d.
Surely, far away, _they_ were singing again. Where were they? Within
his brain?--or battling with the storm to reach him? What were those
wraith-like things--those tiny forms dancing weirdly on the roaring
waters? Ah, he knew. They were the elfins of his brain that had
tormented him with their music and fled at his approach. They
had flown from their little cells, and were holding court on the
storm-waves like fairies on the green. It was like them to love the
danger and the tumult and the night. It was like them to shout and
bound with the intoxication of the hour, to scream with the gale, and
to kiss with frantic rapture the waves that threatened them. Each was
a Thought mightier than any known to living man, and in the bosom of
maddened nature it had found its element. And they had not deserted
him--they had fled but for the hour--they had turned suddenly and were
holding out their arms to him. Ah! he would meet them half-way--

A pair of arms, strong with terror, were suddenly thrown about him,
and he was dragged to the other side of the gallery.

"Harold!" cried Weir; "what is the matter with you? Are you mad?"

"I believe I am," he cried. "Come to the light. I have something to
tell you."

He caught her by the wrists and pulled her down the gallery until they
were under the lantern which burned in one of the windows on nights
like this as a warning to mariners. She gave a faint scream of terror,
and struggled to release herself.

"You look so strange," she cried. "Let me go."

"Not any more strange than you do," he said, rapidly. "You, too, have
changed since that night in here, when the truth was told to both of
us. You did not understand then, nor did I; but I know all now, and I
will tell you."

And then, in a torrent of almost unintelligible words, he poured
forth the tale of his discovery: what had come to him in the study at
Crumford Hall, the locket he had found, the letters he had read, the
episode of his past he had lived over, the poem which had swept him
up among the gods in its reading--all the sequence of facts whose
constant reiteration during every unguarded moment had mechanically
forced themselves into lasting coherence. She listened with head bent
forward, and eyes through which terror, horror, despair, chased each
other, then returned and fought together. "It is all true," he cried,
in conclusion. "It is all true. Why don't you speak? Cannot you
understand?"

She wrenched her hands