'You are unhappy,' said a voice beside her.

Lucy started. The self in her seemed to wrestle its way upward from black and troubled depths of sleep. She opened her eyes. Someone was bending over her. She felt an ineffable horror, but not the smallest astonishment. Her dreams had prophesied; and she saw what she foreknew.

In the wavering light she perceived a stooping form, and again she noticed a whiteness of hands and face set in a black frame.

'Yes!' she said, lifting herself on her elbow. 'Yes!--what do you want?'

'You have been sobbing in your sleep,' said the voice. 'I know why you are unhappy. My brother is beginning to love you--you might love him. But there is some one between you--and there always will be. There is no hope for you--unless I show you the way out.'

'Miss Manisty!--you oughtn't to be here,' said Lucy, raising herself higher in bed and trying to speak with absolute self-command. 'Won't you go back to bed--won't you let me take you?'

And she made a movement. Instantly a hand was put out. It seized her arm first gently, then irresistibly.

'Don't, don't do that,' said the voice. 'It makes me angry--and--that hurts.'

Alice Manisty raised her other hand to her head, with a strange piteous gesture. Lucy was struck with the movement of the hand. It was shut over something that it concealed.

'I don't want to make you angry,' she said, trying to speak gently and keep down the physical tumult of the heart; 'but it is not good for you to be up like this. You are not strong--you ought to have rest.'

The grip upon her arm relaxed.

'I don't rest now'--a miserable sigh came out of the darkness. 'I sleep sometimes--but I don't rest. And it used all to be so happy once--whether I was awake or asleep. I was extraordinarily happy, all the winter, at Venice. One day Octave and I had a quarrel. He said I was mad--he seemed to be sorry for me--he held my arms and I saw him crying. But it was quite a mistake--I wasn't unhappy then. My brother John was always with me, and he told me the most wonderful things--secrets that no one else knows. Octave could never see him--and it was so strange--I saw him so plain. And my mother and father were there too--there was nothing between me and any dead person. I could see them and speak to them whenever I wished. People speak of separation from those who die. But there is none--they are always there.

And when you talk to them, you know that you are immortal as they are--only you are not like them. You remember this world still--you know you have to go back to it. One night John took me--we seemed to go through the clouds--through little waves of white fire--and I saw a city of light, full of spirits--the most beautiful people, men and women--with their souls showing like flames through their frail bodies. They were quite kind--they smiled and talked to me. But I cried bitterly--because I knew I couldn't stay with them--in their dear strange world--I must come back--back to all I hated--all that strangled and hindered me.'

The voice paused a moment. Through Lucy's mind certain incredible words which it had spoken echoed and re-echoed. Consciousness did not master them; but they made a murmur within it through which other sounds hardly penetrated. Yet she struggled with herself--she remembered that only clearness of brain could save her.

She raised herself higher on her pillows that she might bring herself more on a level with her unbidden guest.

'And these ideas gave you pleasure?' she said, almost with calm.

'The intensest happiness,' said the low, dragging tones. 'Others pity me.--"Poor creature--she's mad"--I heard them say. And it made me smile.

For I had powers they knew nothing of; I could pa.s.s from one world to another; one place to another. I could see in a living person the soul of another dead long ago. And everything spoke to me--the movement of leaves on a tree--the eyes of an animal--all kinds of numbers and arrangements that come across one in the day. Other people noticed nothing. To me it was all alive--everything was alive. Sometimes I was so happy, so ecstatic, I could hardly breathe. The people who pitied me seemed to me dull and crawling beings. If they had only known! But now--'

A long breath came from the darkness--a breath of pain. And again the figure raised its hand to its head.

'Now--somehow, it is all different. When John comes, he is cold and unkind--he won't open to me the old sights. He shows me things instead that shake me with misery--that kill me. My brain is darkening--its powers are dying out. That means that I must let this life go--I must pa.s.s into another. Some other soul must give me room. Do you understand?'

Closer came the form. Lucy perceived the white face and the dimly burning eyes, she felt herself suffocating, but she dared make no sudden move for fear of that closed hand and what it held.

'No--I don't understand,' she said faintly; 'but I am sure--no good can come to you--from another's harm.'

'What harm would it be? You are beginning to love--and your love will never make you happy. My brother is like me. He is not mad--but he has a being apart. If you cling to him, he puts you from him--if you love him he tires.

He has never loved but for his own pleasure--to complete his life. How could you complete his life? What have you that he wants? His mind now is full of you--his senses, his feeling are touched--but in three weeks he would weary of and despise you. Besides--you know--you know well--that is not all. There is another woman--whose life you must trample on--and you are not made of stuff strong enough for that. No, there is no hope for you, in this existence--this body. But there is no death; death is only a change from one form of being to another. Give up your life, then--as I will give up mine. We will escape together. I can guide you--I know the way. We shall find endless joy--endless power! I shall be with Octave then, as and when I please--and you with Edward. Come!'

The face bent nearer, and the iron hold closed again stealthily on the girl's wrist. Lucy lay with her own face turned away and her eyes shut. She scarcely breathed. A word of prayer pa.s.sed through her mind--an image of her white-haired uncle, her second father left alone and desolate.

Suddenly there was a quick movement beside her. Her heart fluttered wildly.

Then she opened her eyes. Alice Manisty had sprung up, had gone to the window, and flung back the muslin curtains. Lucy could see her now quite plainly in the moonlight--the haggard energy of look and movement, the wild dishevelled hair.

