Some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with surprise as she lifted her eyes to mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for the inquiry.

"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed you had noticed it long ago; I mean, where it stands. The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And holding the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe they may be valuable, out-of-print, early editions. If," her voice faltered wistfully, "if Father ever forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and comes to visit us, he would love every musty old volume. Do you think Mother and he ever will, Cousin Roger?"

"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic parents are out of date. They must adjust themselves gradually when they realize Vere is—himself. Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where to find that bookcase?"

"Now? Why, of course!"

She led me across the hall to her sewing room. I cannot say that she sewed there very much, but she had chosen that title in preference to boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife. She had assembled here a spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers, a Hepplewhite sewing-table and chairs discovered about the house. Her canaries' cage hung above a great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which she kept gold-fish. A pipe of Vere's balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was not excluded.

In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled the chain of a lamp bright under a shade of peacock chintz, and watched me stoop to look at the faded bindings.

"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some time to find the book I want. You had better hurry back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a missing wife."

"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book tonight, then?"

"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your canaries?"

She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked my sleeve with a caressing doubt and remonstrance.

"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon it will be morning! Do you have to write your lovely music at night, Cousin Roger? You have been growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite well? You are so good that you should be happy, but—are you?"

"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why, how did your lazy, tune-spinning, frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of the family?"

"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan says so. You know, Cousin Roger, that I was over-educated in my childhood; my brain choked with little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all. We went to church Sundays because that was the correct thing to do. But I was almost a heathen when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about church. He doesn't trouble about the past, or life after death, or punishment for sin. He believes if one tries to be kind and straight, the big Kindness and Straightness takes care of everything. So I have learned to feel that way, too. It is a—a calm sort of feeling all the time, if you know what I mean. And that is the way you are good, although perhaps you never thought of it."

"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and walked with her to the foot of the stairs.

When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door, I went back to the sewing room and drew up a chair before the case of books.

Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy. They were a sober collection. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of the Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin Luther loaded the first shelf. I looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound sermons of a divine of whom I had never heard.

The lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above. Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus, Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of the row stood a thin, dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility. I took it out and opened the covers.

Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman. Beneath in old long-s type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the legend:

"Desire Michell, ye foule witch."

Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that panic should not drive me again nor my defense fall from within its walls. Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my own inner kingdom I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of upstairs while I read; glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the disturbing lamp.

The date stamped into the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Michell have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded witch by a bigoted generation.

Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart; eyes that even in this wretched picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls clustered about the brow and two massive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed bronze-colored braid up in my drawer——?

The volume was entitled "Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in Ye Colonies," by Abimelech Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to "Ye Foule Witch, Desire Michell."

As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed through the house, sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound, instantly ended, that is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a flash of lightning whipped across my eyes. But when I glanced toward the windows I saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.



CHAPTER XIV

"Beauty is a witch—" —MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

I will tear the core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections.

Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country." There he found a congregation, and they lived much respected. Their culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working neighbors. Young Mistress Michell was reputed learned in the use of simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a beauty exceeding the custom among godly women, to so great degree that sorcery should have been suspected of her."

However, sorcery was not suspected; not even when her fame spread among near-dwelling Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying Water on which the Sun is Shining. Admiration was her portion, then, with all the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she refused every proposal made to her father for her. She walked aloof and alone, until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's house.

This man's full name was not given, apparently through the writer's cautious respect for place and influence. He was vaguely described as goodly in appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied with riches. However he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not stated. He did come, saw Desire Michell, and fell as abjectly prostrate before her as any youth who never had left the village.

He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at the minister's house. But a day came when Master Michell forbade him to cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit had not been honorable to the maid.

Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public, and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in the spring.

Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled slowly across snowbound distances. With spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was rich in gold and grants of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a man of weight and influence, it seemed.

Sir Austin had married her.

Desire Michell shut herself in her father's house. The clergyman did not live many months after the humiliation. Alone, the girl lived. "Student," wrote Abimelech Fetherstone, "of black and bitter arts. Or as some say, having, like Bombastus de Hohenheim, a devil's bird enchained to do her will."

In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened. He burned with fever, anguish consumed him. Physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man. They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water. When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife and servants to send for the girl. In her pardon he saw his sole hope of life.

Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers were sent to the village. They were not even admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress Michell.

"Your master came himself to woo; let him come himself to plead."

That was the answer they received to carry back to the sick man.

Sir Austin heard, and submitted with trembling hope. Writhing in the anguish wasting him by day and night, he made the journey by coach and litter to Desire Michell's house. At her door-sill he implored entrance and pity. The door did not open.

It never opened for him. For three days in succession he was borne to her threshold, calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants and physician clustered about staring at the house which stood locked and blank of response. At night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.

On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Michell seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair "flowing down in grate bewty."

"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with me?" she calmly asked the men who gaped upon her. "How should I have harmed him, who came not near him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."

If she had been aged and ugly, she might have been hung. Gossip ran rife through the countryside. But indignation was strong against the man who had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and the matter slept for a time.

New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her windows in the deep night. The old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the blood of superstitious hearers.

There was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for Mistress Michell had been long and constant. One morning he was found dead on her doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his hand four words were scrawled in the snow: "Sara daughter of Ruel——"

There were those who could finish that quotation. Next Sabbath the new minister took as his text: "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." And he spoke of Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved by an evil spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last against Desire Michell. But when the officers came to arrest her, she was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.

