curious, and very interesting; but
such occurrences make people dubious about things in which, as everybody
knows, it is wisdom's part to believe implicitly.

Now the second day
after Ruric had died, the season now being June, Count Manuel stood at
the three windows, and saw in the avenue of poplars his wife, Dame
Niafer, walking hand in hand with little Melicent. Niafer, despite her
lameness, was a fine figure of a woman, so long as he viewed Niafer
through the closed window of Ageus. Dom Manuel looked contentedly enough
upon the wife who was the reward of his toil and suffering in Dun
Vlechlan, and the child who was the reward of his amiability and
shrewdness in dealing with the stork, all seemed well so long as he
regarded them through the closed third window.

His hand trembled somewhat as he now opened this window, to face gray
sweetly-scented nothingness. But in the window glass, you saw, the
appearance of his flourishing gardens remained unchanged: and in the
half of the window to the right hand were quivering poplars, and Niafer
and little Melicent were smiling at him, and the child was kissing her
hand to him. All about this swinging half of the window was nothingness;
he, leaning out, and partly closing this half of the window, could see
that behind the amiable picture was nothingness: it was only in the old
glass of Ageus that his wife and child appeared to live and move.

Dom Manuel laughed, shortly. "Hah, then," says he, "that tedious dear
nagging woman and that priceless snub-nosed brat may not be real. They
may be merely happy and prosaic imaginings, hiding the night which alone
is real. To consider this possibility is troubling. It makes for even
greater loneliness. None the less, I know that I am real, and certainly
the grayness before me is real. Well, no matter what befell Ruric
yonder, it must be that in this grayness there is some other being who
is real and dissatisfied. I must go to seek this being, for here I
become as a drugged person among sedate and comfortable dreams which are
made doubly weariful by my old master's whispering of that knowledge
which was my father's father's."

Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the
round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, "I am Lubrican, and I
come to guide you if you dare follow."

"I have always thought that 'dare' was a quaint word," says Manuel, with
the lordly swagger which he kept for company.

So he climb