraceful waste

of mind, energy, and usefulness, occasioned by some trifling

disappointment or misfortune.  There would be no more sins glossed over

as "sowing wild oats," and "having his fling," or "driven to the bad,"

because once an individual feels he is responsible to _himself_ for

undue physical indulgences--for laws of natural life set at naught, and

spiritual impulses disregarded--he will try to emerge from the slough of

evil, and he will learn with startling rapidity to value all joys of the

senses less and less.  There can be no high order of morality without

this sense of responsibility, for when a man feels he is moulding his

own character, forming, as it were, fresh links in the chain of

endurance, adding by every act and thought and word to that personality

he is bound to confront as _himself_, to re-inhabit as himself, and to

judge as himself, then life rises into an importance that words cannot

convey, but which the soul alone recognises and feels in those better

moments that are mercifully granted to each and all of us.



So Julian Estcourt took up his burden--saddened, aged, embittered

perhaps, but not one whit more inclined to squander the gifts of life or

the fruits of discipline than he had been in his dreamy, studious youth.



He neither sought distraction in evil and dissipated courses, nor death

by any of those foolhardy and rash exploits which have far too often

been glorified as "courage" or "pluck."



He was graver, more reticent, more studious than of yore, and he found

his reward, though few even of his intimate associates were aware of his

abnormal gifts, or his superior knowledge.  Such was the man who, still

in the prime of life's best years, still with thirst unslaked for that

one divine draught of love which, once at least, is offered to mortal

lips, stood now in the soft December moonlight by the side of the woman

he had worshipped for long in secret and in pain, and cried aloud in

triumph to his heart, "At last happiness is mine!"



His whole consciousness was pervaded with a sense of ecstasy that seemed

to make all past pain and regret sink into utter insignificance.  To

stand there by her side, to drink in that wonderful beauty of face and

form, was a joy that brought absolute forgetfulness of everything

outside and apart from its new and magical acquisition.  The world was

forgotten.  Even the possibility of a formal and imperative ceremonial

by which his newly-won treasure must be secured to himself at last,

barely flashed across his consciousness.  He did not trouble himself to

put it into words.  He listened to the brief disjointed fragments of her

speech--fragments which gave a dim picture of her life in these empty

years of division.  Now and then he spoke of himself.  She listened.

Once she turned to him with an impulse of tenderness strange in one so

cold and self-possessed.



"Ah!" she cried, softly, "I have made you suffer... but it was not my

will...  Oh, always believe that...  And I will give you compensation.--

I can promise it--now."



They seemed to him the sweetest words that ever fell from mortal lips,

and no less sweet--though infinitely puzzling--was that exquisite

humility with which she crowned the wonder of her self-surrender.  Yet

even as he heard his brain grew bewildered--his senses seemed to reel.

Strange thoughts and shapes seemed to hover around him, and all the

soft, dim space of night appeared a black and peopled horror.  For a

moment he felt that consciousness was forsaking him... that the shock of

this unexpected joy was beyond his strength to bear.  Dizzy and sick he

swayed suddenly forwards.--A cool hand touched his brow--a voice reached

his ear.  With a mighty effort he shook off the paralysing weakness, and

sank down by the side of his enchantress.



"Is it a dream?" he murmured, vaguely; "shall I wake to-morrow and know

you have mocked me again?"



"Nay, my beloved," she whispered; "this--is no dream...  Never again

shall I mock you.  I am but a woman now who loves.  Earth holds no

weaker thing."



------------------------------------------------------------------------



When Julian Estcourt entered the public drawing-room, nearly two hours

after he had left it, several curious eyes turned towards him.  The

card-players had finished their game and broken up into various groups.

A few men were yawning and apparently meditating a retreat to the

smoking-room.  No one seemed particularly energetic, but the entrance of

that tall soldierly figure struck a new note of interest in the languid

assemblage.  He seemed to bring--as it were--a breeze of vitality, a

sense of freshness and energy along with him from the starlit air and

the pine-scented woods.  His head was erect, his eyes shone with the

radiance of happiness, a certain sense of pride--of triumph--and yet of

deep intense content, was in his aspect and his smile.



Mrs Ray Jefferson, her spirits still unimpaired by losses at "poker,"

was the first to remark audibly on the change.



"Why, Colonel!" she said.  "Have _you_ been having a Turkish Bath?

Guess you look as fresh and perky as if you'd taken a new lease of

life."



He laughed.  "The only bath I have taken," he said, "is one of

moonlight.  You should all be out on the terrace.  Far healthier and

more enjoyable than these hot, gas-lit rooms, I assure you."



"The terrace," said Mrs Jefferson, looking at him with a sudden stern

accusing glance.  "Ladies and gentlemen, what did I tell you?  I--do--

believe--"



She paused dramatically, every eye turned fully and searchingly upon the

handsome face and erect figure so calmly and easily confronting this

sudden criticism.



"Well?" he said at last.  "What is it you believe?"



"You've seen--her," burst out Mrs Jefferson eagerly.  "Now Colonel, no

tricks--plain yes or no; I'm certain sure you've seen her--my Mystery.

Haven't you?"



"I will not pretend," he said, "to misunderstand you.  I have met an old

friend, and I hope soon to have the pleasure of introducing her to you

all.  Not with any mystery about her, as our American friend seems

determined to suppose, but simply as the Princess Zairoff--of whom you

may have heard before this."



There was a buzz--a stir--a confused murmur.  "Heard of her--I should

think so.  You never mean to say she's _here_?  I thought she was in

Russia--"



"Gracious!" almost shrieked Mrs Jefferson.  "Why it was her husband who

died so mysteriously, on the eve of that awful conspiracy.  You never

mean to say, Colonel Estcourt, that you know her.  Why she's one of the

celebrities of Europe, and to come here, to this quiet place--and

_incognito_?"



"Do you not think," he said, "that the fact of being quiet and unknown

would just be the one fact she would appreciate?  I hope I am not

claiming too much from your courtesy when I say that the privilege of

her society can only be obtained by a due regard to her wishes in that

respect.  She wishes only to be known as Madame Zairoff, here."



"I'm sure," exclaimed Mrs Jefferson eagerly, "I'm only too willing to

promise anything for the privilege of seeing her.  Isn't that the

general opinion also?"



There was a murmur of assent, specially eager on the part of the men.



"I can only assure you," continued Colonel Estcourt gravely, "that you

will not regret the slight inconvenience of repressing personal

curiosity, for Madame Zairoff is a woman whose gifts and graces are of a

marvellous nature and calculated to delight the most critical society.

As Mrs Jefferson told us, she is here for her health.  It is an

incident we cannot deplore if we are to benefit by her society."



"You'd better all look out for your hearts, gentlemen," laughed Mrs

Jefferson gaily and excitedly.  "I assure you I don't believe there's

another woman in the world like her.  I've seen her under trying

circumstances, and I give you my word of honour that a woman who can

preserve any charm of personal appearance under the ordeal of a Turkish

Bath--"



There came a discreet little cough from the neighbourhood of Mrs

Masterman.  The little American stopped abruptly.



"I'd best say no more," she said.  Then she laughed.  "All the same, if

you only could see us--"







CHAPTER SEVEN.



CURIOSITY.



There was suppressed but general excitement throughout the hotel all the

next day.



Someone had caught sight of the Princess Zairoff, who had driven out

after luncheon in a low open carriage with three horses harnessed

abreast in Russian fashion, that went like the wind.  Colonel Estcourt

was beside her, and curiosity was rife as to how he should have known

her, and whether accident only was responsible for the meeting of two

people, one of whom had come from Russia, and the other from India, to

this prosaic English nook, _for their health_.



Mrs Masterman sniffed ominously, as one who scents scandal and

impropriety in facts that do not adapt themselves to every-day rules of

life.  A few other women, suffering from one or other of the fashionable

complaints in vogue at this season, agreed with her, that "it certainly

looked very odd."  They did not specify the "it," but they were quite

convinced of the oddity.  It did not occur to them to reflect that there

was not the slightest reason for any mystery on the part of the

Princess, she being perfectly free and untrammelled, or that Colonel

Estcourt had been singularly gloomy and depressed before Mrs

Jefferson's graphic description of the mysterious beauty attracted his

notice.



There is a certain class of people who always shake their heads, and

purse up their lips, at the mere suggestion of "chance," or "accident,"

having a fortunate or happy application.  They do not apply the same

train of reasoning to the reverse side of the picture; the bias of their

nature is evidently suspicious.  These are the minds that refuse to

credit those little misfortunes of picnic and pleasure parties, by which

young people lose themselves in mysterious ways, and get into wrong

boats and carriages, and generally contrive to upset the plans of their

elders, when these plans have been framed with a deeper regard for

rationality than for romance.  Mrs Masterman belonged to this class,

which doubtless has its uses, though those uses are not plainly evident

on the surface of life; she spent the day in gloomy hints, and

mysterious shakes of the head, and insinuations that no good was ever

known to spring from a superabundance of feminine charms, which, in the

course of nature, must have an evil tendency, and be productive of

overweening vanity, extravagance, and even immorality.



Still, even evil prognostications cannot quell the fires of curiosity in

the female breast, and every woman in the hotel made her toilette with

special care on this eventful evening, as befitting one who owed it to

her sex to vindicate even the smallest personal attraction in the

presence of rivalry.  Colonel Estcourt was not at dinner, so his

presence did not restrain comment and speculation, and the tongues did

quite as much work as the knives and forks.



"I do wonder what sort of gown she'll wear," sighed Mrs Ray Jefferson,

who was attired in a "creation" of the great French man-milliner,

accursed by husbands of fashionable wives, and whose power is only

another note in that ascending scale of absurdity struck by the hands of

fashion.



"Perhaps she won't come down in the drawing-room at all," said Mrs

Masterman spitefully, after listening for some time to the remarks

around her.  "Colonel Estcourt did not specify any particular night."



"Oh, I'm sure she'll come," said Mrs Jefferson, whose nature was

specially happy in always assuring her of what she desired.  "I've got

an impression that she will--they never fail me.  You know I've a

singularly magnetic organisation.  A great spiritualist in Boston once

told me I only needed developing to exhibit extraordinary powers.  But I

hadn't the time or the patience to go in thoroughly for psychic

development.  Besides it's really a very exacting pursuit."



"Exacting rubbish!" exclaimed Mrs Masterman impatiently; "I can't stand

all that bosh about higher powers, and developing magnetism.  Of course

there are a set of people who'd believe anything that seemed to give

them a superior organisation; it's only another way of pandering to

human vanity.  Spiritualism is perfect rubbish.  I've seen and heard

enough of it to know.  I once held a _seance_ at my house, just to

convince myself as to its being a trick or not, I was told that the

medium could materialise spirit forms.  I, of course, asked some people

to meet him, and we selected a room and put him behind a screen as he

desired, and there we all sat in the dark, like so many fools, for about

half-an-hour.--"



"Well," interposed Mrs Jefferson eagerly, "and did you have any

manifestation?"



