of fact, I
never heard of anything so horrible. Thank heaven it happened when you
were so young! No woman's will and spirit could rise superior to such
a memory if it were a recent one. But am I forgiven?"

"As you are perfectly incorrigible, I suppose there is no use being
angry with you," she said, still with a little pout on her lips. "But
I will forgive you on one condition only."

"Name it."

"You are never to mention the subject to me again after to-night."

"I never will; but tell me, has the memory of your childhood never
come back for a moment?"

"Never. All I remember is that sense of everlasting wandering and
looking for something. For a long while I was haunted with the idea
that there was something I still must find. I never could discover
what it was, but it has left me now. If you had not been so unkind, I
should have said that it is because I am too happy for mysterious and
somewhat supernatural longings."

"But as it is, you won't. It was an odd feeling to have, though.
Perhaps it was a quest for the memories of your childhood--for a lost
existence, as it were. If ever it comes again, tell me, and we will
try and work it out together."

"Harold!" she exclaimed, smiling outright this time, "you will be
trying to analyze the cobwebs of heaven before long."

"No," he said, "they are too dense."

VI.

It was eleven o'clock when they parted for the night. Dartmouth went
up to his room and sat down at his desk to write a letter to his
father. In a moment he threw down the pen; he was not in a humor
for writing. He picked up a book (he never went to bed until he felt
sleepy), and crossed the room and sat down before the fire. But he
had not read two pages when he dropped it with an exclamation of
impatience: the story Weir had told him was written between every
line. She had told it so vividly and realistically that she had
carried him with her and almost curdled his blood. He had answered her
with a joke, because, in spite of the fact that he had been strongly
affected, he was angry as well. He hated melodrama, and the idea of
Weir having had an experience which read like a sensational column in
a newspaper was extremely distasteful to him. He sympathized with her
with all his heart, but he had a strong distaste for anything
which savored of the supernatural. Nevertheless, he was obliged to
acknowledge that this horrible, if commonplace experience of Weir's
had taken possession of his m