ption of them.

"Have no special fear for me, Malcolm. Queen Tera knows, and will
offer us no harm. I know it! I know it, as surely as I am lost in the
depth of my own love for you!"

There was something in her voice so strange to me that I looked quickly
into her eyes. They were bright as ever, but veiled to my seeing the
inward thought behind them as are the eyes of a caged lion.

Then the two other men came in, and the subject changed.

Chapter XVIII

The Lesson of the "Ka"

That night we all went to bed early. The next night would be an
anxious one, and Mr. Trelawny thought that we should all be fortified
with what sleep we could get. The day, too, would be full of work.
Everything in connection with the Great Experiment would have to be
gone over, so that at the last we might not fail from any unthought-of
flaw in our working. We made, of course, arrangements for summoning aid
in case such should be needed; but I do not think that any of us had
any real apprehension of danger. Certainly we had no fear of such
danger from violence as we had had to guard against in London during
Mr. Trelawny's long trance.

For my own part I felt a strange sense of relief in the matter. I had
accepted Mr. Trelawny's reasoning that if the Queen were indeed such as
we surmised--such as indeed we now took for granted--there would not be
any opposition on her part; for we were carrying out her own wishes to
the very last. So far I was at ease--far more at ease than earlier in
the day I should have thought possible; but there were other sources of
trouble which I could not blot out from my mind. Chief amongst them
was Margaret's strange condition. If it was indeed that she had in her
own person a dual existence, what might happen when the two existences
became one? Again, and again, and again I turned this matter over in my
mind, till I could have shrieked out in nervous anxiety. It was no
consolation to me to remember that Margaret was herself satisfied, and
her father acquiescent. Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it
throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it
stands. I seemed to hear the hands go round the dial of the clock; I
saw darkness turn to gloom, and gloom to grey, and grey to light
without pause or hindrance to the succession of my miserable feelings.
At last, when it was decently possible without the fear of disturbing
others, I got up. I crept along the passage to find