hange,
growing larger and darker with an expression of age.

"It is their thoughts constantly playing about your soul that makes you
feel they watch you. They do not watch you with their eyes. The purposes
of their inner life are calling to you, seeking to claim you. You were
all part of the same life long, long ago, and now they want you back
again among them."

Vezin's timid heart sank with dread as he listened; but the girl's eyes
held him with a net of joy so that he had no wish to escape. She
fascinated him, as it were, clean out of his normal self.

"Alone, however, the people could never have caught and held you," she
resumed. "The motive force was not strong enough; it has faded through
all these years. But I"--she paused a moment and looked at him with
complete confidence in her splendid eyes--"I possess the spell to
conquer you and hold you: the spell of old love. I can win you back
again and make you live the old life with me, for the force of the
ancient tie between us, if I choose to use it, is irresistible. And I do
choose to use it. I still want you. And you, dear soul of my dim
past"--she pressed closer to him so that her breath passed across his
eyes, and her voice positively sang--"I mean to have you, for you love
me and are utterly at my mercy."

Vezin heard, and yet did not hear; understood, yet did not understand.
He had passed into a condition of exaltation. The world was beneath his
feet, made of music and flowers, and he was flying somewhere far above
it through the sunshine of pure delight. He was breathless and giddy
with the wonder of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, the
terror of it all, the dreadful thought of death, pressed ever behind her
sentences. For flames shot through her voice out of black smoke and
licked at his soul.

And they communicated with one another, it seemed to him, by a process
of swift telepathy, for his French could never have compassed all he
said to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what she said to him was
like the recital of verses long since known. And the mingled pain and
sweetness of it as he listened were almost more than his little soul
could hold.

"Yet I came here wholly by chance--" he heard himself saying.

"No," she cried with passion, "you came here because I called to you. I
have called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of the
past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and I claim you."

She rose again a