"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a perfume she herself distilled of her learning in such matters; which was said to contain a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which she steeped her hair so that wherever she abode were sweet odours. So did she escape Justice, but shall not escape Hell's Damnation and Heaven's casting out."

I closed the book and laid it down.

Reading those dim, closely printed pages had taken time. I was astonished to find the window spaces gray with dawn, when I glanced that way. The night was past. Neither from Desire nor from the Thing without a name which had sent me to this book could I find out what I was expected to glean from the narration.

My enemy had made no conditions on directing me to the book. It had asked no price, uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached. I had come to an end; a corner had been turned. I had opened a door that could not be closed. How did I know this? Why?

Why was the fog against the windows this morning so like the fog that shrouded the unearthly sea opposite the Barrier?

By and by Cristina came downstairs and busied herself in the kitchen. Bagheera, who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded out to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the voices of Phillida and Vere drifted from above.

To have Phillida find me there in her sewing-room, finishing an all-night vigil, involved too many explanations. I did an unwise thing. From the lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such books as were readable by my knowledge, and carried the armful up to my room. After a hot bath and breakfast I would look over these companions of the New England witch book.



CHAPTER XV

"Not a drop of her blood was human, But she was made like a soft sweet woman." —LILITH.

The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.

There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not read the books I mean.

Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were, but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles.

Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it. Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As soon as possible, I left them.

Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say to Desire Michell if she came tonight?

Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.

Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?

"Sara the daughter of Ruel—who was beloved by an evil spirit who suffered none to come to her."

"There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a nobleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to behold, and for it refused rich marriages.... Until the Gospel of St. John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore noise."

I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Michell herself had alleged jealousy as the Thing's reason for attacking me.

What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium? Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right? Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.

The evening had passed to an hour when I might look for the girl to come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.

In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.

Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing, did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold phosphorescence of swamp and marsh?

A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.

"I am here," her familiar voice told me.

"Desire, you had to come, tonight."

Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might. She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a step.

"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for you; I knew that before I entered this room."

"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"

"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."

"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.

"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."

Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me anything so near an admission of love until now.

"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston. I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and spectres. I love you."

"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust me. Why?"

"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"

"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The gates soon close, now, upon me."

"What gates?" I demanded.

"Sacrifice and expiation."

"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the book of Desire Michell, downstairs."

I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In the hush, it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had done the night before, a slight shock as from some distant explosion. In my intentness upon the woman opposite me the tremor passed unheeded. She must answer me now, surely! Now——

She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her words apart:

"How did you—find—the book?"

"It told me—the Thing from out there," I admitted, sullenly defiant of her opinion.

She cried out sharply.

"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal madness—and you are here? Oh, you are lost, and the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow—yet you have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the Borderland? To brave the Loathesome Eyes so long—and fall this way at last! Yet—there may be a hope—since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go now. By all that man can dread for soul or body, go now."

"Not without you."

"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I shall never come here again. Take with you my gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind me. I make no reproach—if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have gone."

"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire——"

I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my table lay, as usual, a small electric torch. Every member of our household was provided with one for use in emergencies likely to occur in a country house, the time of candles being past. Now, rising in agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the flashlight's button. A beam of light poured across the darkness.

What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman? Were those a woman's draperies or part of the night fog that showed mere swirl upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes dark and almond shaped, then a drifting mass of gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering gold flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down out of vision, as aghast, I lifted my hand and the torch went out.

Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows?

"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoarse to my ears.

No answer. I felt myself alone.

I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.

Well, I had seen her at last—but how? A wan loveliness seemingly painted upon the canvas of the dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my suspicions, my love hurled coarsely at her like a command, my promise of security for her visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return?

Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books, that I might read, fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the comradeship that bound me to Desire Michell. How should I find her? How free us both?

The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull surprise I realized that considerable time had passed while I sat there. Still I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.

Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide, impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my whole body. My heart shuddered and staggered in its beating from pure shock.

"Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!"

The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach. Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too long. This was the new peril. This was what I had fled from, unknowing the source of my panic, the night before.

This was death.

A second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from some bitter ocean. This time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and hissing in its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt my heart stop, then reel on like a broken thing. Flecks of crimson spattered like foam against my eyelids.

The wave broke. The mass poured down the beach, tugging at me in its retreat. With the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.

The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to man.

That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after standing against my enemy so long?

Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame feller"?

Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam. The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued on, dying away down the creek.

As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its progress across the muffling softness of the rug, across the polished wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.

As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me, poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling the breath I drew. My lungs labored.

"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling, feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower—plead!"

Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.

"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but I live. The duel is not lost."

"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might spy meanly on the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."

Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave——

My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn filling this room of mine, shining on the figure of a man who had been myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden. On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!

"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing. "Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."

But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me like strength.

"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for with the death of my body your power ends. Back—or else face me, Thing of Darkness, while we stand in one place."

At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap. Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.

* * * * *

I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded, fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.

This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself against me.

"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay, crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"

It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering menace.

"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way must pass me. Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."

With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should overwhelm the defeated.

"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look upon you, if you have visible form."

Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying, hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning, visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting river might look by night. And as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from which the mind shrank, appalled. Now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central mass, groping out in unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed to stalk there, rearing up its monstrous stature until all that Breach was choked with it. It fell down into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank their loops. But through all change steadily fixed upon me I felt the eyes of the Unseen.

I stood my ground. With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance there is no need to say. Each instant I anticipated the surge of that returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its shore. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help Desire Michell! If I had sheltered her for one hour——!

The Thing halted, stooped.

"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me. "Fool, evil goes with her. For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast."

