‘Satan tempts us,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Satan tempts us.’

She turned her face away, clasped her hands tightly, and went on.

‘I do not know how to say it. It was like this. I was at a dance, and very happy. I think I never was so happy in my life. I never danced with any one before. There came a moth, and it was going to burn itself. He saved it; and then he said, “What matter if it had died, for we were all like moths.” There is nothing more.’

‘He told a lie.’

‘I knew it, I knew it,’ she said. ‘Say that! Look at me as you say it! Say: “I believe we live again.”’

‘I believe that we live again,’ I said solemnly, answering her gaze with perfect truthfulness. The anguish passed away; the strained hands loosened. She bent her head and closed her eyes. When she spoke again, she said in a whisper: ‘It is all well. How good of you to come! He said he would believe it, if I told him. I could not tell him. He made me feel as if I did not know. If I could only—will you say this to him for me? Ah, no! I forgot. You must never tell any one.’

‘You shall tell him yourself.’

A light, first of wonder, then of the happiness of those who see a vision, dawned in her eyes. I was still half in heaven with her, when the Count entered. She told him that I had been ill—that I ought not to have come out at night.

‘I am greatly obliged to you for your kindness.’ The Count addressed himself to me with a graceful, though condescending bow. ‘The Abbot is informed of the reasons for which secrecy is imperative,’ he continued. ‘I feel sure that you will hold me excused. But we must not suffer you to go hence without a draught of wine.’ His daughter went before him.

I followed, down the dark staircase into a hall—the same evidently as that into which I had peeped from the window of the boudoir. It lay in darkness now; even the fire burned low. The Count carried a lamp.

Strange figures, stranger faces, met my eyes. Goat-footed creatures were driving airy chariots over my head; Cupids and Fauns and things half man, half beast or bird, were at their wildest revelry around me. Here stood l’homme armé, his visor up, nothing but vacant blackness behind it. There, two colossal heads, man and woman, leered at each other. Garlands of carved fruit and flowers, amidst which squirrels, monkeys, and little owls were playing, wreathed pillar and post of the staircase by which we had come down. No two were alike.

In front of the fire stood a table; on it a tray of polished brass, holding a flask of fine Venetian work and some glasses.

He seated himself in silence. I did the same.

A French clock on its bracket struck, or rather tolled, an hour after midnight.

Lifting his dark eyes, the Count fixed them steadily upon me.

I feared his recognition too much to meet them, for he and I had looked each other in the eyes once before. It is impossible to mask the soul when she is sitting at her open windows. But he had no suspicion.