liers painfully undid the string, and
unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue,
and Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
without a word.

There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two
man sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall
old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of
one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He
was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's
head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true
artist, for the woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were
parted with a strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it
brought to his memory one summer evening, long ago; he saw again the
long lovely valley, the river winding between the hills, the meadows
and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising
from the water. He heard a voice speaking to him across the waves of
many years, and saying "Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!" and then he
was standing in the grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy
ticking of the clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying
on the green char beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked
into her eyes, and his heart grew cold within him.

"Who is this woman?" he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.

"That is the woman who Herbert married."

Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There
certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he
had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the
laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from
those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
face, Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip's words, "the most vivid presentment of
evil I have ever seen." He turned the paper over mechanically in his
hand and glanced at the back.

"Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death."

Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.

"I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour
me out a little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a
few mi