her by both hands and stand a long time in rapt contemplation
of her face. As I gazed, the memory of that other Edith, which had
been affected as with a benumbing shock by the tremendous experience
that had parted us, revived, and my heart was dissolved with tender
and pitiful emotions, but also very blissful ones. For she who brought
to me so poignantly the sense of my loss was to make that loss good.
It was as if from her eyes Edith Bartlett looked into mine, and smiled
consolation to me. My fate was not alone the strangest, but the most
fortunate that ever befell a man. A double miracle had been wrought
for me. I had not been stranded upon the shore of this strange world
to find myself alone and companionless. My love, whom I had dreamed
lost, had been reembodied for my consolation. When at last, in an
ecstasy of gratitude and tenderness, I folded the lovely girl in my
arms, the two Ediths were blended in my thought, nor have they ever
since been clearly distinguished. I was not long in finding that on
Edith's part there was a corresponding confusion of identities. Never,
surely, was there between freshly united lovers a stranger talk than
ours that afternoon. She seemed more anxious to have me speak of Edith
Bartlett than of herself, of how I had loved her than how I loved
herself, rewarding my fond words concerning another woman with tears
and tender smiles and pressures of the hand.

"You must not love me too much for myself," she said. "I shall be very
jealous for her. I shall not let you forget her. I am going to tell
you something which you may think strange. Do you not believe that
spirits sometimes come back to the world to fulfill some work that lay
near their hearts? What if I were to tell you that I have sometimes
thought that her spirit lives in me,--that Edith Bartlett, not Edith
Leete, is my real name. I cannot know it; of course none of us can
know who we really are; but I can feel it. Can you wonder that I have
such a feeling, seeing how my life was affected by her and by you,
even before you came. So you see you need not trouble to love me at
all, if only you are true to her. I shall not be likely to be
jealous."

Dr. Leete had gone out that afternoon, and I did not have an interview
with him till later. He was not, apparently, wholly unprepared for the
intelligence I conveyed, and shook my hand heartily.

"Under any ordinary circumstances, Mr. West, I should say that this
step had been taken on r