That he had so far been unable
to accomplish anything in his present embodiment gave him no
uneasiness at the moment. Sooner or later the imprisoned song would
force its way through the solid masonry in which it was walled up--He
gave a short laugh and came down to earth; his fancy was running away
with him.

He folded the poem compactly and put it in his breast pocket,
determined that it should never leave him again until a copy was in
the hands of the printer. It should be sent forth from Constantinople.
The poem must be the apparent offspring of his present incarnation;
and as he had never been in Constantinople he must go there and remain
for several months before publication.

He went into the library and sat down before the fire. He closed
his eyes and let his head fall back on the soft cushion, a pleasant
languor and warmth stealing through his frame. What a future! Power,
honor, adoration--the proudest pedestal a man can stand upon. And, as
if this were not enough, an unquestioned happiness with the woman he
loved with his whole heart. To her advent into his life he owed his
complete and final severance from the petty but infinite distractions
and temptations of the world. His present without flaw, and his future
assured, what was to prevent his gifts from flowering thickly
and unceasingly in their peaceful soil and atmosphere of calm? He
remembered that his first irresistible impulse to write had come
on the night he had met her. Would he owe to her his final power to
speak, as he had owed to that other--

He sat suddenly erect, then leaned forward, gazing at the fire with
eyes from which all languor had vanished. He felt as if a flash of
lightning had been projected into his brain. That other? Who was that
other?--why was she so marvellously like Weir? Her grandmother? Yes,
but why had he felt for Weir that sense of recognition and spiritual
kinship the moment he had seen her?

He sprang to his feet and strode to the middle of the room. Great
God! Was Weir reembodied as well as himself? Lady Sioned Penrhyn was
indisputably the woman he had loved in his former existence--that was
proved once for all by the scene in the gallery at Rhyd-Alwyn and
by the letters he had found addressed to her. He recalled Weir's
childhood experience. Had she really died, and the desperate,
determined spirit of Sioned Penrhyn taken possession of her body?
Otherwise, why that sense of affinity, and her strange empire over him