"Oh, yes," laughed the gouty sufferer grimly, "a very material one

indeed.  By some accident the medium knocked down the screen just after

we'd seen a spirit face floating _above_ it.  In the confusion some one

struck a light, and there was our medium--standing on the chair without

his coat, and wrapping some transparent India muslin about himself,

which had been dipped in phosphorus I believe, so that it gave out a

curious shimmering light in the dark.  You may suppose I never went in

for materialistic _seances_ again."



"Still," said Mrs Jefferson, "although you may have been tricked, it

doesn't stand to reason that spiritualism _is_ trickery.  I've come from

the very core and centre of it--so to speak.  I've been at more

_seances_ than I could count, and I've seen tests applied that _prove_

the manifestations are genuine.  Still there are heaps of professional

mediums who are not to be depended on, I grant.  If you want to know the

truth of spiritualism, you can always work it out for yourself.  That's

quite possible, only it's a deal of trouble."



"I don't believe in it," reiterated Mrs Masterman stubbornly.  "All

mediums are cheats and humbugs."



"Oh!" said Mrs Jefferson.  "If it comes to exceptions laying down the

rule, where are we?  The other day a clergyman was taken before the

courts for drunkenness, but I suppose you're not going to say all

clergymen are drunkards.  A doctor poisoned a patient by mistake, but

surely we're not to class our dear medical men as poisoners and

murderers on that account.  It's just the same with any abnormal or

extraordinary facts that set up a new theory for investigation.

Impostors are sure to creep in, and the lazy and the indifferent and the

sceptical call their exposure `results.'  Depend on it we don't half

investigate subjects now-a-days, and we suffer for it by giving place

and opportunity for the development of a certain class of beings who

prey on our credulity, and make profit out of our indolence and

superstition."



"There's something in spiritualism, you bet," drawled the nasal voice of

Mr Ray Jefferson.  "I've had messages written to me, and things said

that no third person could possibly have known about."



"Ah, slate writing," sneered Mrs Masterman.  "I've seen that too.  Just

another trick."



"How do you explain that?" asked Mrs Jefferson quickly.



"Well, this way.  I went to two or three different mediums so as to test

them all.  I found they had no objections to bringing your own slates

and writing your own questions, but while they held the slate under the

table they kept you talking to distract your attention, and from time to

time they got convulsive jerks and movements by which it was quite

possible for them to see what was written.  Then you heard a scratching

(the medium probably had a little bit of pencil in his finger-nail), and

your answer was given you.  Well, let that pass for what it's worth, but

I always noticed the medium asked if I wouldn't like a message, and when

I said `yes,' he brought out _his own slate_."



"But," said Mrs Jefferson, "didn't he let you examine it first?"



"Oh yes, and wiped it over with a damp cloth.  Then it was held under

the table, and in a few seconds covered with `spirit-writing.'  But I

found out afterwards that you can buy slates with a _false cover_, this

cover fits within the frame and is exactly like the other side of the

slate, but, _your spirit-message is already written_, a touch makes the

cover drop off, the medium covers it with his foot in case you should

look under the table, out comes the slate, and there you are!"



"On," said Mrs Jefferson angrily, "it's plain you've only been to the

charlatans and impostors of spiritualism.  Why, I've had a message

written in a _locked_ slate while I held the key and held the slate too.

What do you say to that?"



"I've only your word for it," said Mrs Masterman sarcastically.  "My

slates were never locked."



"And I've only _your_ word for what you've told us," answered Mrs

Jefferson with rising wrath.  "I suppose my evidence may be as

trustworthy."



"Well," interposed another voice, "my view of spiritualism is, that it's

an intensely humiliating idea after you've done with this world to be at

the beck and call of any other human being who can make you go through a

variety of tricks, as if you were a performing dog, in order to convince

people still in the body that there is another life.  If that other life

permits us to come back here and play tambourines, and knock furniture

about, and write silly and ambiguous messages on slates, I don't--

myself--think it's a very desirable one."



This view of the question produced a blank silence.  It proceeded from a

gentleman who was supposed to be a little "odd"--partly because he spoke

seldom, and then with a startling originality, on any subject of

discussion.



Mr and Mrs Ray Jefferson looked at one another, somewhat dismayed.

Mrs Masterman smiled triumphantly, the young poet murmured something

vague about the inestimable beauty of sublime "mysteries," but the

subject was temporarily extinguished.  The only side hitherto considered

had been the `phenomenal,' and people--once the idea was originated--

felt really inclined to think that after all, when they quitted the

earth plane, it would not be a very elevating prospect to find

themselves dragged back to give _seances_ and perform tricks like a

French poodle in order to convince their friends and relatives that they

were _still in existence_!



The conversation only went on in subdued murmurs, and presently there

was a feminine move towards the drawing-room.



Once there the great subject as to whether Madame Zairoff would or would

not appear that evening, was again freely discussed.  That it was an

equally interesting probability to the sterner sex was soon made evident

by the unusual alacrity with which they joined the circle.  They broke

up into groups and knots, scattered through the length of the handsome,

brilliantly lighted room, but a curious restlessness was apparent; no

one settled down to cards or music.  Even the "odd" individual moved

about and dropped cynical remarks along the route of his progress,

instead of sitting down to backgammon as was his wont.  A few other

misguided individuals, of the male sex, offered and accepted bets _sotto

voce_ on the chances of the Unknown appearing.



At last, when expectation had been strained almost to breaking point, it

was set at rest.  The doors were thrown open, and, lightly leaning on

Colonel Estcourt's arm, appeared Mrs Jefferson's much talked of, and

beautiful "Mystery."







CHAPTER EIGHT.



SURPRISE.



An involuntary hush fell upon the whole assemblage.  Not a man or woman

there but felt their breath come a little quicker, their hearts beat

with suppressed excitement, as that perfect figure, with its magical

indolent grace, swept slowly through the room and into their midst.



It was the usual homage paid to Princess Zairoff, for she possessed that

rare and delicate mixture of indifference, languor, and disdain that is

in itself a distinction, and makes ordinary womanhood and beauty

suddenly feel coarse and commonplace.



She paused before Mrs Ray Jefferson, and greeted her with a soft

indescribable grace, and after a few minutes' conversation permitted

herself to be introduced to a few of the group around the little

American.  That perfect ease of manner, which held not a vestige of

condescension, soon exerted its charm.  One after another drew near that

envied circle, anxious to pick up some stray pearl of speech from those

lovely lips.  The women forgot to be envious, because she never for one

moment forgot or ignored them.  Even gouty Mrs Masterman found that her

ailment had been remembered, and was sympathetically enquired about in a

way to which she was entirely unaccustomed.  The poet talked as if he

drew in inspiration with every glance from those starry eyes, the

musician at her request moved to the piano and played some of his "Music

of the Future," and it no longer seemed incomprehensible.  A sense of

exhilaration, of pleasure, of content, spread through the group, and

animated discussion, and gave even ordinary conversation a sudden grace

and charm.



It was to be expected before the evening was over, that that

conversation would ascend by natural gradations from the ordinary to the

intellectual, yet no one could tell exactly how or when it began to do

so, any more than they could describe the strange yet clear logic by

which this one woman set to rights various perplexing problems, and gave

the key as it were to a nobler and higher order of eclectic philosophy

than they had yet ventured upon.



To Mrs Ray Jefferson, that discussion in the Baths had acted as the

stimulus of an olive to the palate.  She was all eagerness to resume it.



"I hope, Madame Zairoff," she said, in her brisk, lively, fashion, "that

you will give me a little enlightenment about what you said yesterday.

This is just a leisure time with most of us, and I suppose mental

culture is not incompatible with hygienic pursuits."



"Assuredly not," said the Princess, smiling.  "The more you cultivate

the mind the less you feel or care for the ailments of the body, and to

give those ailments even occasional insignificance, is to first forget,

and then banish them.  If you draw your mind away from the thought of

pain, you cease to feel pain."



"But that would require a far stronger mental capacity than we possess,"

said Mrs Masterman.  Then she suddenly remembered that she had not felt

a single gouty twinge the whole evening, because her mental

consciousness had been unusually excited.  This remembrance made her

grow suddenly thoughtful and attentive to the discussion.



"I think," said Princess Zairoff, gently; "that we all make a great

mistake in setting any absolute limit to our mental capacity.  It is

quite within our own power to dwarf or extend it.  If we are content to

rest satisfied with a small amount of knowledge we can do so, and even

cease to suffer in our own self-esteem by feeling we are stupid, or

indolent, or ignorant.  Our perceptions are gradually blunted, and

society is kind enough to case most of its remarks and opinions in a

sugar-coating, so that the real truth never reaches us.  We gradually

find, then, that an opinion that soothes our personal vanity and

self-esteem is a very pleasant opinion.  So long as we cherish that

falsehood, so long do we blunt our faculties of progress.  Now it seems

a very extraordinary thing to me, who have long been accustomed to

investigate and direct the psychic side of nature, to find such numbers

and numbers of people who don't believe in _any psychic laws at all_,

far less care to investigate them as knowledge.  The reason is simply

this, that they all are convinced that _one_ trivial, petty earth-life

is the one life for which they were created and are responsible,

therefore the only one they feel bound to investigate."



She paused and looked at the circle of grave and wondering faces.



"You have heard of the law of Karma, I suppose?" she said.



There was a murmur, vague, spontaneous, or doubtful, according to the

amount of comprehension excited by the question.



"It is a pity," resumed the Princess, "that it is not more generally

understood.  What is the difficulty?  I learnt it in my childhood just

as your English children learn their catechism.  You have taken up the

doctrine of Evolution very strongly, but Karma is its very leading law,

so to speak.  Man is perpetually working out and developing afresh the

energies, aspirations, and character with which his spirit was

originally endowed.  He becomes, as it were, the product of the better

part of himself, that struggles to the surface again and again during

periods of incarceration in the flesh."



"Then you would convey that we all live over and over again?"



"Most certainly.  It is the only rational way to account for the

injustice, the sorrows, and the miseries of earth.  It gives long

opportunities for the modification of character; it acts as retribution

to the evil and the vicious and the selfish; it gives a far deeper sense

of responsibility than the shallow acceptance of mere creeds, because a

man's good or evil deeds become a series of actions with inevitable

consequences.  If you teach him that he can throw off the results of a

bad life, and of all it has entailed upon his fellow man, by a brief

spell of penitence, or a blind, irrational faith in the sacrifice of a

Being he has neglected and ignored during the greater part of that life,

you really are only pandering to the selfish and cowardly side of his

nature."



