ought to
me so poignantly the sense of my loss was to make that loss good. It
was as if from her eyes Edith Bartlett looked into mine, and smiled
consolation to me. My fate was not alone the strangest, but the most
fortunate that ever befell a man. A double miracle had been wrought for
me. I had not been stranded upon the shore of this strange world to
find myself alone and companionless. My love, whom I had dreamed lost,
had been reembodied for my consolation. When at last, in an ecstasy of
gratitude and tenderness, I folded the lovely girl in my arms, the two
Ediths were blended in my thought, nor have they ever since been
clearly distinguished. I was not long in finding that on Edith's part
there was a corresponding confusion of identities. Never, surely, was
there between freshly united lovers a stranger talk than ours that
afternoon. She seemed more anxious to have me speak of Edith Bartlett
than of herself, of how I had loved her than how I loved herself,
rewarding my fond words concerning another woman with tears and tender
smiles and pressures of the hand.

"You must not love me too much for myself," she said. "I shall be very
jealous for her. I shall not let you forget her. I am going to tell you
something which you may think strange. Do you not believe that spirits
sometimes come back to the world to fulfill some work that lay near
their hearts? What if I were to tell you that I have sometimes thought
that her spirit lives in me--that Edith Bartlett, not Edith Leete, is
my real name. I cannot know it; of course none of us can know who we
really are; but I can feel it. Can you wonder that I have such a
feeling, seeing how my life was affected by her and by you, even before
you came. So you see you need not trouble to love me at all, if only
you are true to her. I shall not be likely to be jealous."

Dr. Leete had gone out that afternoon, and I did not have an interview
with him till later. He was not, apparently, wholly unprepared for the
intelligence I conveyed, and shook my hand heartily.

"Under any ordinary circumstances, Mr. West, I should say that this
step had been taken on rather short acquaintance; but these are
decidedly not ordinary circumstances. In fairness, perhaps I ought to
tell you," he added smilingly, "that while I cheerfully consent to the
proposed arrangement, you must not feel too much indebted to me, as I
judge my consent is a mere formality. From the moment the secret of the
locket wa