ed to myself a stranger. To-day an intimacy has
sprung up between myself and that observant, detached something within
me--that little extra spirit which looks on at me, and yet is, somehow,
me. I am at home with my own power. I am accustomed to my strength of
personality. From my fever I rose like some giant. Long ago my world
recognised the obedience it owed me. Long ago, by many signs, in many
ways, it taught me the paramount quality of the emanation from my soul
that is called my influence. Yet sometimes, even now, I seem to stare at
myself aghast, to turn cold when I am alone with myself. I am seized
with terrible fancies. I think of the voice of the burn. I think of that
childish Autumn ceremony upon its bank among the mists and the flying
leaves. I think of the grey youth who spoke with me in the twilight, and
my soul is full of questions. I muse upon the Wandering Jew, upon Faust,
upon Van Der Decken, upon the monstrous figures that are legends, yet
sometimes realities to men. And then--and this is ghastly--I say to
myself, can it be that I, too, shall become a legend? Can it be that my
name will be whispered by the pale lips of good men long after I am
dead? For, is there not a whirl of white faces attending my progress as
the whirl of dead leaves attends the Autumn? Do I not hear a faint
symphony of despairing cries like a dreadful music about my life? Is not
my power upon men malign? Boys with their hopes shattered, men with
their faiths broken, women with their love turned to gall--do they not
crowd about my chariot wheels? Or is it my vain fancy that they do? Here
and there from the sea of these beings one rises like a drowned creature
whom the ocean will not hide, stark, stiff, corpse-like. Doctor
Wedderburn was the first. Kate Walters is the second--Kate Walters.

* * * * *

When my convalescence was well advanced she left Carlounie and went back
to Edinburgh. Some months afterwards I heard casually that she was
working in an hospital there. But a year and a half went by before I saw
this girl again. Her fresh, pure, ministering face had nearly faded
from my memory. Yet, she had attended intimately upon my marvellous
transformation from my death of weakness to the life of strength. She
had lifted me in her girl's arms when I was nothing. Yes, I had been in
her arms then. How strange, how close are the commonest relations
between the invalid and his nurse! When I chanced to m