PERKINS, THE FAKEER (continued 3)

And cheer my passing day.

EDMUND E. GOSSE.

"But, madam, the symptoms, in so far as I can gather them, are insufficient for an accurate diagnosis. You have stated the case clearly and in minute detail, but my experience in the new school of medicine--if such it can be called--convinces me that you have inadvertently omitted some significant factor in the premises, without which I can vouchsafe to you nothing more valuable than sweeping generalities. In other words, you have given me an opportunity to lay before you a theory, but no chance to suggest to you a practical line of action."

I looked helplessly at Mrs. Van Corlear and saw that she was scanning Dr. Emerson Woodruff's strong, thoughtful face attentively. Presently, she glanced at me, as if asking my permission to speak, and I nodded to her in acquiescence.

"We have told you, doctor," began Mrs. Jack, "that this--ah--friend of ours plays nothing but Chopin. That's important, of course?"

"Exceedingly," remarked Dr. Woodruff, impressively, his hands folded across his chest and his head bent forward. Even at that critical moment, I found myself wondering if all practitioners of the anti-materialistic school were large, dignified, magnetic men, with majestic brows and bright, searching eyes.

"But he's not always a soloist," went on Mrs. Jack, in a low but vibrant tone; "he has shown an inclination of late to travel in double harness--piano and violin, you know."

An enigmatical smile came into Dr. Woodruff's face for an instant. The man's intuition was so quick and keen that I had begun to fear I should find it difficult to maintain my incognita.

"You say," he asked, presently, turning toward me, "that his general health remains good? He has no tendency towards melancholia; doesn't grow flighty at times in his talk?"

"I have never seen him look so well as he does at present," I answered, wearily. I had come to Dr. Woodruff against my will, succumbing weakly to Mrs. Jack's insistence. And now the whole affair appeared ridiculous and the doctor's questions irrelevant and futile. My interest in the séance--if that is the word for it--was reawakened, however, by the physician's next question.

"Who plays the violin for him?" he asked, curtly.

Mrs. Jack answered him at once. "Signorina Molatti. You know her by reputation?"

"Yes," he answered; "I have heard her play. She has a touch of genius. They must make great music together--Molatti and your friend."

A lump came into my throat and I clutched the arms of my chair awkwardly. That Dr. Woodruff had noticed my emotion, I felt sure.

"Well, what is your explanation of all this, doctor?" I asked, impatiently. I was thoroughly out of harmony with myself, Mrs. Jack and the physician, and my pride revolted at the false position in which I had been placed. A skeptic who goes to a clergyman for guidance sacrifices both his logic and his dignity. Here I sat in Dr. Emerson Woodruff's office, under an assumed name, telling a stranger weird tales about a supposititious acquaintance who was in reality my own husband. Had I not been unfair to Tom, Dr. Woodruff and myself? Surely the road to truth is not through a zigzag lane of lies!

"My dear madam," began the doctor, in his most pompous manner, "the case as you have stated it is unique in the annals of what I take the liberty to call the new science--new, that is, to the Western world. To the brooding East, the introspective, sapient, miracle-working Orient, there would be nothing strange or inexplicable in what your--er--friend calls his 'seizure.' I have seen in India phenomena that, should I describe them to you, would wholly destroy what little confidence you have in my veracity and common sense. May I ask why you have come to me, madam? You have no faith in the school to which I am devoted."

His voice had grown suddenly stern, and I avoided his gaze in confusion. The ease with which he had read my thoughts offended and frightened me.

"It's my fault, Dr. Woodruff," cried Mrs. Jack, loyally; "I persuaded her to come. I have been over the jumps before, and I rather like the course. But it's pretty stiff going at first, you must acknowledge."

To my surprise, Dr. Woodruff laughed aloud. His merriment restored my equilibrium, and I hastened to explain.

"Won't you believe me, doctor, when I say that I have not come to you in an antagonistic mood? I am intensely interested in the problem we have laid before you--and I feel sure you can help us to read the riddle. We have a friend who has no music in his soul. Suddenly, he begins to play Chopin like a master. Then he develops a fondness for duets. We fear the future. Presently, he will begin to neglect his business and his---and--"

"And his wife," added the doctor, glancing at me, quizzically. Then he turned sharply toward Mrs. Jack. "Is this man fond of horses? Does he ride?"

"Before he became so completely absorbed in his profession he was a marvel over timber," she answered, with enthusiasm. "I remember--" she began, reminiscently.

"Never mind ancient history," I cried, rather rudely. "I really can't see, Dr. Woodruff, what his cross-country skill has to do with his Chopin seizure."

"As I understand it, madam," explained the physician, evidently hurt by my petulance, "as I understand it, you are desirous of turning your--ah--friend's mind from music. You tell me that his professional duties have had no effect in this connection. To use an expression that is not often employed by psychologists, a counter-irritant is what I had in mind. It is not strictly scientific to prescribe a remedy before the diagnosis is completed, but, as I gather from your words, you wish to attempt a cure at once."

I am sure there flashed a gleam of suspicion, not unmingled with contempt, from my eyes as I scanned the doctor's face. Surely, it was absurd to suppose that if Tom was really the victim of some supernatural manifestation he could be restored to a normal condition by a resumption of his equestrian enthusiasm. Furthermore, what was I to gain by the line of treatment that this psychological poseur seemed to have in mind? Was it not just as well for my peace of mind to have Tom playing duets with Signorina Molatti as chasing an anise-seed bag across fields and ditches in company with Mrs. Jack Van Corlear or some other horsey woman?

"Do you think he has been hypnotized by Signorina Molatti?" I asked, bluntly, anxious to pin the physician down to some explanation of Tom's eccentricities that should not offend against probability.

"Admitting the possibility of hypnotism in this instance," answered Dr. Woodruff, gravely, "it would seem to be much more likely that your friend had hypnotized Signorina Molatti. Do you not agree with me?"

Taking all the circumstances into consideration, I was forced to admit to myself that his argument was sound. But I could not imagine Tom in the role of a Svengali. Whichever way I turned I was at the horn of a dilemma.

"The fact is, madam," began Dr. Woodruff, very seriously, "the fact is that your reticence has placed me in a somewhat awkward position. While you have apparently made a clean breast of the whole affair, there are several gaps in your story that I must fill up before I can be of any great service to you. There are various explanations of your friend's remarkable outbreak that naturally suggest themselves. Most people would assert at once that he had deliberately concealed his musical ability for years, planning to make a sensational début when occasion served. You have rejected this explanation as inconsistent with your knowledge of the man's character. I accept your view of the matter, and lay aside as untenable the seemingly most reasonable solution of the problem. Practically, but two lines of conjecture remain open to us. Your friend may have been hypnotized, may have become the plaything of a harmless medium who possesses a sense of humor and enjoys a practical joke. But, I must admit, this explanation appears far-fetched and involves several very improbable hypotheses."

The doctor paused for a time and eyed us musingly. I felt better disposed toward him than heretofore, recognizing the fact that I had been listening to the words of a well-balanced, logical man who might tread lofty heights, but who always stepped with care. If Dr. Emerson Woodruff was a mystic and a dreamer, there was nothing in his outward seeming or his mental methods to indicate it.

"How many hurdles on the other track?" asked Mrs. Jack, abruptly.

"Pardon me," said the physician, gently; "I didn't catch your meaning."

"There were two lines of conjecture open to us," explained Mrs. Jack, "after we had agreed that--what shall I call him?--the man with Chopinitis is not a liar. You don't accept the hypnotic theory, Dr. Woodruff. What's the other?"

"Would you be shocked," asked the psychologist, suavely, "if I should suggest that your friend may be possibly under the direct influence of the spirit of the late Frederic François Chopin?"

"That's what Tom thinks!" I cried, excitedly, and then bit my tongue, regretfully. Dr. Woodruff's penetrating eyes were fixed on me.

"I said that there were gaps in your narrative," he remarked, reproachfully. "Your friend--I take it that his name is Tom--believes, then, that he is under the control of Chopin?"

"I think he does," I answered, not very graciously; "he has spent much time of late reading the details of Chopin's life."

"H'm!" exclaimed the doctor, like one who comes gladly on a new symptom in a puzzling case; "would it not be possible, madam, for me to see this man, unobserved myself? If I could hear him play it would be throwing a flood of light on the case. As it is, I am groping in the dark."

"And--and--in case, sir, that your worst fears are realized," I faltered, "can you do anything for him? Can he be cured?"

"You see, doctor, she didn't marry Chopin. Naturally--"

The look that I gave Mrs. Jack quieted her restless tongue. But the fat was in the fire.

"Yes, the murder's out, Dr. Woodruff," I confessed, wearily. "We've been talking about my husband. We were very happy together before his seizure. And--and--now----"

"And now his wife isn't one, two, three," cried Mrs. Jack, excitedly; "and it's a burning shame. Can you do something for him, doctor? Surely you don't think it's chronic, do you?"

The suspicion of a smile crossed the physician's face, and I felt the blood come into my cheeks. I had no intention of laying my marital misery before the keen eyes of this strangely powerful man, but somehow I felt a sense of relief now that he had come into possession of all the facts.

"If you think it advisable, doctor, for you to hear my husband play," I said, presently, "I'm sure it can be arranged. He has agreed to give a recital at the rooms of the Chopin Society to-morrow evening. He has asked us to go with him. Could you not obtain a card? He would not know, of course, why you were there."

"I have many friends among the Chopin idolaters; it is easily arranged," remarked Dr. Woodruff, as he rose and ushered us toward the exit from his inner office. "Meanwhile, madam, I shall make a close study of the case from the data already at hand. I am very grateful to you for coming to me, and I think I can safely promise to be of service to you. Au revoir. To-morrow evening at eight."

