chateau was haunted, that the fair Helene roamed through
its halls, cut off from her lover, and doomed to stay within these walls
by Black George's curse."

* * * * *

De Lacy silent, Wrexler and I looked at the portrait. My own feelings
were in a turmoil. It had been a ghost's lips that had touched me last
night; yet surely no ghosts could have been so beautiful or seemed so
real.

Wrexler turned to me, "It would be the curse that has always been upon
me that when I fell in love it would be with a ghost!" His eyes were
vivid, shining brightly in his pale face. "I knew when I saw her on the
stairway that I loved her."

"There is a rumor," said de Lacy, "that the man who sees the fair Helene
will meet with some misadventure, unless she gives him a kiss. Then he
is protected from her wrath."

I started. Wrexler smiled. "She kissed me with her eyes. I am not
afraid."

"The fair Helene makes men suffer to make up for the wrong Black George
did her. For years she has not been seen at Rougemont. Last night when
you described her, I was afraid. My lord," de Lacy turned to me, "send
your friend away. If she only looked at him and smiled, there is a grave
and deadly danger for him, more deadly because it may be unexplainable.
Men upon whom the fair Helene has smiled have met strange deaths."

As Wrexler looked up at the portrait, an inward light illumined his
countenance. "I am not afraid," he repeated.

"There are many deaths. There is the death of the spirit as well as that
of the body. I beg you to go while there is time, friend of my lord."
There was real feeling in de Lacy's voice.

I too felt afraid for Wrexler. The strange, unworldly feeling he had
always had, the pulling toward something he knew not what, made me
doubly fearful. Had the fair Helene been calling him all this time,
across the world? For myself I had no fear. She had kissed me, and
besides, even death at her hands would have been preferable to never
seeing her again. In these last few minutes I had realized that I too
was in love with Helene, that I could hardly wait for the night, in
hopes that she might visit me again.

Resolutely I put my own feelings in the background, for at the moment
Wrexler was of paramount importance. If there was anything in de Lacy's
story--and from my own experience I was sure there was--Wrexler was in
danger. I turned to him. "If anything happened to you, I could never
forgive myself