crystal at that instant. I regarded the crystal as a harmless distraction of hers, and I was being simply jocular when I made that remark. Emmeline, however, took it seriously. As her face had changed when she first saw me in the box at the Opera, and again to-night when she met me and Marie Deschamps on my arm, so once more it changed now.

“Do you really want to?” she questioned me, in her thrilling voice.

My soul said: “It’s all rubbish — but suppose there is something in it, after all?”

And I said aloud:

“Yes.”

“Come, then.”

We passed through the room with the red Japanese lantern, and lo!