As we seated ourselves in the carriage, I turned angrily to Mrs. Jack. "Why did you betray me?" I cried. "It was cruel, cruel!"

Mrs. Jack smiled affectionately and seized my hand. "Don't be annoyed at me, my dear. I was merely doing justice to Dr. Woodruff. It's absurd to try to put a thoroughbred over the water jump with blinders. It's unfair to the horse, to say the least."

CHAPTER VII.

A PRELIMINARY CANTER.

So comes, at last,

The answer from the Vast.

MAURICE THOMPSON.

"Do you really intend to go, Tom? But suppose, dear, you don't feel like playing; what will happen then? Do be sensible, old fellow, and stay home with me. You always shunned notoriety--and now you go in search of it. What is the matter with you, Tom? You haven't been at all frank with me since--since--"

"Since when, my dear?" asked my husband, smiling at me kindly over his demi-tasse.

"Since you played that duet with Signorina Molatti in the music-room," I answered, ashamed of the feeling of jealousy that I had nourished for several days. As I gazed at Tom's honest face the absurdity of the accusation that I had brought against him in this undirect way forced itself upon me. My husband at that moment struck me as the least flirtatious-looking man I had ever seen. But facts are stubborn things. I had good reason to believe that Tom had accompanied a famous violiniste, not only in our music-room but in the signorina's own drawing-room. It is astonishing how quickly a suspicious wife develops into a female Sherlock Holmes!

"I plead guilty to the indictment," said Tom presently, lighting a cigar. "Suppose we go into the library, Winifred. We can have a quiet half-hour at least before we start."

I derived both pleasure and pain from this suggestion. It was satisfactory to find Tom more inclined to be companionable than he had been for nearly a week. On the other hand, I was disappointed at discovering that his determination to attend the meeting of the Chopin Society remained unshaken. That any further protest from me would be futile, I fully realized, and it was with a feeling of apprehension and disquietude that I seated myself in the library, and watched Tom as he dreamily blew smoke into the air, seemingly forgetful of my presence. After a time, he began to speak, more like a poet soliloquizing than an unimaginative lawyer addressing his wife.

"It was a strangely vivid vision. I have had dreams that were like reality, but none that approached this one in intensity. I passed first through a doorway that led into old picturesque, crumbling cloisters, forming a quadrangle. Stretching away from these cloisters ran long corridors with vaulted roofs. Down one of the corridors, I hurried toward a light that seemed to come through a rose window, intensifying the grim darkness surrounding me. It was bitterly cold; the chill of death seemed to clutch at my heart. And always I heard the sound of mournful voices through the resounding galleries."

"Tom!" I cried, shocked by the queer gleam in his eyes.

But he went on as if he had not heard me. "There were other noises, some harsh, others majestically musical. There came to me the mighty roaring of a storm-swept sea beating against a rocky shore. The winds sobbed and thundered and whistled and fell away. Then I could hear the plaintive notes of sea-birds outside the stone walls of the monastery. But always it was the chill dampness that appalled me. I was forever hurrying toward the rose window, where warmth and love and joy awaited me; but always it fled before me, and the long black corridor lay between me and my goal. It was horrible."

"What had you been doing, Tom?" I asked, in a desperate effort to recall him to his present environment. "Had you been eating a Welsh rabbit at the club?"

He gazed at me, defiantly. "No," he said, gloomily, "I had been playing Chopin with Signorina Moletti."

By an effort of will, I restrained the words that rushed to my lips, and asked, quietly: "And which of his works had you been playing?"

"I don't know," he answered, wearily. "I think the signorina said our last rendition was No. 1 of Opus 40, whatever that may mean."

Tom glanced at me sheepishly, for all the world like a mischievous schoolboy who has been forced to make a confession. My mind was hard at work trying to recall the details of my recent researches into the life of Chopin. To refresh my memory, I opened a book that lay among other Lives of "the master" on the library-table.

"'No. 1 of Opus 40,'" I presently found myself reading aloud, "'is in A major, and is throughout an intensely martial composition. There is a spirit of victory and conquest about it. The most remarkable circumstances attached to it seems to lie in the fact that it is supposed to have been written during Chopin's sojourn at the Carthusian monastery on the island of Mallorca with George Sand.'"

Bitterly did I regret my indiscreet quotation. Tom had turned white and there had come into his eyes an appealing, despairing expression that reminded me of a deer I had once seen brought to bay in the Adirondack forest.

"Mrs. Van Corlear," announced the butler at the door of the library, and Mrs. Jack, who had the run of the house, came toward us gaily.

"And how is our boy-wonder this evening?" she cried, laughingly. "I'm backing Tom Remsen for the great Chopin handicap to-night. Are you quite fit, Tom? Do I get a run for my money?"

How easy it is for our most intimate friends to take our troubles lightly! Although I realized that underlying Mrs. Jack's levity was a kindly motive--a desire to carry off an awkward situation with the least possible friction--I could not help feeling annoyed at her flippant words. Grateful as I was to her for her loyal interest in my peculiar affliction, it was unpleasant to feel that Mrs. Jack was treating as a light comedy what seemed to me to involve all the elements of a tragedy. There was nothing farcical, surely, in Tom's appearance as he stood there, pale, silent, smiling perfunctorily at our guest, every inch a modern gentleman, but strangely like the tagonist of some classic drama, the rebellious but impotent plaything of vindictive gods.

"Come, let us go," I cried, nervously, anxious to put an end to a most uncomfortable situation. "Do you really feel up to it, Tom? There is still time to back out of it, you know. A solo before a crowd is much more trying than a duet in private."

I had not intended to hurt Tom's feelings, but my words had displayed a plentiful lack of tact. And the worst of it was that Mrs. Jack seemed to be in a diabolical mood, for she at once jumped at the chance to make mischief.

"I have heard of your fondness for duets, Tom," she remarked, and I was reminded of the soft purring of a cat preparing to pounce on a helpless mouse. "What a delight it must be to Signorina Molatti to find an interpreter of Chopin worthy of her fiddle! You find her a very interesting personality, do you not?"

Tom stopped short--we were slowly making our exit from the library--and gazed at Mrs. Jack with a puzzled expression in his eyes. "Signorina Molatti?" he queried, musingly. "What do I think of her? I really don't know. I never considered the question before. She's merely a part of the music--not an individual, don't you see?" Suddenly his face changed, and he put his hand to his brow as if a sharp pain had tormented him. "Wait a moment! Don't go!" he implored us, in a labored, unnatural voice. "What does it all mean? Tell me! What am I doing? I can't play Chopin! I can't play anything! Have I been hypnotized? I tell you, Winifred--Mrs. Jack--'tis all a mistake, a mystery, an uncanny, hideous bedevilment. It's demoniac possession--or something of that kind. And what'll the Chopin Society think if I make a horrible flunk? At this moment, I don't feel as if I could play a note. Come into the music-room!" he ended, a touch of wildness in his voice and manner.

Mrs. Jack and I followed him, silently. There was in Tom's way of hurrying across the drawing-room a mingling of eagerness and dread that was wholly uncharacteristic of the man. As he hastened feverishly toward the piano, a hectic flush on his cheeks and his eyes aglow, he reminded me of a youth I had seen at Monte Carlo staking his whole fortune on a turn of the roulette wheel.

For a time, Tom sat at the instrument, his head bowed low and his hands hanging listlessly at his side. Mrs. Jack's arm was round my waist, and I could hear her deep, hurried breathing and feel the nervous tremor of her slender, well-knit form. It was indeed a most trying crisis that could disturb the poise of the athletic woman beside me.

"He doesn't connect," she whispered to me, presently. "I wish Dr. Woodruff were here."

But Mrs. Jack had spoken prematurely. Suddenly Tom's hands were raised and he struck the opening chords of Chopin's Scherzo in B minor, Opus 20. The fury of the following measures he rendered with stunning effect. Then the vigor of the rushing quaver figure lessened gradually, and, at the repeat, Tom sprang erect and turned toward us, an expression of weird ecstasy on his face.

"It's all right, girls!" he cried, with a boyish lack of dignity. "Come on! We're late, as it is. I'll show those Chopin people something they'll never forget! Come on!"

"He's fit!" whispered Mrs. Jack to me. "It wasn't much of a preliminary canter--but he's in the running fast enough!"

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CHOPIN SOCIETY.

In this dark world where now I stay,

I scarce can see myself;

The radiant soul shines on my way

As my fair guiding elf.

VICTOR HUGO.

Molatti was a marvel of beauty that evening. Great as was my prejudice against the girl, I was forced to admit to myself, as we entered the crowded rooms of the Chopin Society, that I had never seen a handsomer creature, nor one more radiant with the joy of life. The glory of youth, the fire of genius were in her eyes. There were many striking faces in evidence that evening, faces full of the subtle charm that the worship of music frequently begets; ugly faces alight with an inward glow, symmetrical faces whose regularity was not insipid; plebeian faces stamped by an acquired distinction; patrician faces warmed by an esthetic enthusiasm; faces that told their story of struggle and defeat, and others that bore the mysterious imprint of success. But there was only one countenance in all that picturesque throng to which my gaze constantly returned, paying unwilling homage to a fascination against which I vainly rebelled. I found it difficult to believe that Tom had never noticed the signorina's wonderful beauty of face and form, that he had always considered her, as he had said, "merely a part of the music."

Mrs. Jack, who had been watching me closely, seemed to read my mind, for she whispered to me teasingly: "Tom'll sit up and take notice to-night, don't you think? She's well groomed and shows blood, doesn't she?"

From Mrs. Jack Van Corlear this was high praise indeed, and Molatti deserved it. The studied simplicity of her low-cut black gown, relieved by a small cluster of diamonds below the neck, harmonized with the quiet arrangement of her luxuriant, dark hair, seemingly held in place by a miniature aigrette of small diamonds. The marmoreal whiteness of her perfect neck and firm, well-rounded arms was emphasized by a sharp contrast. Of color there was none, save for the slight flush of health in her cheeks and the rich, red line of her strong, sensitive mouth.