A little shudder ran through the group at these bold words.  Mrs Ray

Jefferson lifted her head and cast glances of triumph about, as one who

should say, "I told you she would shock you all!"



There was scarcely a man or woman there who did not attend church on

Sundays, and who had not managed to make a comfortable compact between

the tenets of religion and the demands of social and worldly pleasures.

Not one who, if taken to task on the momentous subject of a spiritual

future, could have given any rational explanation of why he or she held

certain vague ideas on the subject of salvation, or put off the deeper

consideration of the subject to some indefinite period when they would

have had their fill of vanities, and lost either the means or the desire

to pursue them.



And yet there was a subtle _frou-frou_ of rustling skirts as the women

drew slightly away, and a decided appearance of discomfort on the faces

of the men, to whom an unpleasant truth was suddenly and sharply

conveyed, and who found themselves strangely powerless to combat, or

argue out its real meaning.







CHAPTER NINE.



DISCUSSION.



Colonel Estcourt came to the rescue.



"No doubt," he said, "the subject and this view of the subject seems a

little strange to our friends here.  We must remember they have not been

accustomed to hear it freely discussed, as we have."



"It _is_ strange," said Mrs Jefferson, rallying her energies, "but we

should not shirk its consideration for that reason.  I quite agree with

Madame Zairoff that people don't think half seriously enough of their

real natures, the mysterious inner _something_ which we all feel we

possess, but whose voice we stifle in the din of the world.  And yet,"

she added, sighing pathetically as she looked at the great Worth's

`creation,'--"the vanities are very pleasant.  Why should we turn

anchorites?"



"There is not the slightest necessity to do that," said the princess,

smiling at the unuttered thought she had read in that glance.  "Far from

it.  The gravest duties of life are generally those that meet us in the

world, and are called forth by our actions in that world.  All lives are

not meant to be isolated, and certainly none for the whole period of

earth life.  A person would have to be very sure that he was _free_ to

cut himself adrift from his fellows before he would even be permitted to

do it."



"Permitted!" echoed Mrs Jefferson, rather vaguely.  "But by whom?"



"The teachers of occult science," answered the Princess Zairoff.



"But who are they?" exclaimed the little American.



"That I cannot tell you," she answered, gravely.  "They exist, and their

influence is already beginning to make itself felt.  But it would be a

poor triumph to unveil the highest wisdom that humanity can ever learn,

in order to satisfy the idle and the curious, and the lovers of marvels.

Those who desire to learn can always do so, but nothing is forced upon

you, or even obtruded.  I should not have opened my lips on the subject

had you not expressed a desire to hear something about it."



"I suppose," said Mrs Jefferson, eagerly, "you yourself are a believer

in occultism?"



"Madame Zairoff is a great deal more than that," said Colonel Estcourt;

"she is one of its most earnest students and most ardent votaries.  If

you knew half of her marvellous powers you would congratulate yourselves

upon being permitted to receive her, unless, indeed," he added, with a

questioning glance at the beautiful woman beside him, "she has a fancy

to make converts."



The men became eager of entreaties to her so made, but the women held

back a little.



Princess Zairoff, however, assured them she had no intention of

proselytising.  "It is quite true I am deeply interested in this

subject," she said, "but I should be sorry to bore you all with my

views, or the reasons for my holding those views.  Psychic inquiry

demands a great deal more than cursory study.  There are many mysteries

of nature that men have looked upon as enigmas, until patience and

research have solved them for them.  Then they marvel how they could

have been blind so long!  Magnetism, spiritualism, and clairvoyance have

all their mystical, as well as their explicable, side.  It is only

because they don't readily lend themselves to the comprehension of our

material nature, that we try to scoff them into the limbo of absurdity

and imposture."



"Ah," said Mrs Jefferson.  "Talking of clairvoyance, _that_ I do

believe in.  I knew a coloured woman in America--the way that woman

would tell you things--it was enough to make your flesh creep!  She'd

just go quietly off to sleep, and you might ask her anything you liked,

and she'd tell you; and it was all as true as possible."



The princess met Julian Estcourt's eyes, and smiled strangely.  Mrs

Jefferson caught the glance.



"Perhaps," she said, "you're a clairvoyant?"



"I used to be," she said, gravely.  "Perhaps my faculties have grown

blunted, for want of use.  They are far from being as keen as they were

in India.  However," and she smiled at the circle of faces, "I wonder if

any of you would believe me if I told you what you were talking about at

dinner time.  First of all, you must remember, your conversation could

not have been betrayed to me by my friend, as he was not there, and that

my rooms are on the opposite wing to the dining saloon.  Well, you

discussed different phases of spiritualism.  This lady," she indicated

Mrs Masterman, "gave her experiences of imposture; you," looking at

Mrs Jefferson, "combated those experiences by your own, and this

gentleman."--she smiled at the cynical individual, who was hovering on

the outskirts of the circle--"silenced you all by reducing your theories

to strong commonsense facts.  Shall I quote his own words?  After the

rate people have been running after spiritual phenomena, they are

absolutely refreshing.  He said that it was an intensely humiliating

idea to find oneself at the beck and call of any other human being when

you imagined you had done with this life."



"Good gracious!" almost screamed Mrs Jefferson, "but how on earth did

you hear all this?  It's positively alarming."



"Well," said the princess, still smiling at the pale and

conscience-stricken faces, "you see I have a--faculty shall I call it?--

that enables me to hear and see anything I am curious about, or

interested in.  I don't believe I could even explain how I do it; but it

seems easy and natural enough to myself.  I only paid you a brief visit

to-night, more that I might have a little bit of proof to give you, that

the powers I spoke of do exist, and are capable of being trained to

almost any extent, if the motives for developing them are good.  Have I

convinced you?"



She rose as she spoke, and stood facing them in her beautiful indolent

grace.  She was garbed in some white soft stuff, which floated round her

like a cloud, the wide hanging sleeves were lined with faint shell-like

pink, and fell away from her bare lovely arms to the hem of her floating

draperies.  She looked like some goddess of mythology, rather than a

living woman, and as Julian Estcourt gazed at her he felt a sudden

thrill of awe.



Could that more than mortal beauty ever really be his--his in the common

prose of possession that can never be disassociated with marriage--the

prose that is to the delicate subtle beauty of love, what the rough

touch is to the wings of the butterfly, the bloom of the grape?



For a moment the thought seemed like sacrilege.  He could have fallen at

her feet in a sudden adoration of the divine beauty and purity of

embodied womanhood.  "If ever she has lived before," he said in his

heart, "it must have been as a vestal virgin, or a martyred saint.

Where in the world is such another woman?"



The voice of the cynical philosopher broke on his ear and disturbed his

thoughts.  "Madame, it is my humble opinion that you could convince us

of anything you desired.  Happy are those who have so charming a

disciple to expound their doctrines, happier still the fortunate few to

whom those doctrines are to be expounded by lips so lovely and a heart

so wise."



Ere the circle had quite recovered from its astonishment at hearing a

speech so flattering uttered by their surly Diogenes, they had parted to

make way for the beautiful stranger, and the last gleam of her snowy

robes had floated through the doorway, as a cloud melts into the

darkness of descending night.



There was a sort of long-drawn breath, a feeling as of long tension

suddenly set free, a turning as if by one accord to one another.  Then--

well, then all the tongues leaped into action, and for the remainder of

that evening, like Thackeray's folk "At the Springs," they talked, and

they talked, _and they talked_.







CHAPTER TEN.



PREMONITION.



When the Princess Zairoff was in the privacy of her own boudoir, she

turned to Colonel Estcourt in a sudden appeal:



"Why did you make me go, Julian?" she said.  "I knew I should only shock

them.  I can't ever put up with that languid ignorant curiosity."



"I think it will do them good to be shocked," he said, with a smile.

"Give them something to think of beside their ailments.  And I had a

special reason," he went on with a deeper note of tenderness in his

voice--"I do not wish you to shut yourself away as you have been doing.

You will grow morbid and dissatisfied with life.  I want you to take a

healthy interest in it once again."



She had thrown herself on a low cushioned lounge before the bright wood

fire.  He took a chair beside her.  She seemed to lapse into profound

thought, and he watched her beautiful grave face with adoring eyes.



"I wish," she said suddenly, "one could live a free, simple,

uncriticised life.  Do you remember the old days among the wild hills?

The cool grey dawns... the sharp sweet air... the long gallops over the

rough roads by the rice fields... the strange temples... the songs of

the snake-charmers?  Ah, we were happy then, Julian, happier than we

ever realised."



"May we not be still happier?" he said earnestly.  "Life has a graver

and a wider meaning, it is true, but that should only give us a deeper

power of appreciation."



A strange smile touched her lips; a smile of mystery, and of dreamy,

unfathomable regret.



"We shall never be happier," she said, "than we were then.  I have

always felt that... yes, I know what you would ask.  Did I love you

then?  Yes, Julian, with all my heart and soul... and yet--and yet--I

could have been nothing more to you than a sister, a friend.  There was

a purpose in my marriage."



She ceased speaking.  For a moment her eyes closed, her head sank back

wearily on the soft cushions.



Presently she opened them, and met his anxious gaze.  "No, I did not

faint," she said.  "But, why I know not, that sense of blankness and

dizziness always comes over me when I speak on that subject.  There is

something I wish, yet dread, to remember--but, just as I am on the point

of grasping it, there is a blank."



"Do not speak of that time," he said passionately.  "I hate to think you

were the wife of that man--it was sacrilege... you--my pure-souled

goddess."



"He was a bad man," she said.  "But, up to a certain point, I could

always escape and defy him.  He was a coward at heart, and he was afraid

of me."



Then suddenly she stretched out her arm and touched his shoulder with a

timid, caressing movement.  "You need not be jealous of those years, my

beloved," she said softly.  "No man would, who knew them and valued them

for what they were to me."



He sank on his knees, and folded his arms about her.  "Ah, queen of

mine," he said, "it is only natural that I should be jealous of the

lightest touch, or look, or word, that were once another's privilege.

Therein lies the only sting in my happiness--"



"Does not that prove it is of earth--earthly?" she said, as her deep

mournful eyes looked back to his own.  "I believe, Julian, it would be

better, even now, if we were to part.  I have always that dread upon my

soul, that I am destined to bring you suffering--misfortune--"



"Bring me what you will," he interrupted passionately, "but do not speak

of parting!  Rather suffering and trial at your hands, oh, my life's

love, than the greatest peace and prosperity from any other woman's!"



"I wish you loved me less," she said sadly.  "But I am not forbidden to

accept your love now; only, I have warned you, do not forget.  And

now--" she added suddenly: "Put me to sleep... it is so long, so long,

since I have known real rest, such as you used to give me."



