rank
with all his energy from the conclusion to which he was being forced. He
turned, however, upon the request for admission, and led the way into
the dining-room, letting his visitor close the door and follow.

"Lefevre," said the strange voice, "I have come to show myself to you,
because I know you are a true-hearted friend, and because I think you
have that exquisite charity that can forgive all things."

"_Show myself!_" ... As Lefevre listened to the strange voice and looked
at the strange person, the suspicion came upon him--What if he were but
regarding an Illusion? He had read in some of his mystical and magical
writers, that men gifted with certain powers could project to a distance
eidola or phantasms of varying likeness to themselves: might not this be
such a mocking phantasm of Julius? He drew his hand across his eyes, and
looked again: the figure still sat there. He put out his hand to test
its substantiality, and the voice cried in a keen pitch of terror--

"Don't touch me!--for your own sake!... Why, Lefevre, do you look so
amazed and overcome? Is not my wretched secret written in my face?"

"And you are really Julius Courtney?" asked Lefevre, at length finding
utterance, with measured emphasis, and in a voice which he hardly
recognised as his own.

"I am Julius Courtney--"

He paused, for Lefevre had put his head in his hands, shaken with a
silent paroxysm of grief. It wrung the doctor's heart, as if in the
person that sat opposite him, all that was noblest and most gracious in
humanity were disgraced and overthrown.

"Yes," continued the voice, "I am Julius; there is no other Courtney
that I know of, and soon there will be none at all." The doctor
listened, but he could not endure to look again. "I am dying--I have
been dying for a dozen years, and for a dozen years I have resisted and
overcome death; now I surrender. I have come to my period. I shall never
enter your house again. I have only come now to confess myself, and to
ask a last favour of you--a last token of friendship."

"I will freely do what I can for you, Julius," said the doctor, still
without looking at him, "though I am too overcome, too bewildered, yet
to say much to you."

"Thank you. You will hear my story and understand. It contains a secret
which I, like a blind fool, have only used for myself, but which you
will apply for the wide benefit of mankind. The request I have to make
of you is small, but it may seem extraordin