I looked down. Wavering against my breast, just above my heart glimmered a spot of light. The little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the bright head of Desire Michell were rested there against me, how I would strive to shield her from sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of that will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of hovering brightness.

I felt her press warm against me. I heard the roar of the death-wave far out in that sea. Before me——

Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through the dread Breach. What formed there, more inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What Hand reached for me—for—us——



CHAPTER XVI

"I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was."—MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

"Mr. Locke! Mr. Locke!"

I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan Vere, who bent over me. Phillida was there, too, pale of face. But what was That just vanishing into the darkness beyond my window-sill? What malignant glare seared disappointment and grim promise across my consciousness? Had I brought with me or did I hear now a whispered: "Pygmy, again!"

"Cousin, Cousin, are you very ill?" Phillida was half sobbing. "Won't you drink the brandy, please? Oh, Ethan, how cold he is to touch!"

"Hush, dear," Vere bade, in his slow steadfast way. "Mr. Locke, can you swallow some of this?"

I became aware that his arm supported me upright in my chair while he held a glass to my lips. Mechanically I drank some of the cordial. Vere put down the glass and said a curious thing. He asked me:

"Shall I get you out of this room?"

Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal. Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.

Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he reassured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.

It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.

"Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city—whose name is Hegrin. Thou hast escaped—because thou didst not fear for so terrible a Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may escape——"

What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?

The fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak. A few hours while the sun ran its course once more for me, then night again, bringing completion of the menace. I recognized that this delay could not affect the end. Perhaps it would have been easier if all had finished for me tonight, easier if Vere and Phillida had not found me in time to bring me back.

How had they found out my condition? Wonder stirred under my lethargy. Had I called or cried out? It did not seem that I could have done so. Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor an adventurer as that.

Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee, tiptoeing in her anxiety and questioning Vere with her eyes. He took the cup, stooping to receive my glance of assent to the new medicine.

The brandy had stimulated, but sickened me. The coffee revived me so much that I was able to take the second cup without Vere's help. When I had walked up and down the room a few times, leaning on his arm, life had taken me back, if only for a little while.

The two nurses were so good in their care of me that our first words were of my gratitude to them. Then my curiosity found voice.

"How did you happen to come in at this hour?" I asked. "How did you know I was—ill?"

"I cannot imagine what made Ethan wake up," said Phillida, with a puzzled look toward her husband. "He woke me by rushing out of the room and letting the door slam behind him. Of course I knew something must be wrong to make Drawls hurry like that. Usually he does such a tremendous lot in a day while looking positively lazy. So I came rushing after and found him in here, trying to waken you. I—I thought at first that you were not living, Cousin Roger. It was horrible! You were all white and cold——" she shivered.

Vere poured another cup of coffee. He said nothing on the subject, merely observing that the stimulant would hardly hurt me and some might be good for Phil. I asked her to bring cups for them both.

"I am not sure I really care about the coffee, but I'll make some more," she nodded, dimpling. "I love to drink from your wee porcelain cups with their gold holders. You do have pretty things, you bachelors from town."

When she was across the room, I asked quietly:

"What was it, Vere? What sent you to me?"

He answered in as subdued a tone, looking at the tinted shade of the lamp instead of at my face.

"The young lady woke me, Mr. Locke. She came to the bedside, whispering that you were dying—would be dead if I didn't get to help you in time. She was gone before Phillida roused up so she doesn't know anything about it."

My heart, so nearly stopped forever and so lethargic still, leaped in a strong beat. Desire, then, had come back to save me. For all my doubt and seemingly broken faith, she had brought her slight power to help me in my hour of danger. For my sake she had broken through her mysterious seclusion to call Vere and send him to my rescue.

Neither he nor I being unsophisticated, I understood what Vere believed, and why he looked at the lamp rather than at me. But even that matter had to yield precedence to my first eagerness.

"You saw her?" I demanded. "You call her young. You saw her face, then?"

"I could forget it if I had," he said dryly. "As it happened, I didn't. She was wrapped in a lot of floating thin stuff; gray, I guess? The room was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I don't know why she seemed young unless it was the easy, light way she moved. By the time I got what she was saying and sat up, she was gone."

"Gone?"

"She went out the door like a puff of smoke. I just saw a gray figure in the doorway, where the hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When I came into the hall there wasn't a sign of anybody about. Nor afterward, either!"

I considered briefly.

"I suppose I know what you are thinking, Vere. It is natural, but wrong. The lady——"

"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not—thinking. I guess you're as good a judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all that matters."

"Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning. "Me? I haven't the least idea what you are talking about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now he is able to tell us about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he would drink buttermilk!"

I looked into the candid, affectionate face she turned to me. From her, I looked to her husband, whose New England steadiness had been tempered by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his experience in a city cabaret. A new thought cleaved through my perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place.

"How much do you both trust me?" I slowly asked. "I do not mean trust my character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my sanity and commonsense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to you? Or would you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is deceiving us, or mad'?"

They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of understanding.

"Don't you see yourself one little, little bit, Cousin?" she wondered at me.

"Anything you say, goes all the way with us," Vere corroborated.

"Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while I think."

"Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh and hot."

I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands and tried to review the situation. They obeyed like well-bred children, settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking their coffee as prettily as a pair of parakeets. They seemed almost children to me, although there was little difference in years between Vere and myself. But then, I stood on the brink where years stopped.

With the next night, my triumphant enemy could be put off no longer. That I could not doubt. I cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear weighed less upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization of the few hours left during which I could affect the affairs of life. What remained to be done?

