move on your part might mean a lifelong injury
to Agnes. Behold!"

The Doctor touched a spring and the silk curtains parted. The Judge
started forward with a cry, but the Doctor grasped him by the arm and
cried "Beware!" upon which he subsided, but gazed with intense anxiety
upon what followed.

Behind the curtains, there appeared a sort of stage, which was divided
in half by yet another curtain. To one side, Leon lay reclining on a
couch, as though asleep, his eyes closed. On the other side, Agnes lay
in similar posture. The Doctor spoke:

"Agnes! When I command you to do so, you will open your eyes, and
awaken enough so that you may speak to me! You will see me! You will
hear my voice! But you will neither see nor hear any other person!
Awaken!"

Agnes slowly opened her eyes, and gazed steadily towards the Doctor.
Otherwise, she did not move.

"You see and hear me?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes!"

"Do you see any other person?"

"No!"

"Agnes, I wish to question you upon a very important subject. Will you
reply truthfully?"

"I will reply. Of course it will be truthfully, because I do not know
falsehood."

"Do you love any one, so that you would marry him?"

"I do not know what love is. I do not know what marriage means for
me."

The Judge breathed a sigh of relief as he heard these words. He
thought that his daughter was safe, but even yet he did not comprehend
the power of the man beside him.

"I will now tell you what it is to love. Listen!"

"I will listen!"

"In heaven's name, Medjora," cried the Judge, "go no further!" He
grasped the Doctor's arm as he made the appeal, but he might as well
have addressed a thing of stone. He was unheeded. The Doctor
proceeded:

"Somewhere in a secret corner of thy soul, as yet unreached, there is
a spot more sensitive than all the rest. A single vibration
penetrating there, if harmonious and according with thine own desires,
would awaken a joyousness to which all other joys compare as the odor
of the rankest weeds to the fragrance of the sweetest rose. A
thousand, thousand dreams of happiness are insignificant to the thrill
which courses through the veins when that centre of thy soul is
touched by love. Forever and forever after, wilt thou be a different
being; thine old self cast behind and buried in the oblivion of the
past, whilst thy new existence will remain incomplete, until coupled
with that other dear one, whose glancing eye hath pierced and found
t