I glanced at Tom, who stood not far from me, listening to the words of the president of the society, a short, slender, nervous-looking man, whose mobile countenance at that moment suggested the joy of a lion-hunter who has achieved unexpectedly a difficult feat. Tom was pale, and there was a wrinkle in his brow just between the eyes that assured me he was not completely at ease. But he seemed to be wholly indifferent to the presence of Signorina Molatti. That he had not glanced at her since our entrance to the hall I felt quite sure. Was Tom really a great actor? It was a question that was constantly recurring to me, despite the weight of evidence against an affirmative answer.

Presently Tom returned to my side, and Mrs. Jack deliberately stuck a pin into him--or, rather, us.

"Is music antagonistic to manners, Tom Remsen? Go over and speak to Signorina Molatti. It is your duty, sir."

"And my pleasure, Mrs. Jack," said Tom, with a smile that recalled his former self, my Tom of the ante-Chopin days. He left us at once to make his way through the crowd to Molatti's corner.

"I take it, madam, that that is your husband," remarked a deep, low, carefully modulated voice. I turned to find Dr. Emerson Woodruff beside me. "He doesn't look musical."

"No, but he is," Mrs. Jack put in, hastily. "We've heard him play to-night, doctor. He's good for any distance--with something to spare. Mark my words, sir."

"Have you reached any conclusion about the case, Dr. Woodruff?" I whispered, nervously. "Mrs. Van Corlear is right. He was in splendid form just before we left home. He seemed to be delighted at the prospect of astonishing these people. But he had had a curious outbreak. He had remarked, rather wildly, that he was not a musician, couldn't play a note, and was, he believed, suffering from 'demoniac possession.'"

I saw that my statement had made a deep impression on the psychologist. His face was very grave as he watched Tom, who stood beside Molatti, evidently conversing with her with more vivacity than I had ever seen him display before.

"He's a phlegmatic, well-balanced man, in perfect health," muttered the doctor, musingly. "I am inclined to think," he went on, addressing me directly, "that your husband's case, madam, is the most remarkable that has ever come under my personal observation. I am very anxious to hear--and see--him play before saying anything further about it. You feel sure that he intends to perform to-night?"

Before I could answer this question I found myself beset by the fussy little president of the society, who appeared to believe that he owed me a great debt of gratitude.

"I tried to thank Mr. Remsen for coming here--to our so great joy!--but he referred me to you, madam. Oh, how much I owe you! And it is so charming to find the wife of a man of genius wholly in sympathy with his career. It is not always thus, you know, Mrs. Remsen."

I could feel the internal laughter that I knew Mrs. Jack was suppressing behind me. I longed to turn round and glare at her, but I was forced to smile down into the excited face of the Chopin enthusiast, who, ex officio, was my host for the evening.

"I trust you will not find Mr. Remsen a great disappointment," I managed to say, weakly. For an instant a hot, almost irresistible inclination stung me to tell this overwrought, undersized bundle of nerves the plain truth, to assure him that Tom Remsen, my husband, couldn't tell a nocturne from a negro lullaby, that he was as ignorant of music as I was of law.

"I am sure," commented the president, politely, "that no disappointment awaits us--rather a great and holy joy. But I regret that our pleasure must be deferred for a few moments. Won't you and your friends find seats, please? I have prepared--at the request of the society--a short paper on 'The Personality of Chopin.' It will take not more than ten minutes for me to read it. After that, Mrs. Remsen, we are to have a most wonderful duet from Signorina Molatti and Mr. Remsen."

The little man disappeared, and I was glad to rest myself in the chair that Dr. Woodruff had found for me. I turned toward Mrs. Jack, who had seated herself beside me. She saw the gleam of annoyance in my eyes as they met hers, but smiled, sweetly.

"Why are you angry with me, my dear?" she whispered. "Am I responsible if nature granted me a sense of humor? You must acknowledge that the situation is amusing--even if it is a bit uncanny."

Tom had seated himself beside Molatti to listen to the president's essay. Presently, I found myself hearkening, with almost feverish interest, to the latter.

"I have thought it well, my friends," the president was saying, "to confine my remarks this evening to Chopin in his great general relations to the world. I shall endeavor to draw a picture of the man rather than of the musician. And first of all, let me quote from Liszt in regard to the master's appearance."

I glanced at Tom. He sat motionless, almost rigid, with a face so lacking in expression that it was hard to believe he had caught the significance of the speaker's words.

"'The ensemble of his person,'" quoted the president, "'was harmonious, and called for no special comment. His eye was more spiritual than dreamy; his bland smile never writhed into bitterness. The transparent delicacy of his complexion pleased the eye; his fair hair was soft and silky, his nose slightly aquiline, his bearing so distinguished and his manner stamped with so much of high breeding that involuntarily he was always treated en prince. He was generally gay; his caustic spirit caught the ridiculous rapidly, and far below the surface at which it usually strikes the eye. His gaiety was so much the more piquant because he always restrained it within the bounds of good taste, holding at a distance all that might tend to wound the most fastidious delicacy.'" To this quotation, the president added a few words from Orlowski: "'Chopin is full of health and vigor; all the Frenchwomen dote on him, and all the men are jealous of him. In a word, he is the fashion, and we shall no doubt shortly have gloves à la Chopin.'"

The president paused, and I saw with consternation that he was glaring at my husband. The cause of this interruption was apparent at once as I shifted my gaze. Tom was rocking back and forth in his chair, shaking with laughter. His effort to keep his merriment in check, to restrain the loud guffaws that seemed to rack his very frame, was painfully in evidence. There was something almost heroic in his endeavor to repress an outbreak that would have been brutally rude. Tom had become the center of all eyes through the president's lack of tact.

"What's the matter with him?" whispered Mrs. Jack, hysterically.

"I don't know," I answered, lamely. "He's had a funny thought. Is he better?" I had turned away from him.

"He's growing worse, I think," answered Mrs. Jack, despondently. "Why doesn't the president go on? There, it's all right. He's quiet now."

Mrs. Jack spoke truly. The president had resumed his lecture, and I turned and saw that Tom was no longer swaying with mirth.

"How did it happen?" I murmured in Mrs. Jack's ear.

"I'm not sure," she whispered, "but I think Molatti touched his hand. Oh, isn't it weird? I can't help feeling it's like breaking a colt."

CHAPTER IX.

AN UNRECORDED OPUS.

Methought it was a glorious joy, indeed,

To shut and open heaven as he did.

EMMA TATHAM.

Whenever a number of men and women whose lives are devoted to some one line of art are gathered together the social atmosphere becomes surcharged with electricity. If one is impressionable, acutely sensitive to an environment, it is best, perhaps, to avoid the haunts of genius. I am inclined to believe that sociologists will investigate eventually the eternal antagonism between Belgravia and bohemia by strictly scientific methods. How large an infusion of genius can be safely sustained by a throng in search of social relaxation it would be well to know. One fact, at least, in this connection has been repeatedly demonstrated--as I had learned to my cost--namely, that a social function based on music rests on a powder mine. Belgravia had witnessed an explosion at my recent musical. And now, I felt convinced, bohemia was to undergo a like ordeal.

Tom was at the root of this disquieting conviction. His hysterical attack of wholly irrelevant hilarity, his quick response to Molatti's soothing touch, and now the tense, unnatural expression of his face filled me with painful apprehension. I both craved and dreaded the end of the president's discourse, and my forebodings were darkened by a remark made by Mrs. Jack, who seemed to derive real pleasure from the excitement of the crisis.

"Look at Tom," she whispered. "He's fretful at the post. He'll get the bit in his teeth, presently. Do you see Dr. Woodruff over there? He's taking notes."

Before she had ceased to speak Tom was out of hand and had bolted down the track, as Mrs. Jack would have put it. In other words, he had sprung from Molatti's side as the president ended his discourse and had rushed to the piano at the end of the room. I caught the look of amazement on the president's quaint face, and laughed aloud, nervously. Utterly ashamed of my lack of self-control, I glanced at the crowd surrounding me, but nobody had noticed my touch of hysteria. Every eye in the room was fastened on Tom, who was seated motionless at the piano in an apparently dazed condition. His eyes were closed and the corners of his mouth drawn down. He looked at that moment like the very incarnation of all that was unmusical in the universe. I feared that Mrs. Jack would comment on his ridiculous appearance, but she was kind enough to keep quiet. She told me afterward that my raucous laugh had frightened her.

Suddenly Tom's chin went up, he opened his eyes, fixed them on Molatti's white face, and began to play. Such weird, intoxicating harmonies as filled the room, setting every soul therein athrob with an ecstasy that was close akin to agony, no earthly audience had ever heard before. Men and women were there who had memorized each and every note that Chopin wrote, but there was not among them one who could identify this marvelous improvisation, this strange exposition of a great master in his most inspired mood. It was Chopin, but Chopin unrecorded; his genius in its most characteristic tendency, but raised, as a mathematician would say, to the nth power. It was as if the soul of the composer, dissatisfied with the heritage that he had left to us, had returned to earth to exhibit to his worships the one perfect flower of his creative spirit.

How long Tom played I have never known. I had forgotten all about him before many minutes had passed, losing in my impressionability to music my sensitiveness as the wife of a man misunderstood. There were in the universe only my soul and a throbbing splendor of great music, mighty harmonies that filled all space, magic chords that awakened dim memories of a life long past, filled to overflowing with joy and sorrow, tossing waves of melody that bore me to the stars or sank with me into vast, mysterious realms peopled by gray shadows that I had learned to love.

