old Auntie Yvette, smiling and
weeping simultaneously. Such a dream was the next best thing to
reality--save that it brought home to one too vividly what one had
lost. Pain of that kind was nevertheless a magnificent change from the
other ghastly nightmares, of the wholly maleficent kind. This was a
kindly, helpful pain....It is so rare to see the faces of our
best-beloved in dreams ... Sleep was going to be something other than
a procession of hideous nightmares then ...

"I believe he knew me, Auntie," whispered Lucille. "Oh, when will
Colonel Decies come back. I want him to be here when he opens his eyes
again. He would know at a glance whether he were in his right mind and
knew me."

"I am certain he did, dear," replied Auntie Yvette. "I am positive he
smiled at you, and I believe he knew me too."

"I _won't_ believe I have found him too late. It _couldn't_ be true,"
wept the girl, overstrained and unstrung by long vigils, heart-sick
with hope deferred, as she turned to her companion.

"Lucille! Is it real?" came a feeble whisper from the bed--and
Lucille, in the next moments, wondered if it be true that joy cannot
kill ...

* * * * *

A few weeks later, Damocles de Warrenne sat on the verandah of the
Grand Imperial Hotel Royal of Kot Ghazi, which has five rooms and five
million cockroaches, and stared blankly into the moonlit compound,
beyond which stretched the bare rocky plain that was bounded on the
north and west by mighty mountains, on the east by a mighty river, and
on the south by the more mighty ocean, many hundreds of miles away.

He had just parted from Auntie Yvette and Lucille--Lucille whose last
words as she turned to go to her room had been:--

"Now, understand, Dammy, what you want now is a sea-voyage, a
sea-voyage to England and Monksmead. When we have got you absolutely
right, Mr. Wyllis shall show you as a specimen of the Perfect Man in
Harley Street--and _then_, Dammy ..." and his burning kisses had
closed her mouth.

Was he scoundrel enough to do it? Had he deteriorated to such a depth
of villainy? Could he let that noblest and finest flower of womanhood
marry a--dangerous lunatic, a homicidal maniac who had nearly killed
the man who proved to be almost his greatest benefactor? Could he?
Would the noble-hearted Decies frankly say that he was normal and had
a right to marry? He would not, and no living man was better qualified
to give an opinion on the