one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I
shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no
more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a
pomander into the fire----"

"I will never do that!"

"No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with
ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit
characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with
the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits."

"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds
the powerful spell."

"You--value the braid so much?"

"I value only one other beauty as highly."

"Yes, Roger?"

"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid."

Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a
movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing. The
fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But
when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone.

I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness
than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out
orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest
roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too,
with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust
overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust
was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair.

A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily
cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd
size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an
outline.

I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But
I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Michell's reality.

CHAPTER XIII

"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being
dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts
whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"--KING JAMES' "DEMONOLOGY."

Now I have to record how I walked into the oldest snare in the world.

Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her
hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was
her speech of presently leaving me to return no more. Or perhaps both
these joined in urging