little behind his friend.

'Before I tell you what has happened to me,' Pierston said, 'I want to
let you know the manner of man I am.'

'Lord--I know already.'

'No, you don't. It is a sort of thing one doesn't like to talk of. I lie
awake at night thinking about it.'

'No!' said Somers, with more sympathy, seeing that his friend was really
troubled.

'I am under a curious curse, or influence. I am posed, puzzled
and perplexed by the legerdemain of a creature--a deity rather; by
Aphrodite, as a poet would put it, as I should put it myself in marble.
... But I forget--this is not to be a deprecatory wail, but a defence--a
sort of Apologia pro vita mea.'

'That's better. Fire away!'

1. VII. HER EARLIER INCARNATIONS

'You, Somers, are not, I know, one of those who continue to indulge
in the world-wide, fond superstition that the Beloved One of any man
always, or even usually, cares to remain in one corporeal nook or shell
for any great length of time, however much he may wish her to do so. If
I am wrong, and you do still hold to that ancient error--well, my story
will seem rather queer.'

'Suppose you say the Beloved of some men, not of any man.'

'All right--I'll say one man, this man only, if you are so particular.
We are a strange, visionary race down where I come from, and perhaps
that accounts for it. The Beloved of this one man, then, has had many
incarnations--too many to describe in detail. Each shape, or embodiment,
has been a temporary residence only, which she has entered, lived in
awhile, and made her exit from, leaving the substance, so far as I have
been concerned, a corpse, worse luck! Now, there is no spiritualistic
nonsense in this--it is simple fact, put in the plain form that the
conventional public are afraid of. So much for the principle.'

'Good. Go on.'

'Well; the first embodiment of her occurred, so nearly as I can
recollect, when I was about the age of nine. Her vehicle was a little
blue-eyed girl of eight or so, one of a family of eleven, with flaxen
hair about her shoulders, which attempted to curl, but ignominiously
failed, hanging like chimney-crooks only. This defect used rather to
trouble me; and was, I believe, one of the main reasons of my Beloved's
departure from that tenement. I cannot remember with any exactness
when the departure occurred. I know it was after I had kissed my
little friend in a garden-seat on a hot noontide, under a blue gingham
umbrella, which w