nd gasping breath. Her parted lips were moist and very
cold. She touched them, and they felt like flowers at night, wet with
dew. She pushed the hair from her forehead, and her brow was strangely
damp.

She sprang to her feet with a cry of terror, and stared at the door, for
she was quite sure that she had heard it close softly. It was a heavy
door, that turned noiselessly on its hinges and fitted perfectly, and
she knew the soft click of the well-made French lock when the spring
quietly pushed the bevelled latch-bolt into the socket. In an instant
she had crossed the room and had turned the handle to draw it in. But
the door was locked, beyond all doubt--she had turned the key before she
had sat down in the chair. She felt intensely cold, and an icy wave
seemed to lift her hair from her forehead. Her hand instinctively found
the white button, close beside the door-frame, which controlled all the
electric lamps, and pushed it in, and the room was flooded with light.
She must have imagined that she had heard the sound that had frightened
her.

Half dazed, she moved slowly to the windows, and closed the inner
shutters, one by one, shutting out the cold moonlight, then stood by the
chair a moment, looked at it, and glanced in the direction whence the
vision had come to her out of the shadow.

She did not know how it happened, but presently she was lying on her
bed, her face buried in the pillows, and she was tearing her heart out
in a tearless storm of shame and self-contempt.

What right had that man whom she had so often seen in her dreams to be
alive in the real world, walking among other men, recognising her, as
she had felt that he did that very afternoon? What right had he to come
to her again in the vision and to change it all, to take her in his
violent arms and kiss her on the mouth, and burn the mark of shame into
her soul, and fill her with a pleasure more horrible than any pain? Was
this the end of all her girlish meditation, of the Vestal's longing for
higher things, of the mystic's perfect way? A man's brutal kiss not even
resisted? Was that all? It could not have been worse if on that same day
she had been alone with him in the garden, instead of with Guido d'Este,
and if he had suddenly put his arms round her, and if she had not even
turned her face from his.

It was only a dream. Yes, to-morrow she would awake, if she slept at
all, and the sunshine would be streaming in where the moonlight had
shone,