girl was already half-way
across the room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with a
dessert-spoon and a knife.

Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped down the
remainder of his dinner, and then went at once to his bedroom to be
alone with his thoughts. This time the passages were lighted, and he
suffered no exciting contretemps; yet the winding corridor was dim with
shadows, and the last portion, from the bend of the walls onwards,
seemed longer than he had ever known it. It ran downhill like the
pathway on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it he felt
that by rights it ought to have led him clean out of the house into the
heart of a great forest. The world was singing with him. Strange fancies
filled his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely locked,
he did not light the candles, but sat by the open window thinking long,
long thoughts that came unbidden in troops to his mind.

IV

This part of the story he told to Dr. Silence, without special coaxing,
it is true, yet with much stammering embarrassment. He could not in the
least understand, he said, how the girl had managed to affect him so
profoundly, and even before he had set eyes upon her. For her mere
proximity in the darkness had been sufficient to set him on fire. He
knew nothing of enchantments, and for years had been a stranger to
anything approaching tender relations with any member of the opposite
sex, for he was encased in shyness, and realised his overwhelming
defects only too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came to him
deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, and she sought him out on
every possible occasion. Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yet
frankly inviting; and she won him utterly with the first glance of her
shining eyes, even if she had not already done so in the dark merely by
the magic of her invisible presence.

"You felt she was altogether wholesome and good!" queried the doctor.
"You had no reaction of any sort--for instance, of alarm?"

Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable little apologetic
smiles. It was some time before he replied. The mere memory of the
adventure had suffused his shy face with blushes, and his brown eyes
sought the floor again before he answered.

"I don't think I can quite say that," he explained presently. "I
acknowledged certain qualms, sitting up in my room afterwards. A
conviction grew upon me that there was something about her--how