her forehead.

"There!" he exclaimed, with a forced smile. "Don't let's talk about it
any more, darling. Go to bed and forget all about it. It won't seem so
bad to-morrow morning."

But Milly did not respond. When he released her head she threw it back
against her own clasped hands, closing her eyes. She was ghastly pale.

"No," she moaned, "I can't bear it by myself. It's too, too awful. It's
not Me; it's something that takes my place. I saw it once. It's an evil
spirit. O God, what have I done that such a thing should happen to me!
I've always tried to be good."

There was a clash of pity and anger in Ian's breast. Pity for Milly's
case, anger on account of her whom his inmost being recognized as
another, whatever his rational self might say to the matter. He sat
down beside his wife and uttered soothing nothings. But she turned upon
him eyes of wild despair, the more tragic because it broke through a
nature fitted only for the quietest commonplaces of life. She flung
herself upon him, clutching him tight, hiding her face upon him.

"What have I done?" she moaned again. "You know I always believed in
God, in God's love. I wouldn't have disbelieved even if He'd taken you
away from me. But now I can't believe in anything. There must be wicked
spirits, but there can't be a good God if He allows them to take
possession of a poor girl like me, who's never done any one any harm. O
Ian, I've tried to pray, and I can't. I don't believe in anything now."

Ian was deeply perplexed. He himself believed neither in a God nor in
evil spirits, and he knew not how to approach Milly's mind. At length he
said, quietly:

"I should have expected you, dear, to have reasoned about this a little
more. What's the use of being educated if we give way to superstition,
like savages, directly something happens that we don't quite understand?
Some day an eclipse of conscious personality, like yours, will come to
be understood as well as an eclipse of the moon. Don't let's make it
worse by conjuring up superstitious terrors."

"At first I thought it was like that--an eclipse of memory. But now I
feel more and more it's a different person that's here, it's not I.
To-night Cousin David said that sometimes when he met me he expected to
find when he got home that his Lady Hammerton had walked away out of the
frame. And, Ian, I looked up at that portrait, and suddenly I was
reminded of--that fearful night when I came back and saw--something. I