On one of my visits to New York, I had called on my lawyer and made my will. There were a few pensioners for whom provision should continue after my death. The aged music master under whom I developed such abilities as I had, who was crippled now by rheumatism and otherwise dependent on a hard-faced son-in-law; the three small daughters of a dead friend, an actor, whose care and education at a famous school of classic dancing I had promised him to finance—a few such obligations had been provided for, and the rest was for Phillida.

But now, what of Desire Michell?

She had seemed so apart from common existence that I never had thought of her possible needs any more than of the needs of a bird that darted in and out of my windows. Until tonight, when I had seen her and she had proved herself all woman by her appeal to Ethan Vere. It was not a spirit or a seeress or "ye foule witch, Desire Michell" who had fled to him for help in rescuing me. It was simply a terrified girl. What was to become of this girl? Under what circumstances did she dwell? Had she a home, or did she need one? Could I care for this matter while I was here?

Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds came in to us along with a freshening air. The strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the lamps already looked wan and faded in the new light. I switched them out before speaking to the pair who watched me.

"I have a story to tell you both," I said. "The beginning of it Phillida has already heard. Perhaps——Have you told Vere about the woman who visited this room, the first night I spent in the house? Who cut her hair and left the braid in my hand to escape from me?"

"Yes," she nodded, wide-eyed.

"Will you go to my chiffonier, there in the alcove, and bring a package wrapped in white silk from the top drawer?"

She did as she was asked and laid the square of folded silk before me. I put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying elixir. Phillida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture.

"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some lucky girls have hair like that? If it was unbound, my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity to have cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles and glitters."

She held it out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him.

"Beautiful," he agreed politely.

No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little cousin's plain face and leave her content, I advanced in respect for him.

In the beginning, it was even harder to speak than I had anticipated. When Phillida laid the braid back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected to credit the story I had to tell? How should I find words to embody it?

Only at first! Whether there clung about me some atmosphere of that land between the worlds where I so recently had stood; or the room indeed kept, as I fancied, the melancholy chill of the unseen tide that had washed through it, I met no scepticism from the two who heard my tale of wild experience. They did not interrupt me. Phillida crept close to her husband, putting her hand in his, but she did not exclaim or question.

Silence held us all for a while after I had finished. I had a discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all, they had received but a meagre outline. The color and body of the events escaped speech. How could they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive the charm of Desire Michell, the white magic of her voice in the dark, the force of her personality that could impress her image "sight unseen" beyond all time to erase? How convey to a listener that, understanding her so little, I yet knew her so well?

"I have told you all this because I need your help," I said presently. "Will you give it to me?"

"Go away!" Phillida burst forth. She beat her palms together in her earnestness. "Cousin Roger, take your car and go away—far off! Go where—nothing—can reach you. You must not spend another single night here. Ethan will go with you. I will, too, if you want us. You must not be left alone until you are quite safe; perhaps in New York?"

"And, Desire Michell?"

"She is in no danger, I suppose. She is not my cousin, anyhow. And even she told you to go away."

"You believe my story, then? You do not think me suffering from delusions?"

"Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come here in time to save you, I believe you would have died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have seen for weeks that something was changing you."

"What does Vere say?" I questioned, studying the absorbed gravity of his expression. I wondered what I myself would have said if anyone had brought me such a story.

He passed his arm around Phillida and drew her to him with a quieting, protective movement. His regard met mine with more significance than he chose to voice.

"I'm satisfied to take the thing as you tell it, Mr. Locke," he answered. "Phil is right, it seems to me, about you not staying here. I don't think the young lady ought to stay, either."

"She refuses to leave, Vere. What can I offer her that I have not offered? How can I find her? You have heard how I searched the countryside for a hint of such a girl's presence. No one has ever seen her; or else someone lies very cleverly."

In the pause, Phillida hesitatingly ventured an idea:

"Perhaps she is not—real. If the monster is a ghost thing, may not she be one, too? If we are to believe in such things at all——? She almost seems to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the witch girl in that old book."

I shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying to explain some abstruse knowledge to a child. I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the solemn immensities of the place where I had set my human foot. I had tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that Borderland where the unnamed Thing and I met, each beyond his own law-decreed boundary, and locked in combat bitter and strong. Phillida had listened; and talked of ghosts the bugbears of grave-yard superstition. Did Vere comprehend me better? Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to legends of knight and dragon, as prize of which waited Desire Michell; forlornly helpless as white Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the Maine countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the truths glimpsed by Rosicrucians and mystics of lost cults, when the highly bred college girl failed?

It seemed so. At least his dark eyes met mine with intelligence; hers held only bewilderment and fear.

"They are not ghosts," I said only.

"But how can you be sure?" she persisted.

Beneath the braid and the pomander lay the sheet of paper on which Desire had written weeks before; the first page of that composition now pouring gold into my hands. This I passed to Phillida.

"Do ghosts write?" I queried.

She read the lines aloud.

"'We walk upon the shadows of hills, across a level thrown, and pant like climbers.'"

"They do write, people say, with ouija boards and mediums," she murmured.

I looked at Vere with despair of sustaining this argument. He stood up as if my appeal had been spoken, drawing her with him.

"Now that it's a decent hour, don't you think Cristina might give us some breakfast?" he suggested. "I guess bacon and eggs would be sort of restoring. If you feel up to taking my arm as far as the porch, Mr. Locke, the fresh air might be good medicine, too."

I have speculated sometimes upon how civilized man would get through days not spaced by his recurrent meals into three divisions. Those meals are hyphens between his mind and his body, as it were. What sense of humor can view too intensely a creature who must feed himself three times a day? Are we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into the normal by breakfast, luncheon and dinner? Deny it as we will, when we do not heed them we are out of touch with nature.