He rose slowly and stood beside her, as she nestled back amidst her

cushions.  A strange calm and chill seemed to fold him in its peace, and

the throbbing fires of pain and longing died slowly out of vein and

pulse.  He laid one hand gently on the beautiful white brow; his eyes

met hers, and the glance seemed like a command.  The lids drooped, the

long, soft lashes fell like a fringe on the delicate, flushed cheek.

One long, sobbing breath left her lips; then a beautiful serenity and

calm seemed to enfold her.  Like a statue, she lay there, motionless,

stirless; lifeless, one would have thought, save for the faint regular

breath that stole forth from the parted lips.



Julian Estcourt stood for a moment in perfect silence by her side.  Then

he moved away, and, drawing aside the _portieres_ which separated the

boudoir from the adjoining room, he called softly to her maid.

"Felicie," he said, "your mistress will sleep for two hours; see that

she is not disturbed."



------------------------------------------------------------------------



Once out in the cool night-air, Julian Estcourt gave the rein to thought

and memory.  The march of events had been rapid.  It seemed difficult to

realise that he really stood in the light of an accepted lover to the

woman who, but the previous day, he deemed at the other end of the

world... difficult to realise that she loved him--and had loved him

through all the blank, desolate years of absence and suffering they had

both endured.



Her warning came ever and again like a living voice across the fevered

train of his thoughts.  But he was no whit more inclined to listen to it

here, in the calmness and soberness of solitude, than when her own lips

had spoken it, and the charm of her own presence had swept away prudence

and self-restraint.



"It may not be wise," he said in his heart, "but I have not the strength

to deny myself the only happiness I have ever pictured as possible.  It

is not as if I had frittered away my life on other women--on mere

sensual pleasures.  From my boyhood up to the present hour her power has

been the same--her charm for me the same, I love her.  That says all,

and yet not half enough.  Human nature is weak.  I had dreamt of another

life--of a higher and nobler field of duty, apart from the selfish joys

that are inseparable from mere human ties--but I can yield that dream up

without a regret.  I can turn back from the threshold I have crossed...

May there not be a purpose in our meeting like this--in the prospect of

our union?  If the time has come to teach, and to speak out boldly what

has long been veiled in mysticism and doubt, where could a teacher so

eloquent be found, or one whose natural gifts and loveliness could make

those teachings of so much weight? and I--I, too, can help and protect

her.  Our souls need not descend from the spiritual level they have

attained--they may meet and touch, and yet expand in the duality of

perfect love and perfect comprehension.  It is a glorious thought," and

he lifted his eyes to the starry heights, that to him held all the

mystery of peopled worlds--and were no mere pin-pricks of light, created

to illuminate _one_.  "A beautiful thought--God grant it may be

realised!"



But even as his eyes rested on the solemn splendour of the heavens--even

as the human passions of the senses grew stilled beneath the loftier

aspirations of the soul--even as that involuntary prayer sprang from

heart to lips, some inner consciousness whispered like a warning

voice--"_it cannot be_."



He started as if that sound were audible.  A cold and sudden terror

swept over his body like a chilling wind.  "Bah," he cried.  "What a

nervous fool I am!  Is this all my love has done for me--made me like a

frightened child, starting at shadows?"



He turned abruptly, and went within to seek his own room.



It was just midnight.  Lights were being extinguished in the public

rooms and corridors--silence and sleep were settling down upon the vast

building.



Colonel Estcourt exchanged his evening clothes for the comfort of

dressing-gown and slippers, and then threw himself into an easy chair

before the fire which was blazing brightly and cheerfully in the grate.



It was the conventional hotel bedroom.  A dressing-table stood in the

window; the bed, curtained and draped, looked inviting in its corner.  A

lamp stood on a small table littered with books and papers; an array of

pipes and cigar-holders were strewn carelessly on the marble

mantelpiece.  A sense of brightness and commonplace comfort permeated

the atmosphere, and were sensibly soothing after the chill of the cool

December night.



He took a cigar from his case and lit it, and threw himself back and

smoked at his ease.



As he did so, he heard a clock in the distance strike the quarter after

midnight; mechanically he counted the strokes.  "She will wake now," he

said, half aloud.  The sound of his voice startled himself in the

stillness of the room.  As its echoes died away he glanced nervously

round.  Then his face paled to the hues of death, his eyes dilated.

Midway in the room a veiled misty figure seemed to float--transparent

and yet distinct--and he saw its arm stretched out towards himself with

a sudden impressive gesture.



He tossed the cigar into the grate, then bent his head as if in

submission.



"Is it the summons--at last?" he said, faintly.



If answer there was, it was audible only to himself.  To anyone looking

on, it only seemed as if a sudden dreamy lassitude had overtaken him;

his head sank back against the chair, his eyes closed, his face grew

calm and peaceful, and, like a tired child, he fell asleep.







CHAPTER ELEVEN.



THE DREAM.



As Julian Estcourt's eyes closed, it seemed to him that with a sudden

sharp spasm of pain he tore himself away from that sleeping sentient

portion of humanity which was his representation, and then, without

effort or consciousness of his own, he seemed floating swiftly along

over a dark and misty space.  A great sea tossed and moaned beneath him.

He felt that someone was beside him, but he had no desire to question

its personality.  Now and then lights flashed through the dusky shadows

which enveloped him, and as they flashed he saw vivid pictures of plains

and cities and mountains.



Over one such city, bathed in the clear lucid flame of the full moon, he

seemed to pause.  He saw bridges, piles of buildings, dark flowing

canals, a strange medley of streets, some broad and beautiful, others

dark, narrow and pestilential, reeking with the fumes of dram-shops.



There was snow on the ground, sleighs were gliding swiftly to and fro.

People spoke but seldom; an air of restraint, of fear, of rebellion

impressed him, as the furtive glances and brief whispers became pregnant

with meaning.



Gradually, as he moved through the hurrying crowd, he was conscious of a

name constantly on their lips.  It was muttered by the voices of tipsy

men reeling from their vile dens of intoxication, by the lips of painted

women as they drew their furs around their tawdry finery, by the

artisans with their pinched faces and hungry eyes, by all the classes to

whom life is a bitter struggle with poverty and necessity.



To and fro he seemed to move, without haste, and yet with the rapidity

of thought.  In the magnificence of gilded saloons, in the snow-covered

street, in the haunts of poverty and vice, always and always that one

word was tossed to and fro in every accent of hate and opprobrium.  And

when in wonder he turned to the shape floating still beside him, and

would have questioned the meaning of that word, it stayed the question

on his lips with a mute gesture of silence.



Then, strange to say, he seemed to gather into his own consciousness a

sense of deep implacable hatred.  A hatred that thrilled the air as with

poisoned breath, and beat in the pulses of living men to whom existence

was brutalised by tyranny and vice.  The sense of this awful murderous

Hate, at last grew terrible as a burden, so fully and consciously did he

recognise it, so clearly did he see of what it was capable, and so

mysteriously did it seem to breathe about the very air through which he

moved.



It filled the pulses of the night with a horror from which he shrank

aghast, it stretched a blood-red hand over the white drifts of unsullied

snow, it painted out the brilliant hues of luxury, and threw yet darker

shadows over the sad homes of want and misery and crime.



And more and more he strained every nerve to catch the meaning of that

word which was its embodiment, and again and again he failed.



Suddenly the scene changed.  He was in a poor chamber, barely and

miserably furnished.  It lay in the centre of a pile of buildings facing

a half-frozen canal.  It seemed to him that the building consisted of

hosts of small tenements, all swarming with human life, but he had

passed up the common stairway seemingly unnoticed, and entered this

special room.



It was tenanted by two people.  An old woman of some three-score years,

with a thin worn face and grey hair banded over her hollow temples.  She

was thinly clad, and had an old tippet of yellow fur over her shoulders.

She sat near the stove.  Before her stood a young man in the dress of a

Petersburg student.  They were talking low and earnestly.  Again that

word reached him, again the full sense of its meaning eluded his grasp.



Suddenly the comprehension of the scene became clear to him.  He saw

they were mother and son, that he was relating some incident to her with

a suppressed enthusiasm that yet made itself audible in his deep,

thrilling tone, and visible in the glow and sparkle of his eye.



"She is an angel," he said at last.  "We do well to trust her--but what

a risk, think of it, mother--five hundred lives, and only a few hours to

decide their fate."



The woman's face grew white, her feeble limbs shivered as with an ague

fit.  "My son," she moaned, "my only one--and you, too, may be

sacrificed.  Oh, unhappy country, unhappy fate that makes it ours!  But

you are right.  The Princess is an angel of goodness; she will save us.

She has said it."



They both turned involuntarily towards a small image, before which a

lamp burned.  He saw them kneel hand in hand before it; then the room

faded into darkness--he was in another place now.



A sense of luxury, of perfume, of dreamy warmth, and then he saw,

opening before him in a vista of exquisite colour, a suite of softly

lighted chambers.  They seemed to glow like jewels, each perfect in the

richness and loveliness of its setting, and at the farthest end of one

of them a woman reclined on a couch of white furs.  She was wrapped in a

loose gown of thick white silk, bordered also with snowy fur, and her

lovely hair was unbound, and fell in a long trail of dusky splendour

over the colourless purity of her surroundings.



Her eyes were wide open, and full of a fear that was almost horror, and,

as if to account for it, he seemed suddenly to hear, coming through the

fragrant stillness of those virginal chambers, the dull heavy step of a

man.  She raised herself on one lovely bare arm, her hand went to her

heart, then slowly her eyes were upraised as if in some dumb prayer for

strength.  A strange frozen calm came over the perfect features.  The

face looked as if carved in marble.



Nearer and nearer came the heavy step, reeling and uncertain now, yet

stumbling with drunken obstinacy towards some goal to which the leaden

senses pointed their brutal desires.



Up to this time, Julian Estcourt had only been conscious of a passive

blind submission to the force controlling him; but now power seemed to

thrill him, desire seemed struggling to life, the will awakened from its

lethargy, and a god-like strength and force seemed to spring into life,

held in check but for a moment, as the increased vigilance of sense bade

him watch yet a little longer.



With breath reeking of drink, with bloodshot eyes and reeling step, the

satyr entered.  Yet so great was the spell and charm of that womanly

purity and dauntless pride, that even lust and tyranny sank abashed on

the threshold, and a certain shame and hesitancy were visible in the

flushed face and bloodshot eyes.



"Why are you here?" asked the woman calmly.  "Have you mistaken your

way?"



"No,"--and the intruder advanced with sudden boldness.  "I have come to

ask if you are still of the same mind--still intent on destroying your

_friends_."  His laugh rang out mockingly.  "Fine friends truly for a

Princess Zairoff.  I gave you till to-night--come, which is to be

sacrificed--your womanly scruples, or the five hundred lives you have

fooled into security?"



