y!"

Clarke turned to Morton in a frenzy, his eyes flaming, his lips dry
and contorted. "I see your hand in this! You stand there silent, but
you are the machinator of this plot. You are stealing her away--"

"Be quiet!" commanded Morton, with a gesture towards the stairway.
"Don't you see them coming?"

Viola, fully dressed, and breathless with eagerness to flee, was
hurriedly descending.

As she neared him, Clarke cried out, with lamentable, despairing wail:
"Viola, you are leaving me!"

She gave him one awed, pitying backward glance and passed on, hurrying
as if to escape his outspread hand, swift to outrun the inevitable
tragic shadow of his faith.

For an instant he reeled back against the wall, then sprang to
follow, but the young scientist intervened and thrust him back.

"Keep to your own trail," he sternly said, and as he opened the door
for the girl, she seemed to pass at once into the sunlit spring-time
world of common life.

XIX

SERVISS ASSUMES CONTROL

At the carriage-door Mrs. Lambert halted, her heart sorely smitten by
the vision of Clarke's agonized face. "Wait a moment!" she cried out.
"We were too cruel. Let me say good-bye."

"No," Lambert replied, firmly. "You are done with him." And with these
words he gently assisted her into the coach. "Get in, professor," he
added, with a touch of the same command. "We must be moving."

With a succinct phrase of direction to the driver, Serviss complied,
taking the front seat, opposite Viola. He was horrified to find her
shaking violently as if with cold, her face white, her eyes big and
wild. Her physical rescue was accomplished, but it was immediately
made plain to him that the invisible bonds which linked her to Clarke
were being drawn upon with merciless power, for with the first motion
of the vehicle she fixed a look of terror and entreaty upon her
mother, exclaiming, huskily: "They are calling me! They will not let
me go."

Lambert stared in helpless dismay as he realized the force of this
inner struggle; but the young scientist, filled with fierce rage at
this assertion of the dark forces, met them promptly in pride of his
own resources, his own desire.

"Give me your hands!" he commanded, sharply. She obeyed like a child
in a stupor of pain, her breath coming through her pallid lips with a
hissing sound as if she were sinking each moment deeper into an icy
flood.

With both her inert hands in his, with love and mastering will