We went downstairs.

After breakfast was over, Vere and I walked across the orchard to a seat placed near the lake. There I sat down, while he remained standing in his favorite attitude: one foot on a low boulder, his arm resting on his knee as he gazed into the shallow, amber-tinted water. Fog still overlay the countryside, but without bringing coolness. The damp heat was stifling, almost tropical as the sun mounted higher in the hidden sky.

I watched my companion, waiting for him to speak. He appeared intent upon the darting movements of a group of tiny fish, but I knew his thoughts were afar.

"Mr. Locke, I didn't want to speak before Phillida, because it would not do any good for her to hear what I have to say," he finally began. "It is properly the answer to what you asked upstairs, about our believing you had not imagined that story. Did anything slip out over the window-sill when you were waking up?"

Startled, for I had not spoken of this, I met his gaze.

"Yes. Did you see——"

"Nothing, exactly. Something, though! Like—well, like something pouring itself along; a big, thick mass. Something sort of smooth and glistening; like black, oily molasses slipping over. Only alive, somehow; drawing coils of itself out of the dark into the dark. I can't put it very plain."

"What did you think?"

"The air in the room was bad and close, hard to breathe. I guessed maybe I was a little dizzy, jumping out of bed the way I did and finding you like dead, almost." He paused, and returned his contemplation to the fish darting in the lake.

"That is what I thought," he concluded. "What I felt—well, it was the kind of scare I didn't use to know you could feel outside of bad dreams; the kind you wake up from all shaking, with your face and hands dripping sweat. That isn't all, either!"

This time the pause was so long that I thought he did not mean to continue.

"My excuse for speaking of such matters before Phillida is that I may need a woman friend for Desire Michell," I reverted to the implied rebuke I acknowledged his right to give. "I wanted her help, and yours. More than ever, since you have shared my experience so far, I want your advice."

"I'll be proud to give it, in a minute. First, it's only fair to say I've felt enough wrong around here to be able to understand a lot that once I might have laughed at. Nothing compared to you! But—I've been working about the lake sometimes after dark or before daylight was strong, when a kind of horror would come over me—well, I'd feel I had to get away and into the house or go crazy. That morning when you called from your window to ask where I'd been so early, and I told you looking for turtles—that was one time. I had gone out looking for turtles, but that horror drove me in. When you hailed me, I had it so bad that I could just about make out not to run for the house like a scared cat, yelling all the way. Turning back to the lake with you was a poser. But I did; and the feeling was all gone as quick as it came. We had a nice morning's shooting. Once in a while I've felt it sort of driving me indoors when I stepped off the porch or over to the barn at night. That's a funny thing: the fear was always outside, not in the house. I thought of that while you were telling us how the Thing at the window kept trying to get in at you. We haven't got a haunted house, but a haunted place!"

"Why have you not spoken of this before?" I asked, deeply stirred.

He made a gesture, too American to be called a shrug. He said nothing, watching a large bubble rise through the pure, brown-green water, float an instant on the surface, then vanish with the abrupt completeness of a miniature explosion. I watched also, with an always fresh interest in the pretty phenomenon. Then I repeated my question, rather impatiently as I considered what a relief his companionship in experience would have afforded all these weeks.

"Why not, Vere?"

"Mr. Locke, I don't like to keep saying that you never exactly got used to me as your cousin's husband," he reluctantly replied. "But I can see it's a kind of surprise to you right along that I don't break down or break out in some fashion. Of course I haven't known that you were meeting queer times, too! If you hadn't been through any of this, what would you have thought if I'd come to you with stories of the place being haunted by something nobody could see? You would have judged I was a liar, trying to fix up an excuse for getting away from the work here and shoving off. I don't want to go away. I don't intend to go. I can't see any need of it for Phil and me. But—and this is the advice you spoke of! I think you ought to leave and leave now. It's little better than suicide to stay."

"And abandon Desire Michell?"

He turned his dark observant eyes toward me.

"If I said yes, you wouldn't do it. Phil and I will take care of the young lady, if she will let us. Couldn't a note be left for her, telling her to come to us?"

I shook my head.

"She would not come. Now, less than ever——" I broke off, shot with sharp self-reproach at the memory of how I had driven her from me last night.

"You won't be any help to her if you're dead," he bluntly retorted.

At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier; the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire. To fly from my place now, herded like a cowardly sheep by the Thing of the Frontier, would that not be to thrust her away to save myself?

No! Not myself, my life!

I had the answer now. I walked back to Vere and took my seat again.

"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls herself Desire Michell, if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone and friendless?"

"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered. "But I guess there isn't any disgrace in your going to New York, running or not, if you take her with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago."

"Vere?"

He nodded.

"You've got me! Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and have a show-down. Put her in your car and take her to town."

"I gave her my word not——"

"People can't stand bowing to each other when the ship's afire. If she is worth dying for, she doesn't want you to die for her."

The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation!

What harm could I do Desire by this plan of Vere's? What good might I not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case. A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely. Whether flight could save us I did not know. I did know absolutely that my enemy had crossed the Barrier last night, and I was prey merely withheld from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.

Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup of pictures flitted across the screen of my fancy. Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay as a garden of tulips, where I might buy for her frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman's arm—everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her, where she might dine in silken ease and perhaps hear played the music she had named——

I aroused myself and looked at Vere.

"You'll do it?" he translated my expression.

"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."