Then she sprang to her feet, a statue no longer, but a living,

passionate woman.



"I have borne enough," she cried.  "Beware how you tempt the power that

has been strong enough to keep me from you all these years.  Beware,

too, how, once again, you stain your soul with innocent blood.

Thousands of voices are crying against you even now.  Thousands of years

of suffering on your part will not avail to buy you peace in the future.

I have prayed for these unfortunates, I have begged their lives at your

hands on my very knees.  Do not tempt me too far.  I say again--you do

not know what it is you do."



He laughed brutally.  "I know," he said, "that you shall pay for their

lives, or sacrifice them.  I have waited long enough.  I am sick of

hearing men rave about your beauty, and feeling that that beauty is no

more to me than if I were a beggar at my own gates."



"Do you forget," she said solemnly, "the compact we made?  I am not at

any man's choice, or disposal.  My life has a mission to accomplish, and

you, with all your brutal desires and evil passions, cannot turn that

life from its destined purpose.  Do not forget the warnings you have

already received."



So beautiful she looked, standing there in her floating, snowy

draperies, with her solemn, mysterious eyes fixed upon that sullen,

lowering face.  Beautiful and mysterious as some vestal priestess

defending the secrets of her Order.  But that beauty, for once, seemed

less to subjugate than to inflame the evil desires of that lower nature

to which it was bound.



"I will listen no more to vague threats," he said fiercely.  "I have

paid a heavy enough price for you.  I mean to enjoy my purchase.  See,

here is the list--they are fairly trapped--a word from you and they are

safe--these impatient fools.  Keep silence--and the knout, the mines,

the slow torturing death of Siberia, awaits them all.  Now, once again--

your answer?"



He drew nearer--his eyes aflame--his arms outstretched.



Then a change, wild and fearful, as that of the tropical tornado to a

southern landscape, swept over that lovely form.



Her eyes flashed, her figure seemed to dilate.  Slowly she raised her

arm and stretched it towards that brutal ravisher...



------------------------------------------------------------------------



Struggling, panting, tearing, as it were, against a power that bade him

hearken to that terrible answer, Julian Estcourt cried or seemed to cry

aloud in an agony of entreaty.



Then a rushing noise as of an unloosed torrent was in his ears; a dull,

confused pain beat like clanging hammers in his brain.



His eyes opened and he found himself, bathed in the cold sweat of more

than mortal terror, lying face downwards on the floor of his own

bedroom.



------------------------------------------------------------------------



In a blind, dazed fashion he struggled to his feet and rushed to the

window and let the cool night air blow over his face.  Every limb was

trembling; he could not think with any clearness.



In some dim, unconscious fashion he groped for his watch, found it, and

looked at the time.  A quarter-past one.  Only an hour had passed--an

hour--and he felt as if centuries had swept over his head in the vivid

horrors of that awful dream.



"But it was only a dream," he cried aloud, drawing in deep panting

breaths of the pine-scented air.  "Oh! thank God.  Thank God, it was

only a dream!"



And he sank on his knees and sobbed like a child in the star-lit

solitude of the night.







CHAPTER TWELVE.



EFFECTS.



The next day, when Colonel Estcourt sent to know if the Princess Zairoff

would receive him, he was informed she was ill, and could see no one.



Feeling strangely disinclined for mere ordinary society, he ordered his

horse to be brought round and spent the greater portion of the day in

long, fierce gallops over the miles of stretching sand that framed in

the bay.



The sky was chill and grey; a cold wind blew from the sea and dashed the

salt foam in his face as the waves swept stormily in.  But the dull sky

and the stormy sea suited his mood, and seemed to string up the relaxed

tension of his nerves.



"Nature is man's best physician after all," he said to himself, reining

in his beautiful Arab at last, and baring his brow to the fresh breeze.

"Even as she is his best friend.  Only we don't believe it.  We live in

the world and follow the ways of the world, until our faculties are

blunted, our natures demoralised, our tastes vitiated, our energies

enfeebled.  How many lands I have travelled over, how many cities I have

seen, and yet I verily believe that the wild Sioux in his prairies, and

the wandering Bedouin of the desert, have more of real manhood than we.

Yes; and get more real enjoyment out of life."



It was quite dusk before he reached the hotel.  The country was all new

and strange to him, and he had missed his way more than once.  But

though he was tired, and stiff, and hungry, he felt that his mental

energies were braced, his mind at ease, and the disturbing and torturing

memories of the previous night no longer tormented him.



At dinner he sat next to Mrs Ray Jefferson, who was radiant and voluble

as ever.



She had a great deal to say about the Princess, who, it appeared, had

again spent the morning in the Baths.



"She looked ill," said the little American.  "Awfully white and languid.

I asked her if she had seen a ghost.  There was something scared and

strange about her.  I surmise it's nerves.  It was odd, too," and she

lowered her voice as if taking the Colonel into a special confidence.

"But she went off to sleep in the hot room.  Nothing could waken her.  I

got rather frightened."



His face looked disturbed.  "To sleep?" he said.  "That is rather

unusual, is it not?"



"Oh, plenty of us go to sleep in the cooling-room," said Mrs Jefferson,

"but I never saw anyone do it in any of the others.  She was talking to

me, and then quite suddenly she said `I feel sleepy.  Please do not

speak.  I shall wake in a quarter of an hour.'  And so she did."



"You did not try to waken her, I suppose?" asked Colonel Estcourt

anxiously.



"Well, I did, but it was no use, so I let her be.  I saw she was all

right, because she breathed naturally, and her heart beat quite

regularly.  Still, it seemed odd.  I asked her maid afterwards about it.

She's a pretty little Frenchwoman, and always waits in the cooling-room

for her mistress.  But she didn't seem to think anything of it.  She

said she very often does that, and it is best not to try and waken her.

I must say she seemed much better afterwards.  Brighter and more alert.

What a lovely creature she is!" she added enthusiastically.  "I suppose

you know you're the most envied person in the hotel at this present

moment?"



He smiled, but his face still looked anxious and disturbed.



"Because I have the privilege of being her friend?" he said.  "Well, I

am not going to deny that it _is_ a privilege--a most enviable one."



"I should think," said Mrs Jefferson meaningly, "it is also one that

has its dangers."



The calm grey eyes met her sharp inquisitive glance, but were utterly

unrevealing.



"I will not affect to misunderstand you," he said, "but there are men

who covet danger for its own sake.  They may seem foolhardy, but they

are only accountable to themselves for the risks they run."



"Well," said Mrs Jefferson warmly, "I'm only a woman, and yet if it's

possible to fall in love with one of my own sex, I've done it.  She's

perfectly charmed me.  I can't get her out of my head for a single

moment.  It's not only her wonderful beauty, but her mind.  As for our

poet," she added, laughing, "he's quite gone.  He's done nothing all day

but moon about under the pine trees.  Writing sonnets, I guess, and

hoping to catch a glimpse of her.  All useless--she's not left the hotel

to-day, and I suppose she'll not favour us to night."



Colonel Estcourt was silent.  Conversation was more or less general, but

it sounded vague and unmeaning to him.  He heard a voice on his left

holding forth with energy, but he did not heed it until Mrs Jefferson

touched his arm and whispered an entreaty.



"Do listen," she said, "it's Diogenes.  Isn't he coming out?  I surmise

it's _her_ influence.  You remember last night?"



"An atheist," said the dogmatic voice of the individual who had given

that common-sense view of spiritualism the previous evening, "must be a

fool of the most complete type.  Because he doubts what _men_ teach of

God, is no reason for doubting the existence of God.  I grant that the

Reverend John Smith, with his high-falutin' trappings of Ritualism on

one side, and the Reverend Josiah Stiggins, with his coarse and

commonplace familiarity with the Almighty (whose personality he has the

effrontery to expound as if he were discussing the characteristics of an

ordinary mortal), on the other, are enough to drive hundreds of people

out of the pale of Christianity, and force them to take refuge in

defiance and opposition.  But, all the same, the expectation of another

life is a rooted belief in the minds of all men, quite apart from

religion.  Even the savage has it.  If we call it human nature to eat,

drink, fight, love, or desire, it must also be human nature that gives

universal assent to this idea of an after existence.  The fact of

finding it in all races is but a proof that Man is the creation of a

Power that intends him for a far wider range of existence than he sees

before him.  There are many things affirmed by man's consciousness that

he cannot really or logically explain.  Yet it is a narrow reasoning

that bids us reject the inexplicable."



"Yet you reject spiritualism," said Mrs Jefferson quickly.



"Not at all, my dear madam.  I only reject the humiliating and degrading

trickery that is its sensational form.  I only repeat what I said

yesterday, that no lofty or educated mind could do anything but resent

the idea of being subjugated to a mere material will, and being forced

by that will to perform conjuring tricks in order that a small portion

of the civilised world should gape, and gaze, and cry out `How

wonderful!'  To deny that spirits exist, aye and work, would be to deny

the very crudest faith in Christianity."



"There is no doubt," said Colonel Estcourt, "that everything _is_

explicable, but we must wait for the growth and development of our

higher natures before we can comprehend half the mysteries of the higher

life.  The great fault of the materialist and the scientist is, that

they would fain bring everything down to the level of their _present_

comprehension, instead of patiently waiting the completion of their

future spiritual forces.  It is quite evident that we are not meant to

attain our full mental stature on the earth-plane, or what would be left

to achieve in the countless ages of immortality?  Man believes in

immortality and yet seems to contemplate it as a state of stagnation and

quiescence.  Why he believes in it he cannot fully explain.  It is, as

you said before, a consciousness given to the races of humanity, but no

more capable of commonplace analysis than time, or space, or thought."



"The beautiful is as the cloud that floats in radiant space," murmured

the poet.  "The very vagueness of form permits the eye to clothe it in

the loveliest tints of Fancy."



"Now that's what I call rational," murmured Mrs Jefferson in Colonel

Estcourt's ear.  "Do you think he knows what he means.  I guess he

don't...  Gracious!"



She started, and suddenly grasped his arm.  "Look," she said, "there's

the princess in the doorway.  Is she coming in?  No!  She's moving away.

I believe she's going into the drawing-room after all.  Did you see

her?"



"No," said Colonel Estcourt.  "Are you sure it was the princess?"



His face looked strangely pale.  She saw that his hand trembled as he

laid down his knife on the plate before him.



"Sure?" exclaimed Mrs Jefferson, with asperity.  "Of course I'm sure!

It's not easy to mistake _her_, I fancy.  I can't think why you didn't

catch sight of her.  She just looked in as she passed, I suppose."



"No doubt," he said.  But the gravity and uneasiness of his face

deepened.



