us.

* * * * *

"What did you stop behind to do?" I asked as we prepared for bed at
the hotel.

He flashed his quick, infectious smile at me, and tweaked his mustache
ends, for all the world like a self-satisfied tomcat furbishing his
whiskers after finishing a bowl of cream. "There was an alteration to
that epitaph I had to make. You recall it read, '_Ici repose
malheureusement_--here lies unhappily Julie d'Ayen'? That is no longer
true. I chiseled off the _malheureusement_. Thanks to Monsieur
Edouard's courage and my cleverness the old one's prophecy was
fulfilled tonight; and poor, small Julie has found rest at last.
Tomorrow morning they celebrate the first of a series of masses I have
arranged for her at the Cathedral."

"What was that drink you gave Ned just before he left us?" I asked
curiously. "It smelled like----"

"_Le bon Dieu_ and the devil know--not I," he answered with a grin.
"It was a voodoo love-potion. I found the realization that she had
been dead a century and more so greatly troubled our young friend that
he swore he could not be affectionate to our poor Julie; so I went
down to the Negro quarter in the afternoon and arranged to have a
philtre brewed. _Eh bien_, that aged black one who concocted it
assured me that she could inspire love for the image of a crocodile in
the heart of anyone who looked upon it after taking but a drop of her
decoction, and she charged me twenty dollars for it. But I think I had
my money's worth. Did it not work marvelously?"

"Then Julie's really gone? Ned's coming back released her from the
spell----"

"Not wholly gone," he corrected. "Her little body now is but a small
handful of dust, her spirit is no longer earth-bound, and the familiar
demon who in life was old Maman Dragonne has left the earth with her,
as well. No longer will she metamorphosize into a snake and kill the
faithless ones who kiss her little mistress and then forswear their
troth, but--_non_, my friend, Julie is not gone entirely, I think. In
the years to come when Ned and Nella have long been joined in wedded
bliss, there will be minutes when Julie's face and Julie's voice and
the touch of Julie's little hands will haunt his memory. There will
always be one little corner of his heart which never will belong to
Madame Nella Minton, for it will be for ever Julie's. Yes, I think
that it is so."

Slowly, deliberately, almost ritualistically, he poured a glass of