Presently I felt Mrs. Jack's hand clasping mine. "Don't go to him, dear. He has only fainted," I heard her saying, her voice seeming to reach me from a remote distance. "He was all out, and collapsed under the wire. But it's nothing serious."

Tom had sunk back into Molatti's arms, and his head rested against her shoulder. She had sprung toward him, as I learned later, just in time to save him from a fall. She now stood gazing mournfully down on his white, upturned face, sorrow, pity and, I imagined, remorse in her glance. For an instant a hot rage swept over me, and I strove to stand erect, despite Mrs. Jack's restraining hand.

"Don't make a scene!" she whispered to me, passionately in earnest. "He is in no danger. See, Dr. Woodruff is feeling his pulse."

Even at that awful moment, when I knew not whether Tom was alive or dead. I remember that my mind dwelt for a moment on the tendency of new schools of medicine to cling to old traditions. Of what significance to a psychologist could the rapidity of Tom's pulse be? I heard people all around me talking excitedly.

"Did you ever hear anything like it?"

"I tell you, it's one of the master's posthumous works. I couldn't identify it, but perhaps it was discovered by Remsen."

"That's absurd! Where could he find it?"

"He's better now. See, he opens his eyes."

"I don't wonder he fainted; I was just on the verge of collapse myself."

"Parblen! Chopin à la diable! Non, non, no more pour moi, s'il vous plait!"

"I can now die so vara happy! I hava justa once heard the maestro himself. I hava nothing left for to live."

"Who is this wonderful Remsen? Never heard of him before."

"You'll hear of him again, then. He's the only man living who can interpret the master."

It was, all of it, intolerable. How I hated these chattering idiots, who were making an idol of clay, setting up my poor Tom--who was to me at that moment an object of pity--as the incarnation of their cult, to whom they must pay reverent homage! I longed to cry aloud to them that they had been tricked, that my husband was a sensible, commonplace, lovable man, as far removed from a musical crank as he was from a train-robber or a pirate. All my former love for music seemed to have turned suddenly into detestation, and I longed to get away from this nest of Chopiniacs into the noisy, wholesome atmosphere of the outside world. It seemed to me that nothing could restore my equilibrium but the uproar of the streets and the unmelodious clatter of my coach.

"We must get out of this at once," I said to Mrs. Jack, standing erect and checking the dizziness in my head by an effort of will. I saw that Tom had fully recovered his senses and that he seemed to be actually enjoying the homage the excited throng pressing toward him offered to his vicarious genius. Beside him stood Molatti, her face radiant, as if her mission on earth were to reflect the glory of Tom Remsen's musical miracle.

"We must get out of this," I found myself saying again, as I urged Mrs. Jack toward the exit. "I'll send the carriage back for Tom."

"But it's such bad form to run away like this," protested Mrs. Jack. "What will the president think of us? And Dr. Woodruff! Surely you want to ask him what he thinks of the--ah--case."

But my will for the time being was stronger than hers, and presently we were seated in my carriage, homeward bound, and I was fighting back the hot tears that had rushed to my eyes.

"I--I--don't care what--what Dr. Woodruff thinks about the--the case," I sobbed. "I--I--know what I think about it."

Mrs. Jack said nothing for a time, but it was pleasant to feel the pressure of her hand and to realize that she could be tactful now and again.

We had nearly reached the house before she ventured to ask: "And what, my dear, do you think of the case?"

I pulled myself together and restrained my sobs. I am not of the weeping variety of woman, and I was ashamed of my hysterical exhibition of weakness.

"I think," I began, and then I hesitated, weighing my words carefully--"I think that Signorina Molatti is in love with Tom."

Mrs. Jack laughed outright, both to my amazement and anger. "You've wholly lost the scent, my dear," she remarked, while I removed my hand from hers. "Signorina Molatti is not in love with Tom--she's in love with Chopin."

CHAPTER X.

TOM'S RECOVERY.

At length the man perceives it die away

And fade into the light of common day.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

After rereading the foregoing deposition I am forced to the conclusion that I was designed by nature neither for a novelist nor a historian. I can see that my narrative fails to be convincing, considered either as a work of fiction or as a statement of fact. But may I not comfort myself with the thought that I have given my testimony conscientiously, and that if the outcome of my literary efforts is unsatisfactory my failure is due rather to the inexplicable phenomena with which I have been obliged to deal than to my own defects as an annalist and witness? I have endeavored to inscribe simply and in chronological order the unadorned tale of my husband's sudden attack of genius and its consequences, and I realize now that my data will not be accepted by the scientific, nor will their arrangement appeal to the artistic. But I have told the truth, and if not the whole truth, at least nothing but the truth. As literature my story belongs to the realistic school and is of the present. As a contribution to science it will have no standing to-day, but I am firmly convinced that the psychologists of the future will read the details of Tom Remsen's case with enlightened interest.

I have felt too deeply the nervous strain of setting down in black and white the story of the greatest crisis in my life to go into details here and now regarding the ups and downs of the long illness that Tom underwent after his triumphant appearance before the Chopin Society.

For two days before he collapsed I saw that he was fighting in grim silence against weakness and fever. He was like a man struggling to overcome an unnatural appetite and growing constantly more weary of the contest. He would stroll with reluctant steps into the music-room, stand for a time gazing defiantly at the piano, with his hands clenched and beads of perspiration on his troubled brow; then he would turn away, meeting my gaze with a melancholy smile, and hurry off to his office or his club, to return to me after a time pale and listless, but always stubbornly silent as to the cause of his evident suffering. Only once before he was forced to take to his bed, where he tossed for a week in delirium, did he refer, even indirectly, to the cause of his disquietude.

"Has Signorina Molatti been here to-day?" he asked me, abruptly, one evening at dinner.

"No, Tom," I answered, a note in my voice that I'm sure he did not like. "Did you expect her?"

"I always expect her," he muttered, speaking more to himself than to me.

That evening the magnetism of the open piano in the music-room proved irresistible to him. To my mingled consternation and delight he played selections from Chopin until long after midnight, the while I sat behind him fascinated by his renditions but appalled by the persistent recurrence of his "seizures." "To-morrow," I said to myself, "I will consult Dr. Woodruff again. Perhaps he has made his diagnosis and can suggest some line of treatment."

But on the morrow Tom was in charge of our family doctor and two trained nurses. The morning had found him hot with fever, and by noon he was out of his head and inclined to be violent. Then followed days and nights of alternating hope and fear, during which there came to me a complete revelation of what the old Tom had been to me, the Tom who had bored me at times--ungrateful woman that I was!--by his practical, unimaginative, inartistic personality. How I treasured a word of encouragement from the doctor or a nurse! How bitterly I repented my former discontent, my disloyal longing for something in Tom's make-up that nature had not vouchsafed to him! It had come to him--this "something"--and it had well-nigh ruined our lives. Whatever it had been, demoniac possession, hypnotism or what-not, it had been a thing of evil, despite the uncanny beauty of its manifestation. In my heart of hearts I craved one of two alternatives--either Tom's death or his restoration to his former self, freed forever from the black shadow of Chopin's genius.

It was not until one afternoon well on in his convalescence that I knew my fondest hopes had been realized. We had betaken ourselves to the library, not to read but to enjoy in an indolent way our new freedom from trained nurses and the discipline of the sick-room. Tom, leaning back comfortably in a reclining-chair and puffing a cigarette, wore on his invalid's face an expression of supreme contentment. Not once, I was glad to note, did his eyes wander to the distant shelf on which stood our Chopin literature, books that I had doomed in my mind to an auto-da-fé when a fitting opportunity for the sacrifice should arise.

"Isn't this cozy?" remarked Tom, presently, glancing at me affectionately. "But I suppose I must hasten my recovery, my dear. The Pepper and Salt Trust and other enterprises don't take much stock in sick men."

"Don't worry about business matters, Tom Remsen," I said, with playful sternness. "We can get on very well if you never do another stroke of work in your life."

A shadow passed over Tom's face, and he puffed his cigarette nervously. "I'm not fitted for a life of leisure, my dear," he remarked, grimly. "A man may get into so many kinds of mischief if he isn't busy."

I hastened to change the subject. "Remember, sir, that you are under orders. You are to do as you are told to do. You may not know it, Tom, but the fact is that you and I sail for Europe just as soon as you are strong enough to stand the voyage."

"Where are we going?" he asked, apprehensively. "Not to Paris?"

"No, not to Paris," I answered, understanding him. "We'll spend all our time in Scotland and Ireland. They're the only countries over there that we have not seen, Tom."

The next day I discharged our butler for an indiscretion that he committed at this moment.

"Signorina Molatti," he announced from the doorway of the library, and turning my head I saw the violiniste, with her Cremona under her arm, coming toward us. I glanced at Tom. The two red spots that had leaped into his white cheeks seemed to be an outward manifestation, not of joy but of hot anger. I rose and went toward our visitor, a question in my face.

"Will you not forgiva me, signora?" cried Molatti, in soft, pleading tones. "Eet ees what you calla vera bad form, but I hava been so vera unhappy. They tolda me that Signor Remsen was dying. Can you not forgiva me?"

"But he is on the road to recovery, signorina," I said, perfunctorily. It would not do to give way to my inclination to chide this insinuating girl for her presumption. A scene might cause Tom to have a relapse.

"I see," she cried. "And I am so glad! And I hava broughta my violin. That the signor would lika to hear the voice of the maestro--"

"Stop right there, will you--ah--signorina," exclaimed Tom, gruffly, endeavoring, as I saw, to control his annoyance and show no discourtesy to even an unwelcome guest. "I'm not it, young woman. He's gone away, whoever he was. If he comes back--which God forbid--I'll notify you. But you won't catch me drumming any more on a piano. My musical career is at an end. I'm under the care of a doctor, and he says that I'm on the road to recovery. Forgive me if I have spoken too plainly. You're a very charming young woman, and I admire your--ah--genius. But mine's gone, and I'll take good care that it doesn't come back. If you'd like that piano in the music-room, Signorina Molatti, I'm sure that my wife would be glad to send it over to your apartments. We're through with it--forever!"