Just then one of the waiters paused beside Mrs Jefferson's chair.  She

turned eagerly to him.  "Watson," she said, "just oblige me by going to

the drawing-room and finding out if Madame Zairoff is there.  I guess,"

she added laughingly to Colonel Estcourt, "that I'm not going to waste

my time over thirteen courses if she is."



Still he did not speak, and his unusual pallor and gravity began to

affect the lively little American woman.  She helped herself to truffled

pheasant, and became absorbed in gastronomical duties.



Two or three minutes passed, when the man who had gone on her errand

returned.  She glanced eagerly up.



"Madame Zairoff is not in the drawing-room," he said in a low voice.  "I

met her maid on the stair-case, and she says that madame is not well

enough to leave her apartments this evening."



"But, good gracious me," began Mrs Jefferson, with angry impatience.

"I saw--"



"Hush," said Colonel Estcourt in a low, impressive voice.  "Oblige me by

saying nothing about it.  Remember, I too was looking in the same

direction, yet I saw--nothing."



Mrs Jefferson dropped her knife and fork and stared at him.



"Now, Colonel," she said, "am I in my senses, or am I not?  I've only

had iced water to drink.  I believe I'm a commonplace person eating a

commonplace, though very excellent, dinner.  Nothing's been playing

tricks with my nerves I can swear, and I do assure you that the Princess

Zairoff stood there in that doorway and looked in here, not five minutes

ago.  Why, I'll even tell you the gown she had on.  It was thick white

silk and had a border of soft-looking white fur.  There!" she added

triumphantly.  "You may go up to her rooms after dinner, and if she

hasn't got that gown on, and if she didn't come by that doorway--well--

I'll say I've gone stark staring mad!  That's so!"







CHAPTER THIRTEEN.



A PROMISE.



Just as the ladies had left the dining-room, a note was put into Colonel

Estcourt's hand.



He opened it and read the two brief lines it contained.  "I will see you

in my boudoir when you have finished dinner."



He pushed aside the glass he had just filled and left the table at once.



He knocked at the door of her room, and the low, sweet voice that bade

him enter, thrilled his heart with its accustomed sorcery.  He opened

the door, but as he stepped across the threshold, he suddenly paused,

and for a moment it seemed to him that his heart ceased to beat.  Was it

only chance that reproduced the dream-scene of the previous night, for

the suite of rooms were thrown open, and through the delicate amber

tints of the satin hangings gleamed the faint rose-hue of lamplight,

paling into opal in the farthest chamber but giving to all the soft and

glowing colouring he remembered so well.  Swiftly as his eyes took in

the picture, they seemed also to take in the lovely figure reclining

among soft snowy furs, robed in colourless silk bordered with the same

fur.



She raised herself on her arm as he approached.  "I have not treated you

well to-day, Julian," she said.  "But I have been ill--nervous--

disturbed.  I slept badly, and had terrible dreams.  You must forgive

me."



He bent over the extended hand and touched it with his lips.



"You are cold," she said.  "What is the matter?"



"I too, had a terrible dream," he said.  "I suppose the effects are

still upon me."  Then he looked calmly and fixedly at her.



"You were downstairs a few moments ago," he said.  "Why?"



She looked surprised.  "Did you see me?" she asked.



He shook his head.  "No," he said.  "It was your American friend."



Her face grew thoughtful.  "Then the power _is_ coming back," she said.

"I wonder why."



He seated himself beside her.  "Of course," he said, "it was not really

yourself?"



"I have not left this couch for three hours," she said.  "All the same,

I wanted to have a peep at you all."



"I hope you will not exercise that power too frequently," he said.  "You

know I never liked it."



"I know," she said, smiling up at his grave face, "that you were always

afraid I should not come back from my flights, but I always do.  _They_

send me--very much against my will--still, I must obey."



She sighed.  Then after a moment she put out her hand with a caressing

little gesture.  "What was your terrible dream?" she said.  "I see it is

troubling you still.  You are _distrait_ and absent.  Tell me."



He touched the white hand with his lips.



"I would rather not," he said, "because you were concerned in it, and it

seemed as if you were trying to reveal something or show me something

that I dreaded to see.  It was in fighting against seeing it that I

awoke."



She started from her reclining position and fixed her eyes on his face.

"Julian," she cried, in a sudden breathless way, "was it--was it?--No."

She broke off and wrung her hands helplessly.  "It has escaped me again.

I _cannot_ remember.  Oh, that I could!  It tortures me so.  Julian--"

and she looked at him appealingly.  "_You_ must help me--you must bring

it back.  I will not wed you till that mystery is solved.  Something

warns me against it."



"My dearest," he said soothingly, "do not excite yourself in this

fashion.  It can make no difference to me that there should be mystery

or tragedy in your past life.  Have I not always loved you?  Have we not

chosen the same path in life, only now we shall tread it side by side,

not one far in advance of the other?  The infinite delight of that

companionship shall not be marred by any memories of the past.  If I am

content to let it rest, surely you may be."



She drew herself away.  Her deep strange eyes looked coldly and yet

mournfully back to his yearning gaze.



"You were never a coward, Julian," she said.  "What is it you fear now?"



He threw himself on his knees by her side and buried his face in the

soft white furs.  She saw that he was trembling greatly.  "I cannot

tell," he said hoarsely.  "Would to God that I could!  But if you should

change, if you should repent--Oh! to lose your love now would kill me!"



She laid her hand on his bowed head.  "Rest assured you shall not lose

_that_," she said in her low thrilling voice.  "No, Julian, that is not

the danger--it threatens me, not you.  There will be no change on my

part, not so far as my love is concerned.  Will that assurance satisfy

you?"



"You need not ask that, beloved?  But why disturb our peace?  If I am

content--"



"There must be no secret between your soul and mine," she said solemnly.

"For what, think you, is your power granted, but that I may answer to

it, that I may lead you on the road--and that you, for me, may throw

open the portals?"



"In the future," he said eagerly, "I am content to do your will.  But

not now--not to draw the veil from our buried miseries.  Let them be as

dead things--out of sight and mind."



"You know," she said, "that nothing dies--not a life, or an act, or a

thought.  You may put the past out of sight, but it lives still--lives

in its hidden crimes, its secret sins, its evil and its good--lives to

haunt and shape our future, let that future dream as it will of

forgetfulness."



He rose from his knees, his face was still pale, but his eyes glowed

like living fire.



"When will you wed me, Estarah?" he asked, abruptly.



The soft colour flushed her cheek.  Her eyes drooped.



"My heart is yours," she said.  "My life lives but in the shadow of your

own.  Why should I withhold--this poor gift?"



She placed her hand in his, and let him draw her to his heart.  "I will

wed you when you will," she said, "but only if you yield to my

condition.  It is an easy one, Julian.  Why do you fear?"



Ah--why?  He could not answer that question to his own heart, much less

to hers.  He could not paint the shuddering horror which had forced him

to veil his eyes and shrink aghast from that last scene in his Dream.



Yet when he looked down on her in her pure womanly beauty, and felt the

clinging tenderness of her arms, and knew that among all the world of

men who had worshipped and wooed her, he alone had kept his place and

awakened a response of tenderness, he felt his heart thrill and glow

with sudden strength and pride.



"It shall be as you wish," he said.  "On the night that heralds our

bridal morn, I promise, if my power be still the same, that I will do

your bidding."



She lifted her face.  It was radiant with a strange mysterious joy.  "At

last," she said, brokenly--"at last I shall know.  Every page of my life

will be clear.  Heart to heart, soul to soul, so we shall stand, oh,

beloved!  You and I, with senses purified, with no secret unshared, with

spirits unfettered and souls at rest, so shall we greet our bridal morn.

For this did I brave the ordeal, for this have I faced almost the

bitterness of death--but the trial is almost over--the goal is almost

reached.  Go, now, my life's beloved, lest indeed my heart should break

beneath its weight of joy!  Go; but fear not.  I am yours for ever in

the life we know, and in the deep Unknown beyond I shall claim you

still!"







CHAPTER FOURTEEN.



THE DREAM INTERPRETED.



For some days no one in the hotel saw the Princess Zairoff.  But her

influence seemed to have left a distinct impression, judging from the

run on Buddhist literature at the different circulating libraries of the

town.  The "Occult World", "Isis Unveiled," and "Esoteric Buddhism" were

in great demand; so were various works on Mesmerism, Clairvoyance, and

Occult Science.



The poet plunged into "Zanoni," which he had read in the days of his

boyhood as one reads a fairy-tale, and he and Mrs Ray Jefferson, being

the greatest enthusiasts, held long and learned and quite unintelligible

discussions over these mysterious subjects, with a view to being able to

hold their own with the beautiful proselytiser when she should deign to

come amongst them all once more.



The weather had changed, and kept the invalids indoors, so there was

plenty of time for "serious reading," as Mrs Jefferson called it.



They took to calling the Princess "the Eastern mystery," and were quite

certain that she must be gifted with abnormal powers.  Mrs Jefferson

related the story of her appearance in the doorway, her belief in it

having long since been substantiated by Colonel Estcourt's reluctant

admission that the Princess was certainly attired in a white silk gown,

bordered and trimmed with white fur, when he went up to her rooms that

evening.



Mrs Masterman alone held out, and scoffed audibly at the mystic

literature, and what she called the "insane jabber" that went on in the

drawing-room every evening.



"Psychic phenomena, indeed!" the worthy lady would snort.  "Don't talk

to me about such rubbish!  It's just as bad as the mediums and the slate

writers."



"Dear madam," pleaded the gentle voice of the enamoured poet, "do not, I

pray you, confound these great mysteries with the strain of Human Error

running through their attempted explanation--an explanation only

intended to bring them down to the level of our material understandings.

Let me persuade you to read that most exquisite poem `The Light of

Asia.'"



"Light of your grandmother!" exclaimed Mrs Masterman with sublime

contempt.



"I fear," lamented the poet, "it never was granted to her.  She lived in

a benighted age.  She had not our privileges."



"And a very good thing too," said the purple-visaged dowager wrathfully.

"Privileges indeed!  Fine privileges, if honest, sober-minded

Christians are to learn the way to Heaven from heathens and idolaters.

You are all just as bad as those people Saint Paul speaks of, who were

always running after some new thing.  I'm happy to say my Bible and my

Church are good enough for me.  I don't want a new religion at my time

of life."



"The teachers in the Church are so very frequently our intellectual

inferiors," murmured the poet, "that they only excite commiseration, or

amusement."



"Well, I suppose they know their business," snapped Mrs Masterman, "I'm

sure no man would go into the Church if he didn't feel a call, and the

fact of his doing so and taking up that life should be enough to prevent

any right-minded person from ridiculing mere human frailties of voice

and manner and appearance."



