significance.

He shuddered, he knew not why, and passed his hand over his high
forehead. "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly. "But
you, mademoiselle--you--I have met before?"

"Oh, ages, ages ago!" There was something weird in her emphasis.

"Ha!" said a voice near them, "I thought so!" It was the doctor,
peering at them curiously. "And you both feel rather dazed and
creepy?" He suddenly felt their pulses, lingering, however, as the
Chevalier fancied, somewhat longer than necessary over the lady's wrist
and beautiful arm. He then put a small round box in the Chevalier's
hand, saying, "One before each meal," and turning to the lady with
caressing professional accents said, "We must wrap ourselves closely
and endeavor to induce perspiration," and hurried away, dragging the
Chevalier with him. When they reached a secluded corner, he said, "You
had just now a kind of feeling, don't you know, as if you'd sort of
been there before, didn't you?"

"Yes, what you call a--preexistence," said the Chevalier wonderingly.

"Yes; I have often observed that those who doubt a future state of
existence have no hesitation in accepting a previous one," said the
doctor dryly. "But come, I see from the way the crowd are hurrying
that your divinity's number is up--I mean," he corrected himself
hastily, "that she is probably dancing again."

"Aha! with him, the imbecile McFeckless?" gasped the Chevalier.

"No, alone."

She was indeed alone, in the centre of the ballroom--with outstretched
arms revolving in an occult, weird, dreamy, mystic, druidical,
cabalistic circle. They now for the first time perceived the meaning
of those strange wands which appeared to be attached to the many folds
of her diaphanous skirts and involved her in a fleecy, whirling cloud.
Yet in the wild convolutions of her garments and the mad gyrations of
her figure, her face was upturned with the seraphic intensity of a
devotee, and her lips parted as with the impassioned appeal for "Light!
more light!" And the appeal was answered. A flood of blue, crimson,
yellow, and green radiance was alternately poured upon her from the
black box of a mysterious Nubian slave in the gallery. The effect was
marvelous; at one moment she appeared as a martyr in a sheet of flame,
at another as an angel wrapped in white and muffled purity, and again
as a nymph of the cerulean sea, and then suddenly a cloud of darkness
seemed to descend upon her, throug