"Do you judge she will?"

"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to send help to me when I was in danger, I believe she will come to my room tonight if I wait there——"

He looked at me silently. The consternation and protest in his face were speech enough.

"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly. "If she comes in time, we will try the plan. Have the car ready. You and Phillida will be prepared, of course. We will waste no time in getting away as far as possible."

"And if that Thing comes before she does, Mr. Locke?"

"Is there any other way?"

"I guess you haven't considered that you're inviting me to stand by while you get yourself killed," he said stiffly. "I'm not an educated man. I never heard the names you mentioned this morning of people who used to study out things like this. I never heard of any worlds except earth and heaven and hell. But then I couldn't explain how an electric car runs. I know the car does run; and I know you nearly died last night. If you go back and stay alone in that room, we both know what you are going to meet."

I turned away from him because I sickened at the prospect he evoked. The memory of that death-tide was too near and rolled too coldly across the future. If the trial had been hard when mercifully unanticipated, what would it be to meet my enemy now that I knew myself conquered? Would It not deliberately forestall Desire's coming, tonight?

"Mightn't you help the lady more if you went away now, and came back?" he urged.

The deserter's argument, time without end! Was I to fall as low as that?

Phillida's voice called to Vere from the veranda, summoning him to some need of farm or household.

"In a moment, Pretty," he called assent.

But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped much from my silence and would not disturb me lest my decision be hindered or changed.

By and by I stood up.

"Vere, in your varied experiences in peace and war, did you ever chance to meet a coward?"

"Once," he answered briefly.

"And, did you like the sight?"

"No."

"Then," I said, "let us not invite one another to that display. Shall we go in to Phillida?"



CHAPTER XVII

"They say— What say they? Let thame say!" —OLD SCOTTISH INSCRIPTION.

After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Phillida, who had some housewifely orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I had agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight. We had satisfied her by the assurance that I meant to start for New York before the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she regained her usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I gathered her secret belief was that no "ghost" would dare face Ethan.

Which may have been quite true!

On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our supply of eggs, Phillida's hens having unaccountably failed to supply their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car.

No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.

"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named Desire Michell?" I asked.

She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness.

"Now, Mr. Locke! I'd like to know where a young city feller like you got that old story from?"

"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch?"

"She was a hussy," said Mrs. Hill severely. "I was a little girl when she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago. The disgrace killed him, being a clergyman. An' the gossip that came back, later, an' pictures of her in such dresses! Dear! Dear! The wicked certainly have opportunities."

"Fifty years ago!" I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third Desire Michell.

"Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive today; which she ain't. Why, she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk of? She was——"

The name she gave me I shall not set down. It is enough to say it was that of a super-woman whose beauty, genius and absolute lack of conscience set Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood, quenched at the highest-burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death.

"There was an older house once, on your place," she added pensively. "Did you know that? It stood in the hollow where your lake is now. Two—three hundred years old, folks say it was. One night it burned down in a big thunderstorm. The Michells then living had your house built over by the orchard, then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up the old site with water. All the Michells lived there till the last one went missionary abroad an' died in foreign parts. I mean the hussy's brother. He took up his father's work, feelin' a strong call. He was only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt it dreadful. He was a hard man on the sinner. Preached hell and damnation all his days, he did. Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire an' his tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can tell you!"

"He left children?" I asked.

"No, sir! Rev'rund never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much snarin' with what farm women get to wear around here! I've kind of thought of one of those blue foulard silks with white spots into it since before I married Hill, but never came any nearer than pricin' it an' bringin' home a sample. He was death on sweet odors an' soft raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are the ten-cent bottles Hill makes the pedlar throw in when we trade. I do fancy Jockey Club for special times, an' I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I notice your cousin, Mrs. Vere, has scent on her handkerchief week days as well as when she's goin' somewhere, so I guess you don't hold with the Rev'rund Michell in New York?"

I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs.

"Did the runaway sister leave any children?" I queried.

"Not a Michell alive anywhere," she asserted positively. "Dead, all dead! The Rev'rund was buried at his mission in some outlandish place. An' if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the movin' picture palace in the village, I don't know how he makes out to rest with them flauntin' past his grave!"

I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed, I drove home in such abstraction that Phillida reproved me.

"'The cat has stolen your tongue,'" she teased. "Or did Mrs. Hill vamp you and make roast meat of your heart with her eyes?"

"Phil, do you put scent on your handkerchief week days as well as Sundays?" I shook off thought to inquire.

"No; I keep sachet in my handkerchief box. Why?"

"Next time you are in town, will you buy a blue silk foulard dress with white spots in it and the largest bottle of Jockey Club Extract on sale, and give them to Mrs. Hill for a Christmas present? I'll give you a blank check."

"Cousin Roger? Why?"

So I told her why. But I did not tell her the story of the second Desire Michell; nor of the original house that stood in the hollow now filled by our lake.

Why had a peculiar horror crept through me when Mrs. Hill told me what ruins that water covered? Why had I remembered the inexplicable, repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded the coming of the Monster; a sound like the smack of huge lips, or some body withdrawn from thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to the alien Thing only through the ruins of the house where It had first been called by the sorceress of long ago?

We were walking across from the garage, after putting away the car, when a recollection flashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York, held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Michell, daughter and sister of New England clergymen. I had seen the portrait. And piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs and coils about the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-bronze hair; the color of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.

I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coarse woodcut and the French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their expression of blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped either record. Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory and dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch, all clouded and surrounded by swirls of gray vapor shot with gold.