"Unfortunately," murmured the poet, "I have been at college with several

embryo parsons.  But to the best of my recollection the only `special'

call they had for the _office_ was the call of some earthly relative or

friend who had a comfortable living at his disposal.  It seems to me--I

may be wrong, of course--but it really does seem to me that we have

quite reversed the old order of religious ministration.  At first every

worldly consideration, even the necessaries of life, were given up by

those who undertook the office.  Now, the office is only undertaken

_for_ the worldly considerations, and the necessities of life--"



"Oh," cried Mrs Masterman, losing her temper, which even at the best of

times was exceedingly hard to keep.  "You go off, young man, to your

`Lights of Asia,' and all your other idolatrous rubbish.  The truth is

this foreign woman has bewitched you all, and will end in making you

heathens like herself.  Thank goodness I've too much sense to listen to

her.  It's my belief she'll turn out a murderess, or a fire worshipper,

or something of that sort before we've seen the last of her.  I don't

like mysterious persons!  If she hadn't had big eyes, and a straight

nose, and a figure like those Venuses and creatures who hold the lamps

in the corridors, no one here would have troubled their heads about

her!"



And she swept away contemptuously, leaving the poet utterly aghast at

her last indignant speech.  He repeated it to Mrs Ray Jefferson, who

was reclining in a rocking-chair, endeavouring to comprehend "The Light

of Asia."  The endeavour, however, was not very successful, and she

hailed the approach of the poet with delight.  His account of the

conversation filled her with wrath and indignation.  The feelings might

have been partially due to Mrs Masterman's remembered snubs on the

matter of "feet," and "suppressed gout," at the Turkish Bath.  They

certainly rose strongly to the occasion, and, with the help of sundry

powerful Americanisms, gave a very fair display of vituperative

eloquence.



The poet was more and more convinced that there was only one perfect

woman in the world, and that was the beautiful creature whom he had

apostrophised in sonnets as:--



  "Mysterious Mystery, whose bright sad eyes,

  Wild as the roe, and deep with undreamt dreams."



  Etcetera, etcetera.



So he listened and sighed, and in a low and plaintive voice, significant

of hidden woe and much "soul suffering," to quote from another effusion,

he read to her fragments of the "Light of Asia," which she could not in

the least comprehend, but which she bluntly criticised as "not half bad

to listen to if you felt drowsy."



"Oh, but I do wish the Princess would come down," she said at last in

the intervals of a "selection."



"I've such hundreds of questions to ask her.  Seems to me she dropped

the seed in pretty fruitful soil the other night, for we're all just

`gone' on occultism.  Only we don't know anything about it.  Ah, there's

Colonel Estcourt, I'll ask him if it's possible to have her down this

evening.  I don't mind which body she comes in: the Astral or the

ordinary.  In fact, I think I should prefer the former.  Colonel!" she

called out, raising her voice.  "Come here, I want to speak to you."



She put her request to him as he obeyed her summons, and put it with an

earnestness and fervour that showed it was sincere, and not the formula

of idle curiosity.



"I don't know," he said, "if it will be possible, but, if the princess

consents, I will arrange that two or three of you shall have an

opportunity of witnessing how really marvellous her powers are.  She

never makes a display or show of them, for reasons which you cannot yet

understand, but, if she consents, I should like you, Mrs Jefferson, and

my young friend here (smiling at the poet's excited face), and one or

two other people interested in the matter, to come up to her boudoir

this evening.  I will just send up a note and ask."



"I could just worship you, Colonel," cried the little American,

ecstatically.  "It's real good of you to offer such a glorious treat to

us."



"Do not thank me yet," he said, smiling; "you do not know whether you

will be received."



At the same moment there came a sound in the air above their heads--

soft, clear, vibrating--like the faint echo of a silver bell.



Mrs Jefferson started, the poet turned pale.  Colonel Estcourt looked

at them gravely.



"It is the answer," he said.  "You may come.  She will receive us.  Who

else do you wish to invite?"



"Oh, my husband, if I may," cried Mrs Jefferson, eagerly, "and

Diogenes--he's so solid and sensible.  His imagination never plays

tricks with him."



"Very well," said Colonel Estcourt, "bring them also."



------------------------------------------------------------------------



The Princess Zairoff was seated in her boudoir reading, as the party

filed in, headed by Colonel Estcourt.



She rose and greeted them with the same sweet and gracious manner that

had so charmed Mrs Jefferson.



"I know why you are here," she said, as the little American burst into

vivacious explanations.  "I am quite ready to do anything Julian wishes.

You know--or, perhaps, you do not know--that he trained my

_clairvoyante_ faculties long ago.  They are natural to me, I suppose;

but you do not require to be told that even natural gifts are capable of

training and improving to almost any extent."  She turned to Mrs

Jefferson.  "You have some power," she said, "you saw me the other

night.  No one else did."



Mrs Jefferson looked highly gratified.  "Oh, Madame Zairoff," she

cried, "I'd give up everything in the world to have your wonderful

gifts."



"Even Worth's gowns?" said the princess, smiling.  "What about the

pleasant vanities we talked so much about?"



"Oh, bother the vanities.  I've found out life can be much more

interesting than when it's merely frivolous," said the American,

heartily.  "Is there anything I _could_ do to become an occultist?"



Colonel Estcourt laughed outright.



"My dear Mrs Jefferson," he said, "the life is not by any means easy,

or gratifying.  I think you had better consider it carefully, and weigh

it well in the balance with the `creations' of Worth, and the

magnificence of your diamonds, for somehow the two things won't pull

together, and you haven't even learnt the A B C of occult science yet."



"No," she said, seating herself, "I suppose not.  Well, please begin my

lesson."



"This will not be a lesson," he said, gravely, "only an illustration.

May I ask you all to be seated?"



They took various chairs and seats, and the princess threw herself on

the couch, nestling back among her favourite white bear-skins, with a

smile on her lips.



Colonel Estcourt removed a rose-shaded lamp from the stand, and placed

it behind her, so that the light should not shine directly into her

eyes.  They were all watching her intently in the full expectation of

something to be done or said that was mysterious and awe-inspiring.

Colonel Estcourt then seated himself on a chair opposite the couch.  For

a moment their eyes met and lingered in the gaze, then hers closed

softly, and she seemed to sleep as peacefully and gently as a child in

its cradle.



No one spoke.  Suddenly a voice broke the stillness--clear, sweet, and

sonorous--the voice of the sleeper, though her lips scarcely moved, nor

did the placid expression of her face change.



"What you desire to know is the storied wisdom of past ages, the fruits

of the deepest and most earnest research of which human minds are

capable.  These fruits have only been gathered after long and painful

study, after severe training of every spiritual faculty, and the

repression of all lower material inclinations and desires.  There is but

one among all who listen to me now, capable of undertaking such study,

or undergoing such an ordeal.  The day is at hand when he may choose it,

if he will.  They who bid me speak now, are willing that you should

learn some lesson to benefit yourselves, and your fellow men.  They say

to you, oh Poet, `Perfect those gifts of your higher nature--yet be not

of them vainglorious, since, humanly speaking, they are not yours, but

lent for a purpose, and the brief space of earth-life.'  Look upon every

beautiful thought, every gift of expression, as the direction of One who

has dowered you with the possibility of opening other eyes to the

beauty, and other minds to the understanding of such expression.

Remember there is a great truth in your favourite lines that _Karma_ is

`the total of a soul.'  `The things it did, the thoughts it had, the

Self it wove, with woof of viewless time, crossed on the warp invisible

of acts.'



"There is another listener here--one who has wrestled with the secrets

of Nature.  To him I say, `Be not over vain of the triumph gained by

simple accident of discovery.  Turn that discovery to better uses than

the mere amassing of wealth.  Let the poor, the sick, the needy, gain

health and happiness from your hands, and let their voices bless you for

good wrought amongst them.  For nothing is so pitiful and so abhorrent,

as the worship of wealth, and the selfishness that eats like a corroding

poison into the purer metal of the rich man's nature.  Your wealth will

only bring you happiness in so far as you use it to benefit others less

fortunate though equally deserving.  It is given you as a trial, not as

a reward.'--To you, oh Cynic, this message have I also: `Your eyes see

but through a veil of dulled and vainglorious senses.  Some truths you

have learned, but in the passage through your mind they take the colour

and shape of a distorted and embittered fancy.  You have a work to do,

and influence to do it; but your _will_ must become humble, and then you

will learn the sweets of true knowledge, and be able to disseminate

truth and wisdom.  Now you absorb it into your own mind, for your own

satisfaction, and for the poor triumph of discouraging those of lower

mental stature, and of natures lighter and grosser than your own.  To

the true Prophet and the true Philosopher, he himself is insignificant

before the great truths he has learnt, and his personal identity

willingly sinks into obscurity, so only that these truths may live.'"



For a moment she ceased, and the different faces looked curiously

uncomfortable and startled at so keen a vivisection of their inner

natures.  Mrs Ray Jefferson, however, feeling that she had been left

out in the cold, and anxious for a special message to herself, broke the

spell of silence.



"Have you nothing to say to me, Princess?" she asked beseechingly.



Then the beautiful head moved restlessly to and fro, and the face grew

less placid and child-like.  She began to speak, but now the words came

in quick disjointed fragments.  "They are standing beside you," she

said.  "I must go.  You may come with us, but not Julian.  Keep Julian

away... keep Julian away--"



"What does she mean?" cried Mrs Jefferson, turning pale.  "And--oh

gracious!" she cried to her husband, "look at Colonel Estcourt.  Is he

going to faint?"



All eyes turned on the Colonel.  He lay back on his chair white and

gasping.  "My God," he cried in a stifled voice.  "My power is gone.  I

can't hold her.  I can't keep her back."



"She is speaking again," cried Mrs Jefferson, in low, terrified

accents.  "Oh, I don't half like this.  I wish we had never come."



Then a great awe and stillness fell upon them, and, despite their terror

and their dread, every ear strained to catch the quick disjointed words

that fell from those strange lips.



"I am there...  How still the streets are, and the snow--how fast it

falls.  How they crowd round the palace gate to-night.  Stay the horses,

Ivan, I will speak...  Do not fear, my friends, your lives are safe.  I

promise it...  What is this?  My rooms?  How lonely they seem to-night.

`Alone?'  Yes, I am always alone.  No lover's step has ever echoed

through this cloistered silence.  Alone and sad.  Ah! how I have

suffered here...  What do they say?  It will be over soon, it will be

over--soon.  One more battle to win.  Let me summon all my courage now.

I have faced ordeals before.  I have forgotten woman's fears, and laid

aside woman's scruples.  Am I not pure?  Am I not brave?  Yet why do I

tremble?  One weakness is still unconquered, one human love burns true

and deep and steadfast in my heart.  I cannot cast it out.  I _will_

not; not even at your bidding; not even to make my task easier.



