hat's in your mind?"

"Perhaps--the same thing that's in yours, Heron."

"Speak out plainly."

"I'm not prepared to do that without encouragement. You and I are both
of Irish blood, Heron, so you know as well as I do that imagination gets
out of hand now and then with us Celtic folk. We generally flatter
ourselves it's second sight, whereas it may be--just nothing at all."

"I give you leave to speak."

"Long ago, when I first knew you, while my father was still alive, and
before you married Miss Moreno, you once came to stop with us. You were
run down and ill. My father thought we could do you good. One day you
spoke rather frankly about a certain incident in your past. Never since
have we mentioned that conversation, and I never expected to do so
again. Yesterday I heard the story of another incident which matched it
about as perfectly as two bits of a broken coin can join together. This
second incident concerned two Irish girls. The first died years ago. The
second--is my wife."

"And the first was mine."

"I was wondering. You see, that collapse of yours on Sunday night wasn't
like you, in the normal course of things. It had to be accounted for,
and so----"

"The girl told you!"

"She told me that she'd met outside my door a tall man with red hair and
beard, and extraordinary eyes that pierced her through and through. She
told me that, after she'd walked on to a stone ledge from my window to
yours, and climbed in there----"

"Great Heavens!"

"I mentioned that she was the most wonderful girl in the world. You'll
hear the story some day. She didn't know who you were, then. When she
learned your name, although she wasn't conscious of having heard it in
the past, it affected her strangely. She seemed to associate it with
wakeful nights in her early childhood, and the sound of a woman's sobs
in the dark."

"Don't, Justin. I can't stand any more--now. The sight of her face that
Sunday at the Dietz--the ghostliness of her, in my locked room--I
thought I was haunted."

"Would you like to see her again, and judge for yourself whether----"

"Take me to her," Heron broke in.

They started on again toward the gray limousine drawn up at the roadside
only a few yards away; but before they had gone a dozen steps Heron
stopped O'Reilly once more.

"Does she know?" he asked abruptly.

"I have said nothing to her," Justin assured him. "She cannot know. Yet
I think, what one would call her 'subconscious self' i