emained to him of his own little personality in an effort to retain the
right to his normal self.

The girl had grown quiet again, and was now leaning on the broad wall
close beside him, gazing out across the darkening plain, her elbows on
the coping, motionless as a figure carved in stone. He took his courage
in both hands.

"Tell me, Ilse," he said, unconsciously imitating her own purring
softness of voice, yet aware that he was utterly in earnest, "what is
the meaning of this town, and what is this real life you speak of? And
why is it that the people watch me from morning to night? Tell me what
it all means? And, tell me," he added more quickly with passion in his
voice, "what you really are--yourself?"

She turned her head and looked at him through half-closed eyelids, her
growing inner excitement betraying itself by the faint colour that ran
like a shadow across her face.

"It seems to me,"--he faltered oddly under her gaze--"that I have some
right to know--"

Suddenly she opened her eyes to the full. "You love me, then?" she asked
softly.

"I swear," he cried impetuously, moved as by the force of a rising tide,
"I never felt before--I have never known any other girl who--"

"Then you _have_ the right to know," she calmly interrupted his confused
confession, "for love shares all secrets."

She paused, and a thrill like fire ran swiftly through him. Her words
lifted him off the earth, and he felt a radiant happiness, followed
almost the same instant in horrible contrast by the thought of death. He
became aware that she had turned her eyes upon his own and was speaking
again.

"The real life I speak of," she whispered, "is the old, old life within,
the life of long ago, the life to which you, too, once belonged, and to
which you still belong."

A faint wave of memory troubled the deeps of his soul as her low voice
sank into him. What she was saying he knew instinctively to be true,
even though he could not as yet understand its full purport. His present
life seemed slipping from him as he listened, merging his personality in
one that was far older and greater. It was this loss of his present self
that brought to him the thought of death.

"You came here," she went on, "with the purpose of seeking it, and the
people felt your presence and are waiting to know what you decide,
whether you will leave them without having found it, or whether--"

Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her face began to c