erica, and prosecute himself. To do
this meant to thrust himself into a situation that held a hundred
chances, but there was no one else who could determine it for him. It
was not merely a matter of collecting and sifting evidence. It was
also a test of subjecting his dormant memory to the stimulus of place
and sights and sounds and smells. When he stood at the spot where
Carter had faced his executioners, surely, if he were Carter, he would
awaken to self-recognition. He would slip away on some pretext, and
try out the issue, and then, when he spoke to Duska, he could speak
in definite terms. And if he were the culprit? The question came back
as surely as the pendulum swings to the bottom of the arc, and rested
at the hideous conviction that he must be the malefactor. Then, Saxon
rose and paced the floor, his hand convulsively crushing the letter
into a crumpled wad.

Well, he would not come back! If that were his world, he would not
reenter it. He was willing to try himself--to be his own prosecutor,
but, if the thing spelled a sentence of disgrace, he reserved the
right to be also his own executioner.

Then, the devil's advocate again whispered seductively into his
perplexity.

Suppose he went and tested the environment, searching conscience and
memory--and suppose no monitor gave him an answer. Would he not then
have the right to assume his innocence? Would he not have the right to
feel certain that his memory, so stimulated and still inactive, was
not only sleeping, but dead? Would he not be justified in dismissing
the fear of a future awakening, and, as Steele had suggested, in
going forward in the person of Robert A. Saxon, abandoning the past as
completely as he had perhaps abandoned previous incarnations?

So, for the time, he stilled his fears, and under his brush the
canvases became more wonderful than they had ever been. He had Duska
at his side, not only in the old intimacy, but in the new and more
wonderful intimacy that had come of her acknowledged love. He would
finish the half-dozen pictures needed to complete the consignment for
the Eastern and European exhibits, then he would start on his journey.

A week later, Saxon took Duska to a dance at the club-house on the top
of one of the hills of the ridge, and, after she had tired of dancing,
they had gone to a point where the brow of the knob ran out to a
jutting promontory of rock. It was a cape in the dim sea of night mist
which hung upon, and shr