Who and what was the girl Desire Michell whom I had come to love through a more profound darkness than that of the sight?

It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted my music. There was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that it could be sent to those who waited for it. Vere would attend to that, if tonight made it necessary. I reflected with disappointment that the first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had looked forward to this production with especial interest. There was the symphony, still unfinished, that I had hoped might be more enduring than popular music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we must go glimmering on our ways. If I snatched Desire out of her path into mine, she and I would see all those things together.

I finished at last, and set my room in order. There was a fire laid ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such weather. I kindled it, and put in the flames three of the volumes from the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those three were vile and poisonous. No doubt other copies exist, but at least I refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in Phillida's household. They burned quietly enough, and meekly fell to ashes under my poker.

Our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual, with yellow-shaded candles flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its mistress suffering from a nervous headache.

"It is only the fog," she answered our sympathy. "It came on with the evening, somehow. Never mind me. Cristina has made a cream-of-lettuce bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do not eat every bit. Yes, Ethan; of course I'll take mine. I only wish every bush and tree would not drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking; and the foghorns over at the lighthouses moo regularly every half minute. And I never heard the waterfall over the dam so loud!"

"We've had a wet summer," Vere observed, soothingly tranquil as ever. "The lake and creek are full. There is more water going over to make a noise."

"Please do not be so frightfully sensible, Drawls. You know I mean a different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over one, then dies away."

"Even a fountain will seem to do that if a wind shifts the spray," I suggested.

"Yes, Cousin Roger. But there is no wind tonight."

A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied Vere was similarly affected. If something moved under the water——?

We changed the conversation to a pergola planned for building next spring, that was to be overrun by grapevines and honeysuckle.

"The grapes shall hang through like an Italian picture," Phillida anticipated, headache forgotten in her enthusiasm. She shook her hair about her pink cheeks, leaning over to outline a pergola with four spoons. "Here in the middle we must have a birdbath. Or no! The birds might peck the grapes. We could have one of those big silver-colored looking-balls on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden and lake and sky, with people moving no bigger than dolls. Imagine a reflection of Ethan like a Lilliputian so high!"

So I was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues of garden ornaments in her sewing-room, when the time came for me to keep my rendezvous with Death or the lady. In spite of my warning gesture, Vere followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious.

"Let me go with you," he urged.

"No, thanks. Stay with Phil, and keep her too busy to suspect where I am."

"If I'm doing wrong to let you go," he began.

"You cannot stop me. It is still too early for danger, I think. If you like, you can stroll out on the lawn from time to time and look up at my windows. As long as the lamps are lighted in the room, I am all right. Nothing is happening."

"Your lamps were all three lighted when I found you last night," he said.

The darkness had been only for my eyes, then? Certainly I had seemed to see light withdrawn from the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves, and covered it by stroking Bagheera, who sat on a hall chair making an after-dinner toilet with tongue and paw.

"Well, take care of Phil," I repeated, evading argument.

He detained me.

"The young lady might not come if there were two people, Mr. Locke. I can see that! But I'll go instead. I guess I'd be safer than you, with the—the——You know what I mean! It would be the first time for me. And if I sat waiting in the dark, the lady couldn't tell you were not there. Of course I'd bring her right to you."

No one could appreciate the courage of that offer so well as we who had both felt the intolerable horror of the nearness of the Thing whose nature was beyond our nature to endure.

"She would come to no one except me," I refused. "But, thank you. And Vere, if what you have said about my feeling toward Phillida's husband was true once, it is true no longer."

His clasp was still warm on my hand when I went into my room and switched on the lights. Soft and colorful, the haunted room sprang into view. The writing-table and piano gleamed bare without their usual burdens of scattered papers and music, removed that afternoon. For lack of familiar occupation, when I sat down in my favorite place, I took up the gold pomander and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in the metal.

"Containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with vervain, and cedar, and secret simples——"

"Vervain, which is powerful against evil spirits——"

The strange fragrance, heady as the bouquet of rich wine, never cloying, exquisite, might well have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused. It should stay by me tonight, like a promise of her coming.

After I had sat there a while, I turned out the lights.



CHAPTER XVIII

"An excellent way to get a fayrie—and when you have her, bind her!"—ANCIENT ALCHEMIST'S RECIPE.

In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes, likened by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board for furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The thought of Phillida and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted me almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the room; to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength failed and gasoline gave out.

Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake, under which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first Desire Michell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride through!

Was it too late for my Desire to come, and time for the coming of that Other?

The step of Vere sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the window. He was making a trip of inspection, and would find no light shining from the room. I was about to rise and call down a word of reassurance to him, when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat arrested in hope and expectancy.

"Here, after my warning, after last night?" her soft voice panted across the dark. "Will you die, then? Cruel to me, and wicked to come here again! Oh, must I wish you were a coward!"

Every vestige of her calmness gone, she was sobbing as she spoke. I could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a betraying print upon my table's surface.

"I was cruel to you last night, Desire; yet afterward you saved my life by sending Ethan Vere to wake me. Would you have had me leave without meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness?"

I thought she came nearer.

"For so little, you would brave the Dread One in Its time of triumph? O steadfast soldier, who faces the Breach even in the hour of death, in all that you have done you have remembered me. Why speak of anger or forgiveness? Have I not injured you?"

"Never. I love you."

"Is not that an injury? Even though I hid my ill-omened face from you, reared as I was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has been done. Weak as water in the test, I kept the letter of my promise and broke the intent. Yet go; keep life at least."

