e of herself, she made every effort to return, or
at least to stop.

What good would it do to find out why he was so peculiar, and what it was
that he took so much pains to conceal? This could only be idle curiosity
on her part, for which she would be punished sooner or later.

Turning these thoughts over continually in her mind she lost her gayety,
her power to resist blows of fate, such as the small trials of life,
which formerly made her courageous; her vigorous elasticity sunk under
the heavy weight with which it was charged, and her smiling eyes now more
often expressed anxiety than happiness and confidence.

In spite of her watchfulness over herself she was not able to hide the
change from Saniel, for it manifested itself in everything--in her face
formerly so open, but which now bore the imprint of a secret sadness; in
her concentrated manner, in her silence and abstraction.

What was the matter with her? He questioned her, and she replied with the
prudence that she used in all her conversation with him. He examined her
medically, but found nothing to indicate a sickly condition which would
justify the change in her.

If she did not wish to answer his questions, and he had the proof that
she did not wish to; if, on the other hand, she was not ill, and he was
convinced that she was not--there must be something serious the matter to
make the woman whom but lately he read so easily become an enigma that
made him uneasy.

And this thing--if it were that whose crushing weight he himself carried
on his bent shoulders? She divined, she understood, if not all, at least
a part of the truth.

What an extraordinary situation was hers, and one which might truly
destroy her reason.

Nothing to fear from others, everything from himself. Justice, law, the
world--on all sides he was let alone; nothing was asked of him; that
which was owed was paid; but he by a sickly aberration was going to awake
the dead who slept in their tomb, from which no one thought of taking
them, and to make spectres of them which he alone saw and heard.

And he believed himself strong. Fool that he was, and still more foolish
to have taken such a charge when by the exercise of his will he did not
place himself in a condition to carry it! To will! But he had not learned
how to will.

CHAPTER XLII

THE POWER OF HYPNOTISM

The relative calm that Saniel had felt since his marriage he owed to
Phillis; to the strength, the confidence, the