were looking once more through the windows of the world, as though she could see the figures of dead men playing once more their part in the game of life. And she looked always at the Englishman.
"Listen," she said, "there is something about you, sir, which I do not understand. Who are you, and where do you come from?"
He made no answer. Only he held out his hand as though to keep her away, and drew a little further back.
"You shall not escape," she continued, the words leaving her lips with a sort of staccato incisiveness, crisp and emotional. "No! you are here, and you shall answer. Who are you who come here to mock us all; because it is a dead man who speaks with your voice, and looks with your eyes? You will not dare to say that you are Duncan Fitzmaurice!"
The figure in the shadows seemed to loom larger and larger. He was no longer shrinking away.
"I know nothing of the man of whom you speak!" he declared. "I am a wanderer. I have no name and no home."
Madame de Melbain reeled and would have fallen. Then for a moment events seemed to leap forward. White and fainting, she lay in the arms of the man who had sprung to her succour, yet through her half-opened eyes there flashed a strange and wonderful light—a light of passionate and amazing content. He held her, almost roughly, for several moments, yet his lips were pressed to hers with a tenderness almost indescribable. No one of the little group moved. Wrayson felt simply that events, impossible for him to understand, had marched too quickly for him. He stood like a man in a dream, whose limbs are rigid, whose brain alone is