"Desire, I do not understand you," I answered. "No matter for that, now! I am content to share whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge as I asked you last night, but earnestly and with humility I ask you to come away with me now. If trouble comes to my wife and me, I do not doubt we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the attempt. Come."

"I, to take happiness like that?" she marveled in desolate amazement. "No. At least I will go to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to me. Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere you are living. Out of my sight, out of my knowledge, but living in the same world with me. Each moment you stay here is a risk."

In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was time to act, but action must be certain. If my groping movements missed her in the dark there might be no second chance.

"Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have done, you shall let me touch you before I go," I said firmly.

"No!"

"Yes. Why, would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether you were a woman or a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly? Here across the table I stretch my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may die tonight."

Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve drew obedience, I do not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed my hand hotly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table between us, found her, and drew her to me.

What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance, draperies beneath which beat life and warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath curled against my cheek. So with that guide I turned my head, and set my lips on the lips I had never seen.

Did Something uprear Itself out there in the black fog? A cold air rushed across the summer heat of the fog; air foul as if issued from the opened door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling sound.

I snatched Desire Michell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall. With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a bar against any attempt at escape.

A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom. So far my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted her in my arms. She had struggled then, after her defenses had fallen.

She was quiet now, as though the light had quelled her resistance. She stood drooped and trembling; not the old-time witch, not the dazzling adventuress, only a small fragile girl wound and wrapped in some gray stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held down and showed no more color than a water-lily.

"I thought," she whispered, just audibly. "I thought you—would say, good-bye!"

"I know," I stammered. "But I could not. That way was impossible for us."

She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my heart when I had last stood at the Barrier. One hand gripped the veils beneath her chin, and seemed the clenched fist of a child.

The crash of my door had startled the household. I had heard Phillida cry out, and Vere's running steps upon the gravel path. Now he came springing up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped, staring at us.

"Desire," I spoke as naturally as I could manage, "this is Mr. Vere. Vere, my fiancee, Miss Michell. Shall we go down to Phillida?"

And Desire Michell did not deny my claim.

I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs. Nor do I remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another. Presently we were all in the living room, and Phillida had possession of Desire Michell while Vere and I looked on stupidly at the proceedings.

Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor-lamp and gently drew off the draperies that hooded her. With little murmurs of compassion, she unbound and shook free her guest's hair.

"My dear, you are all damp! This awful fog! You must have been out a long time? You shall drink some tea before we start. Drawls, will you light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table? The kettle is filled."

Now I could understand how Desire had appeared amid a drift of fireshot smoke in the beam of my electric torch, the night before. Her hair was a garment of flame-bright silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled shrinking away from the light had set all that drapery billowing about her.

She was the voice that had been my intimate comrade through weeks of strange adventure. She was the woman of the faded, yellow book, and the painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all the Desires of whom I had ever dreamed; and she was none of them, for she was herself. Her long dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by that ancestral blending of drowsiness with watchfulness; yet were akin to the eyes of youth in all times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the soft mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life. But her forehead, the noble breadth between the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the student whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance.

Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me across the room, all self-confidence trickled away from me. What distinguished me from a thousand men she might meet on any city street? What had I ever said worth note in the hours we had spent together? Now she saw me in the light, plainly commonplace; and remembering myself lame, I stood amazed at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her.

She was rising from the chair, gently putting aside Phillida's detaining hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me, upstairs. Neither Vere nor Phillida had heard her voice. She had given her hand to each of them and submitted to Phil's care with a docility I failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement now was more like the Desire Michell I knew. Only, what was she about to do? Repudiate my violence and me—perhaps go back to her hiding-place?

She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to her preoccupation.

"You must go away," she said. "If there is any hope, it is in that. Nothing else matters, now; nothing! If you wish, take me with you. It would be wiser to leave me. But nothing really matters except that you should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go. Take your car and drive—drive fast—anywhere!"

It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low voice. Phillida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and left the room. The front door closed behind him. The gravel crunched under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was given. After the briefest indecision, Phillida hurried out into the hall.

For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two places where I was not the "lame feller." And if the first place was the dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich Land of Promise in Desire Michell's eyes.

What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this account.

Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat rather like an artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock of gray stuff, long of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day or the figure of my cousin could be imagined.

"You must wear the coat because it is always cool motoring at night," Phillida was murmuring. "And of course you will want it at a hotel; until you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous, scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins to put it up without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every minute, so you must not worry."

"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously. "No one was ever so kind! It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he will only go from here quickly."

"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband has gone for the car. I hear him coming now!"

In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him, then the knob yielded and he was inside.

"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called, with an accent of wonder.

Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was pale, and drops of fog moisture pearled his dark face like sweat.

"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me, ignoring the others. "Perhaps you felt that shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake, or the kick from a big explosion a long ways off? It didn't seem very strong to me. It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though! Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that, tricky when they get old."

"Ethan, what are you talking about?" cried Phillida, aghast.

He continued to look at me.

"I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise you made. I was too keen on finding out what was happening up there to pay much heed."

"Well, Vere?"

"Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage," he reluctantly gave his report. "Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked. There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage."

So there was to be no going tonight from the house beside the lake. A frustrated group, we stood amid our preparations; the two girls wearing cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken. Had we ever really expected to go? Already the project was fading into the realm of fantastic ideas, futile as the pretended journeys of children who are kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words. Only my practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.

"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried protest. "Cousin Roger? Ethan? You cannot mean to give up. Why—'phone to the nearest garage to send us another car. If we pay them enough they will drive anywhere. Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we, Drawls?"