itive; he bent
forward on his chair as Villiers painfully undid the string, and
unfolded the outer covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and
Villiers took it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke
without a word.

There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two men
sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall old-fashioned
clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind of one of them the
slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory. He was looking
intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the woman's head; it had
evidently been drawn with great care, and by a true artist, for the
woman's soul looked out of the eyes, and the lips were parted with a
strange smile. Clarke gazed still at the face; it brought to his memory
one summer evening long ago; he saw again the long lovely valley, the
river winding between the hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the
dull red sun, and the cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a
voice speaking to him across the waves of many years, and saying,
'Clarke, Mary will see the God Pan!' and then he was standing in the
grim room beside the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the
clock, waiting and watching, watching the figure lying on the green
chair beneath the lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes,
and his heart grew cold within him.

'Who is this woman?' he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.

'That is the woman whom Herbert married.'

Clarke looked again at the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There
certainly was Mary's face, but there was something else, something he
had not seen on Mary's features when the white-clad girl entered the
laboratory with the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she
lay grinning on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from
those eyes, the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole
face, Clarke shuddered before it in his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillips's words, 'the most vivid presentment of
evil I have ever seen.' He turned the paper over mechanically in his
hand and glanced at the back.

'Good God! Clarke, what is the matter? You are as white as death.'

Villiers had started wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a
groan, and let the paper drop from his hands.

'I don't feel very well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour
me out a little wine; thanks, that will do.