I was sorry for the girl. The expression of amazement--even horror--that had come into her dark, expressive face touched my heart, and I laid my hand gently on her arm.

"It's a great mystery, signorina," I whispered to her, as I led her from the library. "I can't explain it to you very clearly, for I don't understand it myself. But Mr. Remsen told you the truth. He is no longer musical. In his normal condition he is the most unmusical man in the world. The Signor Remsen that you have known, with whom you have played duets, is dead--I can hardly believe that he ever existed. Will you, Signorina Molatti, grant me the great privilege of presenting to you yonder piano? Frankly, it would be a great relief to me to be rid of it."

There were tears in her splendid black eyes as she turned her face toward me. "I do not understand," she said, mournfully. "You do not know whata it all meant to me. I cannot taka your piano. There is nobody in the wide world to playa eet, now that he ees gone. And you are telling me the truth? I was dreaming? Eet did not really happen? But, signora, there were so many who hearda heem--hearda me--hearda us! Eet could not hava been a dream. Whata was eet?"

Her voice broke with a sob, and I bent down and kissed her tear-stained face.

"I cannot tell you, signorina. But do not let your heart break. You may find him again some day."

"Nevaire again," she sighed, seizing my hands impulsively. "Nevaire again. But I thanka you so much. Fareawell."

My heart was heavy as I returned to Tom, uncertain of the state in which I should find him. To my delight, I saw as I entered the library that he had suddenly made a great stride toward renewed health. He was sitting erect, and there was little of the invalid in his face or voice.

"That's over, my dear!" he cried, gaily, "and I'm going to celebrate Chopin's utter rout. Order me a brandy and soda, will you?--and push that box of cigars toward me. Then we'll read up a bit, little woman, about Scotland and Ireland. On the whole, I'm inclined to believe you and I will have a very jolly outing."

I leaned forward and kissed the dear fellow's smiling lips. "It's so good to have you back again, Tom," I murmured.

"And the signorina?" he asked, presently. "How did she take it? I'm afraid I was cruel to her, my dear. Did I speak too harshly to her?"

"You had no alternative, Tom," I assured him, soothingly; "you had been placed in a very awkward position."

"I had--in a very awkward position," he acknowledged. "And who the deuce put me there? I wonder----"

"Don't wonder, Tom," I cried, sharply. "The less wondering you do the better it will be for us both."

"You're right, Winifred, as you always are," he said, raising aloft the glass of bubbling brandy that the butler had brought to him, and nodding toward me. "Here's your good health, my dear, and bon voyage to us both!"

III.

Clarissa's Troublesome Baby.

For while the wheel of birth and death turns round,

Past things and thoughts, and buried lives come back,

I now remember, myriad rains ago,

What time I roamed Himâla's hanging woods,

A tiger, with my striped and hungry kind.

THE LIGHT OF ASIA.

CLARISSA'S TROUBLESOME BABY.

CHAPTER I.

MY LATE HUSBAND.

And while the wheel of birth and death turns round

That which hath been must be between us two.

--Sir Edwin Arnold.

I was alone in the nursery with the baby, a chubby boy whose eight months of life had amazingly increased his weight and vigor, when I heard the crack of doom issuing from his miniature mouth!

I wonder if your imagination is strong enough to put you, for a moment, in my place. Suppose that you had dismissed the nurse for a time that you might have a mother's frolic in the twilight with your only child, the blessing that had come to you as a reward for marrying again after five years of widowhood. Suppose that the baby, opening his little eyes to their widest extent, had said to you, as my baby said to me:

"You don't seem to recognize me, my dear, but I've come back to you."

Wedded to Tom, already jealous of your maternal fondness for the boy, what effect would Jack's voice, silenced five years ago by death, have had upon you, rising in gruff maturity from a baby's tiny throat? Was it strange that I came within a hair's breadth of dropping the uncanny child to the floor? Mechanically I glanced over my shoulder, in cold dread lest the nurse might return at any moment. Then I found courage to glance down into the baby's upturned face. There was something in the child's eyes so old and wise that I realized my ears had not deceived me--I had not been the victim of an hallucination resulting from the strain of an afternoon of calls and teas. The conviction came to me, like an icy douche, that I was standing there in a stunning afternoon costume, holding my first husband in my arms, and liable to let him fall if our weird tête-à-tête should be sharply interrupted.

"You aren't glad to see me," grumbled Jack, wiggling uneasily against my gloves and coat. "But it isn't my fault that I'm here, Clarissa. There's a lot of reincarnation going on, you know, and a fellow has to take his chances."

Softly, I stole to a chair and seated myself, holding the baby on my trembling knees.

"Are you--are you--comfortable, Jack?" I managed to whisper, falteringly, the thought flashing through my mind that I had gone suddenly insane.

"Keep quiet, can't you?" he pleaded. "Don't shake so! I'm not a rattle-box. I wish you'd tell the nurse, Clarissa, to put a stick in my milk, will you? There's a horrible sameness to my present diet that is absolutely cloying. Will you stop shaking? I can't stand it."

By a strong effort of will I controlled my nervous tremors, glancing apprehensively at the door through which the nurse must presently return.

"There, that's better," commented Jack, contentedly. "You don't know much about us, do you, Clarissa?"

"About--about--who?" I gasped, wondering if he meant spirits.

"About babies," he said, with a wiggle and a chuckle that both attracted and repelled me. "Where's your handkerchief? Wipe my nose--pardon me, Clarissa, that sounds vulgar, doesn't it? But what the deuce am I to do? I'm absolutely helpless, don't you know?"

I could feel the tears near my eyes, as I gently touched the puckered baby face with a bit of lace.

"There was only one chance in ten thousand millions that I should come here," went on Jack, apologetically. "It's tough on you, Clarissa. Do you think that you can stand it? I've heard the nurse say that I make a pretty good baby."

I sat speechless for a time, trying to adapt myself to new conditions so startling and fantastic that I expected to waken presently from a dream--a dream that promised to become a nightmare. But there was an infernal realism about the whole affair that had impressed me from the first. Jack's matter-of-fact way of accepting the situation was so strikingly characteristic of him that I had felt, at once, a strong temptation to laugh aloud.

"I want you to make me a promise, Clarissa," he said, presently, seizing one of my gloved fingers with his fat little dimpled hand and making queer mouths, as if he were trying to whistle. "You won't tell--ah--Tom, will you? He wouldn't understand it at all. I don't myself, and I've been through it, don't you see? In a way, of course, it's mighty bad form. I know that. I feel it deeply. But I was powerless, Clarissa. You know I never took any stock in those Oriental philosophies. I was always laughing at Buddhism, metempsychosis, and that kind of thing. But there's really something in it, don't you think? Keep quiet, will you? You're shaking me up again."

"There's more in it than I had ever imagined, Jack," I remarked, gloomily. "Of course, I'll say nothing to Tom about it. It'll have to be our secret. I understand that."

"You'll have to be very careful about what you call me before people, Clarissa," said the baby, presently. "My name's Horatio, isn't it? What the dickens did you call me that for? I always hated the name Horatio."

"It was Tom's choice," I murmured. "I'm sorry you don't like it--Jack."

"If you called me 'Jack' for short--no, that wouldn't do. Tom wouldn't like it, would he? Your handkerchief again, please. Thank you, my dear. By the way, Clarissa, I wish you'd tell the nurse that she gets my bath too hot in the morning. I'd like a cold shower, if she doesn't mind."

"You'll have to adapt yourself to circumstances, my child," I remarked, wearily, wondering if this horrible ordeal would never come to an end. I longed to get away by myself, to think it all over and quiet my nerves, if possible, before I should be forced to meet Tom at dinner.

"Adapt myself to circumstances!" exclaimed Jack, bitterly, kicking savagely with his tiny feet at his long white gown. "Don't get sarcastic, Clarissa, or I'll yell. If I told the nurse the truth, where'd you be?"

"Jack!" I cried, in consternation. There seemed to be a hideous threat in his words.

"You'd better call me Horatio, for practice," he said, calmly, but I could feel him chuckling against my arm. "I'll get used to it after a time. But it's a fool name, just the same. How about the cold shower?"

"Jack," I said, angrily, "I'll put you in your crib and leave you alone in the dark if you annoy me. You must be good! Your nurse knows what kind of a bath you should have."

"And she'll know who I am, if you leave me here alone, Clarissa," he exclaimed, doubling up his funny little fists and shaking them in the air. "I've got the whip-hand of you, my dear, even if I am only a baby. By the way, Clarissa, how old am I?"

"Eight months, Jack," I managed to answer, a chill sensation creeping over me, as the shadows deepened in the room and a mysterious horror clutched at my heart. I am not a dreamer by temperament; I am, in fact, rather practical and commonplace in my mental tendencies, but there was something awful in the revelation made to me which seemed to change my whole attitude toward the universe and filled me, for the moment, with a novel dread of my surroundings. I was recalled sharply to a less fantastic mood by Jack's querulous voice:

"Will you stop shaking, Clarissa?" he cried, petulantly. "You make me feel like a milk-bottle with delirium tremens. Call the nurse, will you? She hasn't got palsy in her knees. I want to go to sleep."

At that instant the nurse bustled into the room, apologizing for her long absence.

"I'm going to make a slight change in his diet, Mrs. Minturn," she explained, taking Jack from my arms and gazing down with professional satisfaction at his cherubic face. "He's in fine condition--aren't you, you tunnin' 'ittle baby boy? But he's old enough to have a bit of variety now and then. There are several preparations that I've found very satisfactory in other cases, and I've ordered one of them for--there, there, 'ittle Horatio! Don't 'oo cry! Kiss 'oo mamma, and then 'oo'll go seepy-bye."

