actually is a crude
time machine. A device for transporting a human soul to another period.
Who devised it I cannot say. I believe it is old, and that Vance came
upon it only by chance."

"But it isn't a machine. It's just a mirror--"

"Yet it is the gate through which a mind may be reflected into past or
future. All that is needed is a focal point. A person to receive that
mind. In this case, Adrian Vance made the focal point one of my
ancestors, the first Elaine Duchard."

"The first Elaine Duchard!"

"Yes. She was the woman in the picture. And the woman whose image we now
find imprinted in that devil's mirror."

"But how--"

"You remember how Adrian Vance swore vengeance when Elaine refused to
marry him." The aged savant's voice choked with anger. "This must be
what he planned. He bought the picture Gustav Jerbette painted of my
ancestor. Then, by some process, imprinted her portrait in the center of
this mirror, whose secret he somehow discovered. Apparently the picture
does not show except at a certain angle. Perhaps only my daughter's
coloring or facial configuration would ordinarily bring it out." He
shrugged. "That I do not know."

Mark nodded slowly. He was breathing hard, his eyes dark with anger.

"At any rate," the other continued, "Elaine tonight looked into the
mirror. By some accident--an accident Vance had counted on taking place
eventually, of course--, she happened to get exactly the right angle.
She saw her ancestor. Her mind flashed back through time, into that
other Elaine Duchard's brain--"

And then, all at once, the old man's iron will cracked.

"She is trapped!" he cried in a voice like the wail of a north wind
through the pines. "She is trapped in the body of that first Elaine
Duchard, while her own lies here, a useless, unconscious husk! She will
die, as our ancestor died--"

"What do you mean? How did the first Elaine Duchard die?" Mark was on
his feet, fists clenched.

Professor Duchard sat slumped forward, his face buried in his hands,
white hair awry.

"She was a tragic figure," he mumbled. "You saw her picture. You know
how beautiful she was.

"She came from a minor family of the French nobility, but she loved a
young Jacobin--a man such as those who, a few years later, overthrew the
monarchy and founded the French republic.

"She had another suitor, however. A Baron Morriere. When he learned that
she was going to marry another, he kidnapped her the night before her