asked to see his sister, but when they met, Pauline showed no
recollection of him. He called often, and she watched him, I noticed,
with an eager, troubled look. One night, after dinner, as he described
how, in a battle, he had killed a white-coated Austrian, he seized a
knife from the table, and illustrated the downward blow with which he
had saved his own life. I heard a deep sigh behind me, and turning, I
saw Pauline in a dead faint. I carried her to her room. When she came to
herself again, or rather when she rose in her bed and turned her face to
mine, I saw in her eyes, what, by the mercy of God, I shall never again
see there.

With eyes fixed and immovable, and dilated to their utmost extent, she
rose and passed out of the room. I followed her. Swiftly she passed out
of the house into the street, and without the slightest hesitation,
turning at right angles, moved swiftly up a long, straight road. After
turning once more she stopped at a three-storeyed house. Going up to the
door, she laid her hand upon it. I tried to lead her gently away, but
she resisted. What was I to do? The house was an empty one. I paused.
Once before my latch-key had opened a strange door. Would it open this
one? I tried it. It fitted exactly.

Without waiting for me, Pauline ran in ahead. I shut the door. All was
darkness. I could hear Pauline moving about on the first floor. I
followed her, and, striking a match, found myself in a room with
folding-doors. It was furnished, but the dust lay deep everywhere.
Pauline stood in the middle of the room, holding her head in her hands,
striving, it seemed, to remember something. I entered the back room with
the candle I had found. There was a piano there. Something induced me to
sit down at it and to play the first few notes of the song I had heard
that terrible night.

A nervous trembling seemed to seize Pauline. She crossed the floor
towards me, and I made room for her at the piano. With a master hand she
played brilliantly the prelude of the song of which I had struck a few
vagrant notes. I waited breathlessly, expecting her to sing. Suddenly
she started wildly to her feet and, uttering a wild cry of horror, sank
into my arms. I laid her on a sofa close by. As I held her there, a
strange thing happened.

The room beyond the folding-doors was lit with a brilliant light.
Grouped round a table were four men. One of them was Ceneri, the other
Macari. The third man was a stranger to me. These t