ee
her. She was plump, rosy, and good-natured. She was engaged to be
married to a gentleman's servant, and she chattered away gaily, and told
me all about it. A year before a mad fakir had run amuck, had killed a
soldier to whom she was to have been married the next day, and both the
children who had been in her charge. The shock had nearly sent her mad.
Yet when Halkar spoke to her of these things she looked puzzled. She
remembered nothing."

"Well?" Eleanor asked.

"Their memory," he said slowly, "was gone. Their reason was saved.
Halkar was the physician."

She shivered, and sat looking into the fire with eyes full of fear.

"Halkar," he said, "had learned much, but there was more still. It has
taken me many years, but at last I believe that I have learned the
secret which baffled him all his days. All that I need is a subject."

There was a short, tense silence. Eleanor sat quite still, nervously
clasping and unclasping her hands, her eyes steadfastly fixed upon the
fire. He watched her covertly.

"You know so little of me," she murmured, "I am almost a stranger to
you. How can you tell whether I should be suitable--even if I were
willing?"

"You will remember the two cases which I have mentioned to you," he
answered. "The man was chosen by Halkar because in the great storm he
had lost wife, and friends, and children, and in his grief he prayed for
forgetfulness. The girl was chosen because the tragedy which she had
witnessed had driven her far along the road to madness, and this
merciful loss of memory was her salvation, also. The reason you have
been chosen is because I looked into your eyes, and it seemed to me that
I saw there more than the ordinary weariness of life. Then I heard you
speak, and in your tone, too, was more than the ordinary bitterness of
misfortune. Listen, I will tell you more. I will tell you what as yet I
have not breathed to a living soul."

She caught his enthusiasm--a fierce, compelling thing.

"You are a Christian?" he asked.

"I have tried to be," she faltered.

"You believe, at least, in the eternity of human life? You must believe
in it. In nature there is no death, no annihilation. All that takes
place is transmutation! That is obvious," he declared.

"Well?"

"So in human life! The body rots; the spirit passes--where?"

He continued with scarcely a moment's pause:

"Down the broad avenues of time, to appear in a thousand different forms
and shapes. A king in one a