ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity
which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant.
He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes
blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of
the singer, who had enthralled him, ejaculated:

"As God lives, it is you!"

"Suppose it is I!" he returned, impatiently. "Stand aside, or--"

"You must not pass here!" she returned, laying her hands on his lifted
arm.

"Must not? We shall see about that!" and he repulsed her violently.

"No, no; you are too hasty! I mean that would be a fatal course. Here,
here!" seizing him again and dragging him with her. "You were right to
kill that ruffian! to cane him to death--like the Russian grand-dukes,
he was not born to die by the sword. To abduct one woman while paying
court to another, the traitor! But, never heed that! He is punished, and
you must be saved. Here is an outlet: pursue the passage to the end and
leave the town!"

"But I--"

"How can you repay me? Bah! repay me in the other world--below, with a
drop of cold water when I parch!" And with a dulcet yet demoniacal
laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slammed
a door and seemed to run away, singing the refrain of the waltz which
was to haunt him forever-more.