he living wife of Hasan here (as these four legal
witnesses have sworn), but thine own dead spouse, Alawiyah,
refashioned for thee by the Angel of Memory out of thine own sorrow
and unquenchable fountain of tears."

'Quoth Ja'afar, bowing low his head: "Bold is the donkey-driver,
O Ka'dee! and bold the Ka'dee who dares say what he will believe,
what disbelieve--not knowing in any wise the mind of Allah--not
knowing in any wise his own heart and what it shall some day
suffer."'

This story so absorbed me that when my father re-entered the house
I was perfectly unconscious of his presence. He took the book from
me, saying that it was not a book for children. It possessed my mind
for some days. What I had read in it threw light upon certain
conversations in French and German which I had heard between my
father and his Swiss friends, and the fact gradually dawned upon me
that he believed himself to be in direct communication with the
spirit of his dead wife. This so acted upon my imagination that I
began to feel that she was actually alive, though invisible. I told
Frank when I got home that we had another mother in Switzerland, and
that I our father went to Switzerland to see her.

Having at that time a passionate love for my mother (a love none the
less passionate because somewhat coldly returned), I felt great anger
against this resuscitated rival; but Frank only laughed and called me
a stupid little fool.

Luckily Frank forgot my story in a minute, and it never reached my
mother's ears.

I Some years after this an odd incident occurred. The I idea of a
veiled lady had, as I say, fascinated me. One Raxton fair-day I
induced Winnie to be photographed on the sands, wearing a crown of
sea-flowers in imitation of Rhona Boswell's famous wild-flower
coronet, and a necklace of seaweed, with Frank and another boy
lifting from her head a long white veil of my mother's. My father
accidentally saw this photograph, and was so taken with it that he
adorned the title-page of the third edition of _The Veiled Queen_
with a small woodcut of it.

These vagaries of my father's had an influence upon my destiny of the
most tragic, yet of the most fantastic kind.

He had the reputation, I believe, of being one of the most learned
mystics of his time. He was a fair Hebrew scholar, and also had a
knowledge of Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian. His passion for philology
was deep-rooted. He was a no less ardent numismatist. Moreover, he
wa