As I bent down to press my lips against the baby's fat cheeks, I caught a gleam in his eyes that the nurse could not see, and, unless my ears deceived me, Jack whispered "Damn!" under his breath.

CHAPTER II.

A FOND FATHER.

As in the world of dream whose mystic shades

Are cast by still more mystic substances,

We ofttimes have an unreflecting sense,

A silent consciousness of some things past.

--Richard Monckton Milnes.

I remember that Tom impressed me as an extremely handsome man, as he faced me across the dinner-table and smilingly congratulated me on my appearance.

"You must have had an interesting day, Clare. You look very animated. I am so glad that you are beginning to get around a bit. There's a golden mean, you know. A woman should become a slave to neither society nor the nursery."

I realized that there was an abnormal vivacity in my manner as I added: "Nor to her husband, Tom. Do you accept the amendment?"

"Do you imply that I am inclined to be tyrannical, my dear?" he asked, laughingly. "It's not that, Clare. But I can't help being jealous of you. How's the baby?"

My wine-glass trembled in my hand, and I replaced it on the table, not daring to raise it to my lips. "He grows more interesting every day, Tom," I answered, truthfully. "You don't appreciate him." I wanted to laugh hysterically, but managed to control myself.

"Don't I, though?" cried Tom, protestingly. "He's the finest boy that ever happened, Clare, and I'm the proudest father. But I don't believe in a man's making an ass of himself all over the place because there's a baby in the house. After all, it's hereditary, so to speak, and quite common."

I glanced at the butler, but his wooden face showed no comprehension of the bad taste of Tom's remarks. I was glad of that, for Tom has earned a reputation among all classes for always saying and doing the right thing at the right time. I could not help wondering how he would act if I should tell him over our coffee that my first husband was in the nursery, doomed to another round of earthly experience in the outward seeming of Horatio Minturn.

"Forgive me, Clare," implored Tom, misinterpreting the expression of my face. "I didn't intend to hurt your feelings, my dear. And you mustn't do me an injustice. You have hinted several times of late that I am not as fond of the baby as I should be. Now, I know exactly what you mean, and I--"

"Suppose, Tom, that we defer further discussion of the subject until later on," I suggested, realizing that I was losing rapidly my grip on my nerves. "Tell me about your day. Where have you been? What have you done? Whom have you seen?"

It was not until we were seated in the smoking-room and Tom had lighted a long black cigar that he returned to a topic I had learned to dread. Heretofore, Tom's interest in the baby had seemed to me to be intermittent and never very intense. To-night is struck me as persistent and painfully strong.

"What I was going to say, Clare, when you interrupted me at the table," he recommenced, gazing at me thoughtfully through a nimbus of tobacco smoke, "was this: Theoretically, I am a fond and enthusiastic father; practically, I haven't seen the baby more than a dozen times--and he has always yelled at sight of me."

I laughed aloud, nervously, and Tom's glance had in it much astonishment and a little annoyance.

"It's hardly a subject for merriment, is it?" he queried, coldly. "You accuse me of not appreciating Horatio. May I ask you, my dear, when I have had an opportunity of observing his--ah--good points, so to speak? To be frank with you, Clare, and to paraphrase a popular song, 'all babies look alike to me.'"

"But there are great differences among them, Tom," I cried, impulsively; and again a touch of hysteria got into my voice.

"And ours, of course, is the finest in the world," he remarked, good-naturedly. "But what I was getting at, Clara, is this: I want to become better acquainted with the boy. He's old enough now, isn't he, to begin to--what is it they call it?--take notice?"

"Oh, yes." I managed to answer, without breaking down. If Tom would only change the subject! But how could I lead his mind to other things? Surely, I couldn't tell him flatly that hereafter the baby must be a tabooed topic between us, that there really was not any Horatio, that the law of psychic evolution through repeated reincarnations was making in our nursery a demonstration unprecedented in our knowledge of the race. All that I could do was to sit silent, pressing my cold hands together, and endeavor to prevent Tom from observing my increasing agitation.

"He sits up and takes notice," repeated Tom, as if proud of his old nurse's phrase. "Well, it's about time that Horatio ceased to treat me with that antagonistic uproariousness that has characterized his demeanor hitherto in my presence. I have decided to cultivate his acquaintance, Clare, and I need your help."

"He's--he's very young, Tom," I remarked, catching at a straw as I sank.

"I actually believe that you're jealous of the boy, my dear," cried Tom, laughingly. "Frankly, I'm greatly disappointed at your reception of my suggestion. You're so illogical, Clare! In one breath you charge me with lack of appreciation of the baby, and in the next you intimate that he's too young to endure my society. You place me in a very awkward position. I had honestly thought to please you, but I seem to have made a mess of it."

I was sorry for Tom, and realized that the accusation he had made against me was just. For a moment the mad project flashed through my mind of telling him the whole truth, the weird, absurd, unprecedented fact that lay at the bottom of my apparent inconsistency. But the instant that the thought took shape in unspoken words I rejected it as wildly impracticable. Furthermore, there had come to me, under the matter-of-fact influences surrounding me, a possibility that appealed to me as founded on common sense. Was it not reasonable to suppose that I had been the victim before dinner of overwrought nerves, of an hallucination that could be readily explained by purely scientific methods? I had gone to the nursery worn out by social exertions to which I had not been recently accustomed. Alone with the baby in the twilight, would it have been strange if I had fallen asleep for a moment and had dreamed that the child was talking to me? As I looked back upon the episode at this moment, it appeared to me more like the vagary of a transient doze than an actual occurrence. Even the "Damn!" that had seemed to issue from Horatio's tiny mouth as I had kissed his cheek might have been merely the tag-end of an interrupted nightmare, the reflex action of my disordered nervous system.

"You haven't made a mess of it, Tom," I said, presently, "and you have pleased me. The baby's old enough to--to--"

"To find my companionship bracing and enlightening?" suggested Tom, merrily.

"Yes, he's old enough for that," I answered, lightly, glad to feel the fog of my uncanny impressions disappearing before the sunlight of a rising conviction. With every minute that passed thus gaily in Tom's companionship, the certainty grew on me that in the nursery I had been the prey of nervous exhaustion, not the helpless protagonist of a startling psychic drama.

"I'll tell you what we'll do, Clare," remarked Tom, toward the close of an evening that had grown constantly more enjoyable to me as time passed, for, as I playfully misquoted to myself, Horatio was himself again, "I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll come home to luncheon to-morrow and we'll have the baby down from the nursery. I suppose we're all out of high chairs; but you can telephone for one in the morning, my dear."

"But, Tom, Horatio is--is only eight months old," I protested. "He--he doesn't know how to act at the table."

"Well, I'll teach him, then," cried Tom, paternally. "He needs a few lessons in manners, Clare. He has always treated me with the most astounding rudeness. It's really time for him to come under my influence, don't you think? Of course, I may be wrong. I don't know much about these matters, but I can learn a thing or two by experimenting with Horatio."

"He doesn't like his--" I began, impulsively, and then laughed, rather foolishly. The influence of my dream, it appeared, was still upon me.

"Doesn't like what?" asked Tom, eying me searchingly, evidently surprised at my untimely hilarity.

"Game and salads and other luncheon things," I explained, adroitly, suddenly glad that the evening was at an end and that I could soon quiet my throbbing nerves by sleep.

"We'll have some bread and milk for him," suggested Tom, hospitably. "Maybe he won't yell at me if we give him something to eat--something in his line, you know."

Again I succumbed to temptation and laughed aloud. "How little you know about babies, Tom," I remarked, in my most superior way; but even as I spoke the horrible suspicion crept over me again that I, also, might have much to learn about my own little boy.

CHAPTER III.

MY FIRST AND SECOND.

Sometimes a breath floats by me,

An odor from Dreamland sent,

Which makes the ghost seem nigh me

Of a something that came and went.

--James Russell Lowell.

I lunched with Tom and Jack the next day. It was an appalling function, driving me to the very verge of hysteria and destroying forever my belief in my dream theory. My first husband sat in his new high chair, pounding the table with a spoon, as if calling the meeting to order, while my second husband sat gazing at the baby with a fatuous smile on his handsome face that testified to his inability to rise to the situation. Behind the baby's chair stood his nurse, evidently prepared to defend her prerogatives as the protector of the child's health. Lurking in the background was the phlegmatic butler, no better pleased than the nurse at this experiment of Tom's.

"That's it! Go it, Horatio!" cried Tom, nervously. "Hit the table again, my boy. That's what it's for."

"I thought that your idea, Tom, was to teach Horatio how to behave in public," I suggested, playfully, still calm in the belief that I had been deceived in the nursery by a dream.

"But as you said, Clare," argued Tom, "he's very young. It's really not bad form, you know, for a baby to pound a table with a spoon. Is it, nurse?"

"I think not, sir," answered the nurse, pushing the high chair back to its place. The baby had kicked it away from the table while Tom was speaking.

"Isn't he--isn't he rather--ah--nervous, my dear?" asked Tom, glancing at me with paternal solicitude. "It's quite normal, this--ah--tendency to bang things--and kick?"

"Perhaps he's hungry, Tom," I suggested, lightly. My spirits were rising. In the presence of the baby, whose appearance and manner were those of a healthy child something under a year in age, the absurdity of my recent incipient nightmare was so evident that I blushed at the recollection of my nonsensical panic. Reincarnation? Bah! what silly rubbish we do get from the far East!

"Of course he's hungry," assented Tom, glancing down at a bird the butler had put before him. "With your permission, nurse, I'll give the youngster a square meal. How would a bit of the breast from this partridge do? It's very tender and digestible--"

"How absurd, Tom!" I cried. "He'd choke!"

