ed to peep
no more. She touched him lightly upon the mouth with her fingers and
laughed a little low, rippling laugh, the sound of which seemed
to trickle along his sensory nerves, icily. She bent over
him--lower--lower--and lower yet; until, above the nauseating odor of
the place he could smell the musk perfume of her hair. Yet lower
she bent; with every nerve in his body he could feel her nearing
presence....

She kissed him on the lips.

Again she laughed, in that wicked, eerie glee.

M. Max was conscious of the most singular, the maddest impulses; it was
one of the supreme moments of his life. He knew that all depended
upon his absolute immobility; yet something in his brain was prompting
him--prompting him--to gather the witch to his breast; to return that
poisonous, that vampirish kiss, and then to crush out life from the
small lithe body.

Sternly he fought down these strange promptings, which he knew to
emanate hypnotically from the brain of the creature bending over him.

"Oh, my beautiful dead-baby," she said, softly, and her voice was low,
and weirdly sweet. "Oh, my new baby, how I love you, my dead one!" Again
she laughed, a musical peal. "I will creep to you in the poppyland where
you go... and you shall twine your fingers in my hair and pull my red
mouth down to you, kissing me... kissing me, until you stifle and you
die of my love.... Oh! my beautiful mummy-baby... my baby."...

The witch-crooning died away into a murmur; and the Frenchman became
conscious of the withdrawal of that presence from the room. No sound
came to tell of the reclosing of the door; but the obsession was
removed, the spell raised.

Again he inhaled deeply the tainted air, and again he opened his eyes.

He had no warranty to suppose that he should remain unmolested during
the remainder of the night. The strange words of the Eurasian he did not
construe literally; yet could he be certain that he was secure?... Nay!
he could be certain that he was NOT!

The shaded lamp was swung in such a position that most of the light was
directed upon him where he lay, whilst the walls of the room were bathed
in a purple shadow. Behind him and above him, directly over the head of
the bunk, a faint sound--a sound inaudible except in such a dead silence
as that prevailing--told of some shutter being raised or opened. He had
trained himself to watch beneath lowered lids without betraying that he
was doing so by the slightest nervous twitchi