was not, mine; and a sickening consciousness of my utter
inability to reconcile its identity with its appearance overwhelmed me,
and choked my reason.

"Well, have you determined whether or not this is your room?" asked the
girl on my left, proffering me a huge tumbler creaming over with
champagne, and laughing wickedly as she spoke.

"It is mine," I answered, doggedly, striking the glass rudely with my
hand, and dashing the aromatic wine over the white cloth. "I know that
it is mine; and ye are jugglers and enchanters who want to drive me
mad."

"Hush! hush!" she said, gently, not in the least angered by my rough
treatment. "You are excited. Alf shall play something to soothe you."

At her signal, one of the men sat down at the organ. After a short,
wild, spasmodic prelude, he began what seemed to me to be a symphony of
recollections. Dark and sombre, and all through full of quivering and
intense agony, it appeared to recall a dark and dismal night, on a cold
reef, around which an unseen but terribly audible ocean broke with
eternal fury. It seemed as if a lonely pair were on the reef, one
living, the other dead; one clasping his arms around the tender neck and
naked bosom of the other, striving to warm her into life, when his own
vitality was being each moment sucked from him by the icy breath of the
storm. Here and there a terrible wailing minor key would tremble through
the chords like the shriek of sea-birds, or the warning of advancing
death. While the man played I could scarce restrain myself. It seemed to
be Blokeeta whom I listened to, and on whom I gazed. That wondrous night
of pleasure and pain that I had once passed listening to him seemed to
have been taken up again at the spot where it had broken off, and the
same hand was continuing it. I stared at the man called Alf. There he
sat with his cloak and doublet, and long rapier and mask of black
velvet. But there was something in the air of the peaked beard, a
familiar mystery in the wild mass of raven hair that fell as if
wind-blown over his shoulders, which riveted my memory.

"Blokeeta! Blokeeta!" I shouted, starting up furiously from the couch on
which I was lying, and bursting the fair arms that were linked around my
neck as if they had been hateful chains,--"Blokeeta! my friend! speak to
me, I entreat you! Tell these horrid enchanters to leave me. Say that I
hate them. Say that I command them to leave my room."

The man at the organ stirred not i