de him with an air of rare dignity.

"The call of the Past," she said; "and besides," she added proudly, "in
the real life I am a princess--"

"A princess!" he cried.

"--and my mother is a queen!"

At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight tore at his heart
and swept him into sheer ecstasy. To hear that sweet singing voice, and
to see those adorable little lips utter such things, upset his balance
beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms and covered her
unresisting face with kisses.

But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he felt
that she was soft and loathsome, and that her answering kisses stained
his very soul.... And when, presently, she had freed herself and
vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the wall in
a state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her yielding
body, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already dimly
realised must prove his undoing.

And from the shadows of the old buildings into which she disappeared
there rose in the stillness of the night a singular, long-drawn cry,
which at first he took for laughter, but which later he was sure he
recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat.

V

For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, alone with his
surging thoughts and emotions. He understood at length that he had done
the one thing necessary to call down upon him the whole force of this
ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had acknowledged the tie
of olden days, and had revived it. And the memory of that soft
impalpable caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came back to him
with a shudder. The girl had first mastered him, and then led him to the
one act that was necessary for her purpose. He had been waylaid, after
the lapse of centuries--caught, and conquered.

Dimly he realised this, and sought to make plans for his escape. But,
for the moment at any rate, he was powerless to manage his thoughts or
will, for the sweet, fantastic madness of the whole adventure mounted to
his brain like a spell, and he gloried in the feeling that he was
utterly enchanted and moving in a world so much larger and wilder than
the one he had ever been accustomed to.

The moon, pale and enormous, was just rising over the sea-like plain,
when at last he rose to go. Her slanting rays drew all the houses into
new perspective, so that their roofs, already glistening with dew,
seemed to stretch m