iolently perturbed that he could keep silence no longer.

"Julian," he said, with a pressure of chained alarm in his voice,
"Julian!"

"Yes," Julian replied, tensely.

"Anything wrong with you?"

"No, no. Or with you?"

"Nothing definite."

"What then?"

"I will confess to you that to-night I feel--I feel, well, horribly
afraid."

"Of what?"

"I have no idea. The feeling is totally unreasonable. That gives it an
inexplicable horror."

"Ah! then that is why you joined your left hand with my right five
minutes ago. I wondered why you did it."

"I! Joined hands!"

"Yes."

"I haven't moved my hand."

"My dear Val! How is it holding mine then?"

"Don't be absurd, Julian; my hand is not near yours. Both my hands are
just where they were when we sat down, on my side of the table."

"Just where they were! Your little finger has been tightly linked in mine
for the last five minutes. You know that as well as I do."

"Nonsense!"

"But it is linked now while I am speaking."

"I tell you it isn't."

"I'll soon let you know it too. There! Ah! no wonder you have snatched it
away. You forget that my muscles are like steel, and that I can pinch as
a gin pinches a rabbit's leg. I say, I didn't really hurt you, did I? It
was only a joke to stop your little game."

"I tell you," Valentine said, almost angrily, "your hand has never once
touched mine, nor mine yours."

His accent of irritable sincerity appeared suddenly to carry conviction
to the mind of Julian, for he sprang violently up from the table, and
cried, in the darkness:

"Then who the devil's in the room with us?"

Valentine also, convinced that Julian had not been joking, was
appalled. He switched on the light, and saw Julian standing opposite
to him, looking very white. They both threw a rapid glance upon the
room, whose dull green draperies returned their inquiry with the
complete indifference of artistic inanimation.

"Who the devil's got in here?" Julian repeated, with the savage accent of
extreme uneasiness.

"Nobody," Valentine replied. "You know the thing's impossible."

"Impossible or not, somebody has found means to get in."

Valentine shook his head.

"Then you were lying?"

"Julian, what are you saying? Don't go too far."

"Either you were, or else a man has been sitting at that table between
us, and I have held his hand, the hand of some stranger. Ouf!"

He shook his broad shoulders in an irrepressible shudder.

"I was n