'I knew the end was come--this afternoon,' said the hurrying voice. 'When I came out to you, as I walked along the terrace--the sun went out! I saw it turn black above the Campagna--all in a moment--and I said to myself, "What will the world do without the sun?--how will it live?" And now--do you see?'--she raised her arm, and Lucy saw it for an instant as a black bar against the window, caught the terrible dignity of gesture,--'there is not one moon--but many! Look at them! How they hurry through the clouds--one after the other! Do you understand what that means? Perhaps not--for your sight is not like mine. But I know. It means that the earth has left its...o...b..t--that we are wandering--wandering in s.p.a.ce--like a dismasted vessel!

We are tossed this way and that, sometimes nearer to the stars--and sometimes further away. That is why they are first smaller--and then larger. But the crash must come at last--death for the world--death for us all--'

Her hands fell to her side, the left hand always tightly closed--her head drooped; her voice, which had been till now hoa.r.s.e and parched as though it came from a throat burnt with fever, took a deep dirge-like note.

Noiselessly Lucy raised herself--she measured the distance between herself and the door--between the mad woman and the door. Oh G.o.d!--was the door locked? Her eyes strained through the darkness. How deep her sleep must have been that she had heard no sound of its yielding! Her hand was ready to throw off the shawl that covered her, when she was startled by a laugh--a laugh vile and cruel that seemed to come from a new presence--another being. Alice Manisty rapidly came back to her, stood between her bed and the wall, and Lucy felt instinctively that some hideous change had pa.s.sed.

'Dalgetty thought that all was safe, so did Edward. And indeed the locks were safe--the only doors that hold in all the villa--I tried _yours_ in the afternoon while Manisty and the priest were talking! But mine held. So I had to deal with Dalgetty.' She stooped, and whispered:--'I got it in Venice one day--the chemist near the Rialto. She might have found it--but she never did--she is very stupid. I did her no harm--I think. But if it kills her, death is nothing!--nothing!--only the gate of life. Come!--come!

prove it!'

A hand darted and fell, like a snake striking. Lucy just threw herself aside in time--she sprang up--she rushed--she tore at the door--pulling at it with a frantic strength. It yielded with a crash, for the lock was already broken. Should she turn left or right?--to the room of Mrs.

Burgoyne's maid, or to Mr. Manisty's library? She chose the right and fled on. She had perhaps ten seconds start, since the bed had been between her enemy and the door. But if any other door interposed between her and succour, all was over!--for she heard a horrible cry behind her, and knew that she was pursued. On she dashed, across the landing at the head of the stairs. Ah! the dining-room door was open! She pa.s.sed it, and then turned, holding it desperately against her pursuer.

'Mr. Manisty! help!'

The agonised voice rang through the silent rooms. Suddenly--a sound from the library--a chair overturned--a cry--a door flung open. Manisty stood in the light.

He bounded to her side. His strength released hers. The upper part of the door was gla.s.s, and that dark gasping form on the other side of it was visible to them both, in a pale dawn light from the gla.s.s pa.s.sage.

'Go!'--he said--'Go through my room--find Eleanor!'

She fled. But as she entered the room, she tottered--she fell upon the chair that Manisty had just quitted,--and with a long shudder that relaxed all her young limbs, her senses left her.

Meanwhile the whole apartment was alarmed. The first to arrive upon the scene was the strong housemaid, who found Alice Manisty stretched upon the floor of the gla.s.s pa.s.sage, and her brother kneeling beside her, his clothes and hands torn in the struggle with her delirious violence. Alfredo appeared immediately afterwards; and then Manisty was conscious of the flash of a hand-lamp, and the soft, hurrying step of Eleanor Burgoyne.

She stood in horror at the entrance of the gla.s.s pa.s.sage. Manisty gave his sister into Alfredo's keeping as he rose and went towards her.

'For G.o.d's sake'--he said under his breath--'go and see what has happened to Dalgetty.'

He took for granted that Lucy had taken refuge with her, and Eleanor stayed to ask no questions, but fled on to Dalgetty's room. As she opened the door the fumes of chloroform a.s.sailed her, and there on the bed lay the unfortunate maid, just beginning to moan herself back to consciousness from beneath the chloroformed handkerchief that had reduced her to impotence.

Her state demanded every care. While Manisty and the housemaid Andreina conveyed Alice Manisty, now in a state of helpless exhaustion, to her room, and secured her there, Alfredo ran for the Marinata doctor. Eleanor and Aunt Pattie forced brandy through the maid's teeth, and did what they could to bring back warmth and circulation.

They were still busy with their task when the elderly Italian arrived who was the communal doctor and chemist of the village. The smell of the room, the sight of the woman, was enough. The man was efficient and discreet, and he threw himself into his work without more questions than were absolutely necessary. In the midst of their efforts Manisty reappeared, panting.

'Ought he not to see Miss Foster too?' he said anxiously to Eleanor Burgoyne.

Eleanor looked at him in astonishment.

A smothered exclamation broke from him. He rushed away, back to the library which he had seen Lucy enter.

The cool clear light was mounting. It penetrated the wooden shutters of the library and mingled with the dying light of the lamp which had served him to read with through the night, beside which, in spite of his utmost efforts, he had fallen asleep at the approach of dawn. There, in the dream-like illumination, he saw Lucy lying within his deep arm-chair. Her face was turned away from him and hidden against the cushion; her black hair streamed over the white folds of her wrapper: one arm was beneath her, the other hung helplessly over her knee.

He went up to her and called her name in an agony.

She moved slightly, made an effort to rouse herself and raised her hand.

But the hand fell again, and the word half-formed upon her lips died away.

Nothing could be more piteous, more disarmed. Yet even her disarray and helplessness were lovely; she was n.o.ble in her defeat; her very abandonment breathed youth and purity; the man's wildly surging thoughts sank abashed.

But words escaped him--words giving irrevocable shape to feeling. For he saw that she could not hear.