breast, catching the light of the opened
lantern in my left hand, shed over the features an indescribable
reflex hue of quivering rose.

Beneath his head I placed the silver casket: I hung the hair-chain
round his neck: I laid upon his breast the long-loved memento of his
love and the parchment scroll.

Then I sank down by the coffin, and prayed. I knew not what or why.
But never since the first human prayer was breathed did there rise to
heaven a supplication so incoherent and so wild as mine. Then I rose,
and laying my hand upon my father's cold brow, I said: 'You have
forgiven me for all the wild words that I uttered in my long agony.
They were but the voice of intolerable misery rebelling against
itself. You, who suffered so much--who know so well those flames
burning at the heart's core--those flames before which all the forces
of the man go down like prairie-grass before the fire and wind--you
have forgiven me. You who knew the meaning of the wild word Love--you
have forgiven your suffering son, stricken like yourself. You have
forgiven me, father, and forgiven him, the despoiler of your tomb:
you have removed the curse, and his child--his innocent child--is
free.'

I replaced the coffin-lid, and screwing it down left the crypt, so
buoyant and exhilarated that I stopped in the churchyard and asked
myself: 'Do I, then, really believe that she was under a curse? Do I
really relieve that my restoring the amulet has removed it? Have I
really come to this?'

Throughout all these proceedings--yes, even amidst that prayer to
Heaven, amidst that impassioned appeal to my dead father--had my
reason been keeping up that scoffing at my heart which I have before
described.

I knocked up the landlord of the 'White Hart,' and, turning into bed,
slept my first peaceful sleep since my trouble.

To escape awkward questions, I did not in the morning take back the
keys to Shales's house myself, but sent them, and walking to
Dullingham took the train to London.

X

BEHIND THE VEIL

I

When I met my mother at the solicitor's office next day, she was
astonished at my cheerfulness and at the general change in me. As we
left the office together, she said,

'Everything is now arranged: your aunt and I have decided to accept
Lord Sleaford's invitation to go for a cruise in his yacht. We leave
to-morrow evening. Lord Sleaford has promised to take me to-morrow
afternoon to Mr. Wilderspin's studio, to see the great pain