"A step in the silence...  Who dares to cross my chambers?  Courage, my

heart.  There on the threshold stand my White Guard.  Why should I fear?

Courage! courage--"



Like one carved in stone Julian Estcourt sat and listened.  The dumb

misery of a terrible expectance held every faculty in its iron grasp.

Was his dread to be realised?  It seemed so, for all control was gone; a

higher power had seized the reins.  She had escaped him, and an awful

horror was upon him lest he, in his folly and shortsightedness, had

assembled these people here only to be witnesses of the degradation of

the peerless creature he had so worshipped and so loved.



Spell-bound they sat and listened.  The rose-light from the lamps

falling upon their white, set faces, and the quivering tension of their

silent lips.



The voice of the sleeper went ruthlessly on.



Scene for scene, word for word, Julian Estcourt lived over again through

the wild dread and horror of his Dream.  Scene for scene, word for word,

those wondering startled listeners saw it reproduced, though to them it

was scarce intelligible.



At last, she reached the point where his endurance had snapped beneath

the strain of terror, but now his every force was numbed--his will

seemed paralysed.  One feeble helpless effort he made to lock those lips

into silence, to chain back the self-betrayal of that unconscious

speech.  But love had made him weak, and passion had stifled the acute,

unerring faculties that once had bent her to his will.



He was powerless.  He could only sit there dumbly--stupidly--listening

for what he felt was sure as the death stroke of the headsman to his

doomed victim.  Again she spoke.



"The steps approach--yet what is this?  _They_ are no longer on the

threshold.  I am alone--alone--yet what new power is mine!  My brain

seems to dilate!  Space can scarce confine me!  All fear has gone!  And

it is thus you would have me yield to your brutal force, your drunken,

degraded senses!  Back, rash intruder, touch me not if you value life!"



Then, while still they gazed and listened, the beautiful figure rose

slowly from its nest of snowy furs; rose and stood in its wonderful,

indolent, voluptuous grace, upright before those dazed and awe-struck

eyes.



But a change came over the quiet beauty of the face.  It seemed as if

some hidden flame had sprung to life and flashed and quivered in the

wide-opened eyes and convulsed features.  They saw a shiver, such as

shakes the sea before the blast of the coming tempest, bend and sway the

perfect form...



Once, twice, her lips opened, but no words came.  At last she seemed to

force the channels of speech, but the low sweet music of her voice was

harsh and jangled with passion.



"My answer?  Take it, ravisher and murderer of innocence and youth!

Die! in your crimes--Die!"



She stretched out her arm.  There came a hoarse cry, a crash, a heavy

fall.  Julian Estcourt lay upon the floor, white and senseless as the

dead.







CHAPTER FIFTEEN.



EXPIATION.



A severe attack of her "suppressed" enemy, and a nervous headache, the

result of the shock of the previous evening, had driven Mrs Ray

Jefferson to the Turkish bath as early as ten o'clock the morning after

that strange exhibition of Clairvoyance.



She had the rooms all to herself, and as she leant back in her

comfortable chair and dabbled her pretty bare feet in warm water; she

reflected in a troubled and disjointed fashion over all that had

occurred since that eventful morning when the beautiful "mystery" had

appeared before her standing in that curtained archway, which indeed

looked a prosaic enough portal, and not by any means the sort of

threshold for the development of occult science, or psychical marvels.



"She's completely unsettled me," she murmured plaintively.  "How I wish

I had never gone to her rooms last night.  And that poor Colonel

Estcourt--I wonder if he'll ever recover--they say he's never moved nor

spoken since they took him away last night.  I wonder what she really

meant, and if she did kill that man she spoke of.  I don't think it's

possible.  I expect she only _willed_ it, and that's not murder.  Ugh!"

and she shuddered even in the warmth of the hot room where she had

selected to go first.  "If the story leaks out--though I hope to

goodness it won't--how delighted that horrid Mrs Masterman will be.

She never liked her.  Well I'm--if that isn't the princess herself

coming in!  Her trance doesn't seem to have hurt her."



Slowly and languidly through the open doorway, the beautiful figure

swept in and up to the smaller chamber where sat the little American.



As Mrs Ray Jefferson looked at her, she became conscious of some subtle

intangible change that had shadowed, as it were, the marvellous beauty

of her face and form.  Her large deep eyes had lost their lustre, her

clear creamy skin looked dull and opaque.  Even the magnificent hair

seemed to have been robbed of its sheen, and here and there amidst its

masses gleamed a silvery thread.



Up to this moment her age had been a matter of much speculation, varying

from eighteen to twenty-six.  Now one would have said unhesitatingly

that she was a woman of at least thirty years, and a woman who did not

carry those years lightly.



She sat down by Mrs Jefferson, and spoke in a low nervous voice.  "I

knew I should find you here," she said.  "I want your help.  I think you

have always been my friend here.  Do me one service.  Tell me what

occurred in my room last night."



"Do you mean to say?" asked Mrs Jefferson, amazed, "that you don't

know?"



"Should I ask if I did?" she said, mournfully.  "A great weight and

terror are on my soul--yet I cannot explain them.  In some of my trances

I keep the memory of all I see; in some I lose it.  I know nothing of

what I said last night after you spoke and I parted from Julian.  It was

your voice that came between us.  You have great psychic power; but it

is undeveloped."



"Good gracious!" cried Mrs Jefferson; "then, if I'm responsible for

what happened last night, I'll have nothing more to do with Occultism as

long as I live."



"I can't tell why it was," resumed the Princess, mournfully.  "The chain

of communication broke, and I got away, and my great dread was that

Julian should suffer."



"Well, your dread is realised," said Mrs Jefferson.  "Don't you know

he's very ill?"



She started, and grew deadly white.  "Ill--Julian!  No; I did not know.

What is it?--serious do they say?"



"Very.  Some shock to the brain.  You know he was far from strong.  He

was only home from India on sick leave."



The princess was silent for a moment.  Her face looked inexpressibly

mournful.  Involuntarily her hand went to her heart, and she looked at

Mrs Jefferson with sad, appealing eyes.  "I have suffered a great

deal," she said, slowly.  "I only bore it for his sake--for the hope

they gave me that one day we should meet, and love, and taste the

happiness of life together.  Tell me, was it anything I said or revealed

that shocked him?"



"Well--I guess so," said the little American, uneasily.  "Of course, to

us it was all mysterious; but he seemed to make it out, and at last,

when you rose up and stretched out your arm and cried out, `Die! in your

crimes--_die_!' the Colonel just gave a sort of gasp, and crash went his

chair, and he lay there on the floor like a dead creature.  We were all

finely scared, I can tell you.  The odd part was that you went to sleep

again like a child, just as simply and quietly as possible, and my

husband and the poet, and poor old Diogenes, they got the Colonel to his

room, and laid him on the bed, and we sent for a doctor, and he's not

conscious yet.  That's all I can tell you."



The Princess Zairoff leant back on her chair white and silent.  She

asked no more questions.



Presently an attendant appeared with obsequious inquiries.  The princess

suddenly shivered.  "Ask them," she said, abruptly, "to bring up the

temperature to 300 degrees, I am cold."



"Cold!"  Mrs Jefferson stared.  "I guess it's as well I came here

first," she said, "for certainly I can't stand it 50 degrees hotter than

it is at present.  I'll go into the second room.  You see I'm reversing

the usual order this morning.  Three, two, one, instead of one, two,

three.  I'll sit just here by the door, so that we can still talk if you

wish.  I look like a boiled lobster, I'm sure."



Princess Zairoff said nothing.  But when the American had withdrawn, she

threw herself down on a couch near the wall.  By choosing it she was out

of sight of anyone in the adjoining room, though able to converse if she

wished.



That she did not wish was very evident.  No sooner was she alone than an

expression of intense anguish came over her face.  Her hands locked

themselves together, an agony far beyond the weakness of tears was in

her beautiful eyes.



"I have lost him," she cried, in a stifled whisper.  "Lost him for

ever... and it was for this we were brought together...  For this I was

commanded to learn the secret of my failure.  Yes, I, who thought myself

so wise, have failed...  Failed at the crucial test, because my passions

governed me... because my heart was weak, for sake of love...  Oh, my

lost strength--my lost self-restraint...  Must I again tread the weary

road... and only overcome to fail again?"



She turned aside and hid her face in her hands, while all that dusky

veil of rippling hair fell over her like a cloud.



"I am so human still," she moaned--"so human that, woman-like, I

deceived myself, and dreamt of love perfected here, when I might have

known--I might have known...  But, oh, to lose him thus!  To stand

before his eyes shamed, sin-stricken, criminal--I cannot bear that--it

is beyond my strength..."



A new fierce passion seemed suddenly to take possession of her soul.

She raised herself once more, and the old lovely light and splendour

glowed in her eyes.



"There is but one way to win his forgiveness," she cried breathlessly.

"He will pity me then... his heart will soften... he will remember what

I said on that strange happy night when once again we met...  I am but a

woman who loves.  Earth holds no weaker thing... and I loved you,

Julian... you only--you alone! always--always--always.  Men live for

love--a woman can but die.  For the life I took I give my own--it is

just...  Yet if but once, oh, beloved, I could see your pitying eyes,

and hear your tender voice... and know that you--forgave..."



The light faded from her face once more.  Only a hunted, despairing

creature leaned back on that solitary couch.



A voice came shrilly from the outer room: "Are you all right, Princess?

Can you really bear that heat?"



Monotonously--vaguely--her own voice replied: "I am all right--I do not

even feel the heat."



Then, all again grew still, and her eyes closed, and her heart beat in a

dull, laboured way.



Once more the shrill voice reached her; but it sounded far off, and

indistinct: "I hope you won't go off to sleep, like you did the last

time, Princess; you frightened me terribly."



The effort to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet

voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat:



"I shall not sleep--do not be alarmed."



Five minutes later, when Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her eyes from an

examination of her suffering foot, she was surprised to see the Princess

standing in the archway of the further room, exactly as she had done on

the first occasion of her visiting the Baths.



"Are you going?" she called out.  "How is it I never saw you pass

through the room?"



There was no answer--only the deep, wonderful eyes looked mournfully

back at her, and, even as she met the gaze, the form seemed to fade

away--the archway was vacant.



With a faint cry, Mrs Jefferson sprang to her feet, and rushed into the

inner room.  The intense heat stifled, and drove her back; but not

before she saw the Princess lying on the couch, where she had left

her... lying with closed eyes and folded hands; while on her pale, sad

lips a faint smile seemed still to shed its lingering life.



The frantic calls of the terrified woman summoned the attendants.  In a

moment, that motionless figure was lifted and carried into the adjoining

chamber.



But human science and human aid were powerless before a greater Mystery

than the Princess Zairoff had embodied.  The "Mystery of Death!"



THE END.