"He's choking as it is!" exclaimed Tom, half rising from his chair. "Pat him on the back, nurse!"

"He's all right, sir," said the nurse, calmly as Horatio's cheeks lost their sudden flush and he opened his pretty little eyes again. "You needn't worry, Mr. Minturn. He's in perfect health, sir."

"Aren't they queer?" exclaimed Tom, glancing at me, laughingly.

"Sir?" cried the nurse in pained amazement.

"I meant babies, nurse," explained Tom, soothingly, motioning to the disaffected butler to refill his wine-glass. "But look here, Clare; you and I are eating and drinking heartily, but poor little Horatio is still the hungry victim of a dietary debate. What is he to have?--milk?"

The baby leaned forward in his chair, seized his empty silver bowl with a chubby hand, and hurled it to the floor.

"Horatio!" Tom's voice was stern as he scowled at the mischievous youngster. I could not refrain from laughing aloud.

"Is that bad form, Tom, for a little baby?" I asked, mischievously.

"No," answered Tom, repentantly. "I don't blame you at all, Horatio. Your prejudice, my boy, against an empty bowl when you are both hungry and thirsty is not unnatural. Give him some bread and milk, nurse, or he'll overturn the table. What a wonderful study it is, Clare, to watch a baby develop! Do you know, Horatio is actually able to grasp a syllogism!"

"Or a milk-bowl," I added.

"Don't interrupt my scientific train of thought," protested Tom, gazing musingly at the child. "I saw his mind at work just now. 'I'm hungry,' thought Horatio. 'There's my silver bowl. The bowl is empty. There are bread and milk in the house. If I throw the empty bowl to the floor, my nurse will return it to me filled with food. So here goes! Q.E.D.' Clever baby, isn't he?"

It was at that moment I met the baby's eyes, and a sharp chill ran down my back and found its way to my finger-tips. There was an expression in the child's troubled gaze so eloquent that its meaning flashed upon me at once. If the baby had cried aloud, "What an amazing fool that man is!" I could not have been more sure than I was of the thought that had passed through his infantile mind.

"What's the matter, Clare?" I heard Tom asking me, apprehensively. "Do you feel faint?"

"Not at all," I hastened to say, turning my eyes from my first to my second husband. The former was eating bread and milk--reluctantly, it seemed to me--from a spoon manipulated by his nurse. That it was really Jack who was sitting there in a high chair, doomed to swallow baby food while he craved partridge and Burgundy was a conviction that had come to me for a fleeting moment, to be followed by a return to conventional common sense and a renewed satisfaction in my environment. Tom sat opposite me, smiling contentedly, while between us, at a side of the table, the baby perfunctorily absorbed a simple but nutritious diet, deftly presented to his tiny mouth by his attentive nurse. It was a charming scene of domestic bliss at that moment, and I realized clearly how much I had to lose by giving way, even intermittently, to the wretched hallucinations that my overwrought nerves begot.

"Just look at him, Clare!" exclaimed Tom, presently. "I tell you it's an interesting study. It's elevating and enlightening, my dear. To an evolutionist there's a world of meaning in that baby's enthusiasm for bread and milk. Here he sits at the table covered with gastronomic luxuries and actually rejoices in the simplest kind of food. You see, Clare, how well the difference between Horatio and myself in regard to diet illustrates Spencer's definition of evolution as a continuous change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to definite, coherent heterogeneity through successive differentiations and integrations. Great Scott, nurse! What's the matter with him? He's choking again!"

"It's nothing, sir," remarked the nurse, quietly, as the baby recovered from a fit of coughing and resumed his meal. "But, if you'll pardon the remark, sir, I think that he's much better off in the nursery."

It was not a tactful suggestion, and I knew that Tom felt hurt; but he maintained his self-control and made no further comment, merely glancing at me with a smile in his eyes. I realized, with a vague uneasiness, that open and active hostilities between baby's nurse and Tom were among the possibilities of the near future, and it was not a pleasing thought.

"What does he top off with?" asked Tom, presently, grinning at Horatio, who had emptied his bowl and had stuck a fist into his rosebud mouth, as if still hungry. "Have you got an ice for him, James?"

The butler stood motionless, gazing fixedly at the nurse.

"What queer ideas you have, Tom!" I cried, to break the strain of an uncomfortable situation. "An ice would give him an awful pain."

"Perhaps he'd like a Welsh rabbit, then?" growled Tom, crossly.

The baby seized a spoon and rapped gleefully on the table.

"Isn't he cunning!" I cried, delightedly. "He's happy now, isn't he? I am inclined to think, Tom, that he'd rather have a nap than a rabbit."

"Not on your life!" came a deep, gruff voice from nowhere in particular. I looked at Tom in amazement, thinking that he had playfully disguised his tones and was poking fun at me and the baby. But Tom's expression of wonderment was as genuine as my own, while the nurse was gazing over her shoulder at the butler, who was eying us all in a bewildered way. Tom glanced at the nurse.

"Leave the room, James," he said hotly. "I'll see you later in the smoking-room." Then, to the nurse: "Remove the baby, will you, please? Thank you for letting us have him for an hour."

As soon as we were alone in the dining-room, Tom leaned toward me and said: "Shall I discharge James, my dear? He was most infernally impudent, to put it mildly."

But the frightful certainty had come to me that the butler was innocent of any wrong-doing. Absurd as the bald statement of fact seemed to be, my first husband was the guilty man, and, struggle as I might against the conviction, I knew it.

"Give him another chance, Tom." I managed to say, my voice unsteady and my tongue parched. "James was not quite himself, I imagine. I'm not well, Tom. Give me a swallow of cognac, will you, please?"

Tom, alarmed at my voice and face, hastily handed me a stimulant, and presently I felt my courage and my color coming back to me.

CHAPTER IV.

NURSERY CONFESSIONS.

The priceless sight

Springs to its curious organ, and the ear

Learns strangely to detect the articulate air

In its unseen divisions, and the tongue

Gets its miraculous lesson with the rest.

--N. P. Willis.

I longed, yet dreaded, to have an hour alone with the baby. I could no longer doubt that, through some psychical mischance, Jack's soul had found a lodgment in a family hospitable by habit and inclination, but not accustomed to disquieting intrusions. It was thus that I put the matter to myself, as I sat alone in my boudoir after luncheon, having dismissed Marie, my maid, with a message to Horatio's nurse; and the conventional make-up of my thought revealed to me, in a flash of insight, the materialistic tendencies of my mental methods. Metempsychosis had never assumed to my mind the dignity of even a philosophical working hypothesis. Much less had the idea ever come to me that reincarnation actually furnished a process through which the physical laws of evolution and the conservation of energy might find a psychical demonstration.

My natural inclination to take the world as I found it, and to leave the inner mysteries of life to profounder minds than mine, had been intensified by my association with Tom, a disciple of Haeckel, Büchner and other extremists of the materialistic school. I had come to admire Tom's intellectuality and to find satisfaction in the fact that his fondness for scientific studies would strengthen him to resist the temptations that surrounded him to become a mere man of leisure and luxury. Possessed of great wealth and without a profession, it was fortunate for Tom that he had found in scientific research an outlet for his superabundant energies. He had begun to make a reputation for himself as a clear-headed, well-balanced evolutionist, both conservative in method and progressive in spirit, and at our table could be found at times the leading scientific minds of New York. And now, into our little stronghold of enlightened materialism had been dropped a miraculous mystery, or mysterious miracle, that had overthrown all my preconceived ideas of the universe and opened before me a limitless field of groping conjecture. I realized, with due gratitude to fate, that if I had been born with an imaginative, poetical temperament my present predicament would have driven me insane at the outset. Fortunately for everybody concerned, I am a woman who rebounds quickly from the severest nervous shock, and I have taken a great deal of pride in retaining my mental poise in crises of my life that would have made hysteria excusable.

Nevertheless, it was a severe test of my nervous strength to hold Horatio in my arms at four o'clock that afternoon and watch his nurse donning her coat and hat preparatory to a short ride with Marie. I had carefully planned this opportunity for an uninterrupted hour with the baby, but now that it lay just before me I longed to run away from it. The nursery had become to me a temple of mysteries within which I felt chilled and awe-stricken, a victim of supernatural forces against which I was both rebellious and powerless.

After the nurse had left the room I seated myself in a rocking-chair, cuddling Horatio in my arms and softly humming a lullaby, attempting to deceive myself by the thought that I really wished him to sleep for an hour. In my innermost consciousness lay the conviction that I had actually come to the nursery for a heart-to-heart talk with Jack. My deepest desire was to be quickly gratified. A gruff whisper came to me presently from his pretty lips.

"Stop that 'bye-bye, baby,' will you, Clarissa?" he said, petulantly. "Haven't I had enough annoyance for one day?"

"Hush! hush!" I murmured, rocking frantically in the effort to put the child to sleep, despite my realization of the utter inconsistency of my action.

"Don't! don't!" growled the baby. "Do you want me to have mal-de-mer, Clarissa? I can't be responsible for what may happen. Where did everybody get the notion that a baby must be shaken after taking? It's getting to be an unbearable nuisance, Clarissa."

"Is that better, Jack?" I whispered, holding him upright on my knees and peering down into his disturbed face, puckered into a little knot, as if he were about to cry aloud.

"Thank you," he muttered, gratefully. "Under the circumstances, my dear, perhaps it's well that I didn't get that Welsh rabbit. But, frankly, I was bitterly disappointed at the moment."

"What can you expect, Jack?" I asked, argumentatively, again astonished at the matter-of-fact way in which I was handling this astounding crisis. "You seem to have a man's appetite but only a baby's digestive apparatus."

