s of Sisily and the
stooping form with the stethoscope. The instrument of silver and rubber
held miraculous possibilities of life and death to Thalassa. He watched it
anxiously--directed the light upon it. The shape on the couch remained
motionless.

Thalassa's gaze wandered from the stethoscope to

Dr. Ravenshaw. The doctor's bent neck showed white between the top of his
shirt and the grey hair above it. He was wearing no collar, so he must
have been going to bed--when the knock came. Thalassa's eyes dwelt on the
exposed flesh with a steady yet wondering contemplation. The lamp in his
hand wavered slightly.

Dr. Ravenshaw rose to his feet, oblivious of the man who was staring at
his neck from behind. His downward glance rested on Sisily's face, and his
eyes were grave. He turned away and walked out of the room, but returned
almost immediately with a small mirror.

"Hold the lamp higher," he said to Thalassa. "I want the light to fall
right on her face. Higher still--so."

He fell on his knees by the couch and held the mirrored side of the glass
to Sisily's lips. The lamp, held aloft, illumined his face as well as
hers. His features were set and rigid.

Thalassa stood still, his eyes brooding on the sharp outline of the bent
mask. A vague idea, startling and terrible, was magnifying itself in his
mind. Once his glance wandered to Ravenshaw's neck, then returned with
growing fixity to his face, seen at closer range than he had ever beheld
it. In the vivid light the elemental lines beneath the changes of time
took on a strange resemblance to a face he had known in the distant past.
A spectral being seemed to rise from the dead and resume life in the
kneeling body of Dr. Ravenshaw.

Involuntarily he stepped back, and the likeness vanished in the added
distance. The veil of the past was dropped again. He could see nothing now
but the commonplace whiskered face of an elderly Cornish doctor bending
over the inanimate form on the couch. Again the lamp shook slightly.

"What are you doing with that light?" said Ravenshaw peevishly. "Cannot
you hold it steady? Bring it closer, man--closer than that. Now, hold it
there."

In the nearer vision the elemental lines of a forgotten face again
confronted Thalassa beneath the flabby contours of age. It was like
looking at a familiar outline covered by a mask--a transparent mask. He
stood stock still with uplifted lamp, like a man in a trance, but his eyes
never left Dr. Raven