time as if it were daylight.

The night wore on. She was quite silent and motionless. I lay listening.

It must have been towards morning when I closed my eyes, not because I
was sleepy, but because I was so tired of gazing at blackness.

Soon after I had done this there was a stealthy movement in the bed.

"Margot, are you awake?" I instantly cried out sharply.

The movement immediately ceased. There was no reply.

When the light of dawn stole in at the window she seemed to be sleeping.

*****

Last night I did not close my eyes once. She did not move.

She means to tire me out, and she has the strength to do it. To-night I
feel so intensely heavy. Soon I must sleep, and then----

Shall I seek any longer to defend myself? Everything seems so
inevitable, so beyond my power, like the working of an inexorable
justice bent on visiting the sin of the father upon the child. For was
not the cruel boy the father of the man?

And yet, is this tragedy inevitable? It cannot be. I will be a man. I
will rise up and combat it. I will take Margot away from this house
that her soul remembers, in which its body so long ago was tortured and
slain, and she will--she must forget.

Instinct will sleep once more. It shall be so. I will have it so. I will
strew poppies over her soul. I will take her far away from here, far
away, to places where she will be once more as she has been.

To-morrow we will go. To-morrow----

*****

Ah, that cry! Was it my own? I am suffocating! What was that? The horror
of it! The pen has fallen from my hand. I must have slept; and I have
dreamed. In my dream she stole upon me, that white thing! Her velvety
hands were on my throat. The soul stared out from her eyes, the soul of
the cat! Even her body, her woman's body, seemed to change at the moment
of vengeance. She slowly strangled me, and as the breath died from me,
and my failing eyes gazed at her, she was no longer woman at all, but
something lithe and white and soft. Fur enveloped my throat. Those hands
were claws. That breath on my face was the breath of an animal. The body
had come back to companion the soul in its vengeance, the body of----

Ah, it was too horrible!

Can vengeance for the dead bring with it resurrection of the dead?

Hark! There is a voice calling to me from upstairs.

"Ronald, are you never coming? I am tired of waiting for you. Ronald!"

"Yes."

"Come to me!"

"And I must go."

*****

Just at the glimmer o