"That's my punishment, Clarissa," he explained, in awe-struck tones. "In the former cycle I ate too many rabbits. That was scored against me, under the general head of 'Gluttony,' and the sub-title 'Midnight Unnecessaries.' I'm up against it, Clarissa. I wouldn't complain if it were merely a question of not getting what I want. But it's getting what I don't want that jars me. You understand, of course, my dear, that, generally speaking, I refer to milk. Isn't there something in its place that you could persuade the nurse to give me? Don't babies get--er--malt extract, for instance?"

"I'll do what I can for you, Jack." I said, suddenly struck by a brilliant idea. "But I must make a condition, and you must make me a promise."

"I'd promise you anything for a change of diet," muttered Jack, kicking vigorously with his tiny legs and waving his fat fists in the air.

"If you'll swear to me, Jack, never to speak aloud again unless you and I are alone together, I'll agree to make every effort in my power to add to your physical comforts."

"Comforts be--blowed!" exclaimed the baby, crossly. "What I want are a few luxuries. And, furthermore, my dear, I'm getting very weary of that machine-made nurse. She's narrow, Clarissa. I don't wish to speak harshly about a woman whose heart seems to be in the right place, but you must get rid of her, if you care a continental rap about your little baby. You'll have to fill her place, Clarissa, with somebody more broad-minded and up-to-date. She bores me to death."

"You don't mean that you've been talking to her, Jack?" I cried, horrified.

"That's not necessary," growled the child. "What with her ''ittle baby go to seepy,' and 'now, Horatio, 'oo dear 'ittle pet lambie,' she freezes the words upon my tongue. Another thing, Clarissa, that you can't fully understand--I'm not permitted, through psychological conditions that you cannot grasp, to talk to anybody but you. It will relieve your mind to know that I'm as dumb as a--as a real baby when you're not within hearing."

"I'm so glad of that, Jack," I exclaimed, impulsively. "From things you've said before, I had obtained a different impression."

"I was only trying to scare you, Clarissa," remarked Jack, mischievously. "But I've told you the truth at last. By the way, what a stupendous idiot Tom Minturn is! How in the world did you happen to marry him?"

"Jack," I cried, angrily, "I am amazed at your lack of good taste. You are hardly in a position to do Tom justice. Unless you refrain from making such brutal remarks in the future, I shall leave you entirely to the care of the nurse."

"And be accused of neglecting your only child," suggested the baby, slyly.

I had not grasped the full scope of this clever remark, before I was startled by a quick step in the hallway, the throwing open of the door, and the sound of Tom's voice, crying:

"Oh, here you are! I've found you at last, have I? What a pretty picture you make, Clare, there in the half-lights with the baby on your knees. How is the dear little chap? Poor fellow, he must have thought that his dismissal from the luncheon-table was rather abrupt."

"What an ass he is!" whispered Jack, under his breath. Then he began to cry lustily, as had been his custom whenever Tom had deigned to enter the nursery.

CHAPTER V.

A SPOILED CHILD.

Yes, 'tis my dire misfortune now

To hang between two ties,

To hold within my furrowed brow

The earth's clay, and the skies.

--Victor Hugo.

Tom had come to the nursery in high spirits and with the best possible intention. Freed from the depressing presence of the nurse and butler he had argued, I felt sure, that now was the time for a frolic with the baby that should put their relations upon a smoother footing. He had said to me, more than once, that little Horatio's apparent prejudice against him was due to the fact that hirelings were always coming between children and parents in these latter days.

The baby's voice, however, was still for war. I did not dare to trot him upon my knees, knowing his prejudice against a shaking, so I sat there gazing up at Tom's smiling face in perplexity and holding my first husband, now howling lustily, firmly upright on my lap.

"Let me take him, my dear," suggested Tom, with what struck me as rather artificial enthusiasm. "I'll walk with him awhile. It may quiet him."

To my astonishment, the baby stopped crying at once, as Tom bent down and clasped him, rather awkwardly, in his arms. Hope began to dance merrily in my heart, and I laughed aloud. It was a sight to bring smiles to the saddest face. Tom paced up and down the nursery, sedately, furtively watching Jack, as he nestled against his shoulder, making no sound and apparently contented for the moment with the situation. But a sudden fear fell upon me. The thought that this might be the calm before the storm flashed through my mind, and the lightning of premonition was almost instantly followed by the thunder of fulfilment.

"What the dickens!" cried Tom, in anger and amazement. Jack, having deftly hurled Tom's eyeglasses to the floor, had begun to pummel his nose with one hand while he pulled his hair with the other, making strange, guttural sounds the while that were unlike anything that had ever issued from his baby throat before.

"Take him away, will you, Clare?" implored Tom, wildly. "He's the worst that ever happened. What's the matter with him?"

"Perhaps he's sleepy, Tom," I suggested, uncertain whether I should laugh or weep, as I removed the baby from my second husband's arms. "What a bad little boy you have been, Horatio!" I managed to say, chidingly, wondering if nature had not designed me for an actress.

"He ought to be spanked," growled Tom, bending to the floor to grope for his eye-glasses in the twilight.

"Spanked, eh?" whispered the baby, close to my ear. "We'll see about that. I've got it in for him, all right. Just wait!"

"Hush! hush!" I implored him, hurrying back to the rocking-chair, to get as far away from Tom as possible.

"What an infernal temper the boy has," remarked the latter, standing erect again and replacing his eye-glasses upon his nose. "I'm afraid my visit to the nursery has not been a success, Clare," he added, as he stalked to the doorway, evidently sorely hurt at heart.

When we were alone together again, I planted the baby firmly on my knees and bent down till I could look straight into his tear-stained eyes.

"You are very unkind, Jack," I said to him, earnestly. "Have you ever paused to consider what are you here for? Of course, I'm a convert to the theory of reincarnation. You're sufficient proof of its truth. As I understand it, it is incumbent upon you to lead a better life this time than you led before. Frankly, Jack, you aren't beginning well."

"I realize that, Clarissa," said the baby, repentantly. "If I don't brace up, I'll make a terrible mess of it, and my next birth'll be sure to jar me. Maybe I'll be doomed to show up in Brooklyn--or even Hoboken. If you care anything about my--ah--psychical future, my dear, you'll keep Tom Minturn away from me. He's so confoundedly patronizing! He's actually insufferable, my dear. Did you hear him quoting Herbert Spencer at the table, gazing at me all the while as if I were some kind of a germ that might develop in time? And the funny part of it is, Clarissa, that I am a sage, and he's nothing but a misguided ignoramus."

"But Tom has the reputation of being quite learned, Jack," I protested. "He's an active member of the Darwin Society, and has just been elected to the Association for the Promulgation of the Doctrine of Evolution."

"'And the dead, steered by the dumb, moved upward with the flood,'" quoted the baby, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought. "They are blind leaders of the blind, Clarissa. I could tell Tom in a minute more than he'll ever know if he always clings to the idea that the universe is a machine that was made by chance and is run by luck. But I sha'n't take the trouble to give him the tip. He'll know a thing or two some day. Meanwhile, my dear, you'd better keep him away from me. If worse comes to the worst you might send me to some institution. I realize, bitterly enough, that I'll be an awful nuisance to you if you keep me here."

I felt the tears coming into my eyes, and impulsively I drew the baby closer to me. I was in the most deplorable predicament that my imagination could conceive, torn by conflicting emotions and horrified by the awful possibilities presented to me by the immediate future. If Tom, through Jack's hot temper, should discover the truth, and be forced suddenly to abandon materialism by coming face to face with a convincing psychical demonstration, what would happen? I shuddered, there in the gloaming, as my mind dwelt reluctantly upon the unprecedented perils menacing my happiness. It was no comfort to my distraught soul to realize that, in all probability, no woman, since the world began, had been afflicted in just this way. Neither was there any relief in the conviction that I had been in no way to blame for this incongruous psychical visitation.

"No, I couldn't send you away, Jack," I said, musingly; "that is practically impossible. We'll have to make the best of it, and our successful manipulation of the situation depends almost wholly upon your self-control. You must adapt yourself to your environment, my boy; become a baby in fact as well as in theory. You'll be happier that way."

"Don't talk nonsense, Clarissa," grumbled Jack, kicking viciously at his long clothes. "I'm the victim of what might be called a temporary maladjustment of the machinery of psychical evolution. Ordinarily, a baby is not cognizant of a former existence. You advise me to forget the past and remember only that I am your cunning little eight-months-old Horatio. If I only could! It's the only thing that could give me permanent relief, my dear. But it's not possible. Here I am doomed to a kind of dual punishment, ashamed of myself as Horatio and afraid of myself as Jack. And all because I clogged my psychical progress in my late life by a carnal craving for Welsh rabbits! It sounds absurd, doesn't it, when one puts it into words? But, my dear, the sublime and the ridiculous are as close together in one realm of existence as in another. Truth has many faces, and there's always a grin on one of them."

"I think that I hear your nurse coming, Jack," I whispered. "Is there anything that I can do for you?"

"Yes," he answered, excitedly, lowering his voice, however. "Do you think, Clarissa, that you could secrete a flask of bottled cocktails in the room somewhere? I've learned a thing or two of late that might prove useful to me if I needed a stimulant and knew where to find it. I can raise my body by my arms and hold up my whole weight for ten minutes at a time. I've been experimenting at night, when the nurse was asleep. Tom's an evolutionist; ask him about it. He'll explain to you how it happens. You'll bring the cocktails, my dear?"

I hesitated, bewildered by his request; daring neither to grant nor deny it. The nurse was half-way down the hall, and nearing the door rapidly.

"Take your choice, Clarissa," whispered the baby, coolly. "Unless you promise me at once, I shall tell the nurse who I am, the moment she enters the room."

My heart sprang chokingly into my throat, and I whispered, hoarsely:

"Very well, Jack. I'll do as you wish. But do be careful, won't you? Don't take more than a sip at a time, will you?"

Before the baby could reply, the nurse had entered the room, smiling gaily.