"Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps?"

"Never--before my adventure; but I have since," he replied
significantly.

There was, however, something still on the man's mind that he wished to
relieve himself of by confession, yet could only with difficulty bring
himself to mention; and it was only after the sympathetic tactfulness of
the doctor had provided numerous openings that he at length availed
himself of one of them, and stammered that he would like to show him the
marks he still had on his neck where, he said, the girl had touched him
with her anointed hands.

He took off his collar after infinite fumbling hesitation, and lowered
his shirt a little for the doctor to see. And there, on the surface of
the skin, lay a faint reddish line across the shoulder and extending a
little way down the back towards the spine. It certainly indicated
exactly the position an arm might have taken in the act of embracing.
And on the other side of the neck, slightly higher up, was a similar
mark, though not quite so clearly defined.

"That was where she held me that night on the ramparts," he whispered, a
strange light coming and going in his eyes.

* * * * *

It was some weeks later when I again found occasion to consult John
Silence concerning another extraordinary case that had come under my
notice, and we fell to discussing Vezin's story. Since hearing it, the
doctor had made investigations on his own account, and one of his