even to his younger daughter, but in those days there was thunder always
in the air. Douglas remembered the sensation and shuddered. Once he
had come across Joan and her sister together suddenly, and had found it
hard work to keep from a shriek of terror. There was a light in Joan's
eyes--it seemed to him that he had seen it there often lately. Was
there another Joan whom he did not know?

He walked on, grim, pale, chilled. The time when he would lie awake in
his little oak-beamed chamber and thoughts of Cicely would soothe him to
sleep with pleasant fancies was gone. He thought of her now without
emotion--no longer the memory of those walks thrilled his pulses. He
knew very well that never again would his heart beat the quicker for her
coming, never again, even though the memory of that terrible night could
be swept away, would her coming bring joy to him. Firmly though his
feet were planted upon the ladder, it seemed to him then in that gloomy
mood that every step must take him further away from any chance of that
wonderful happiness, so intangible, yet so sweet an adjunct to life.
For he was following like a doomed creature in the wake of Drexley, and
Rice, and those others. Too late had come his warning. The woman of
whom he never dared to think was surely a sorceress. She was only a
woman--scarcely even beautiful, yet the world of her sex had become to
Douglas Guest as a thing that was not. He turned at last back into the
Strand. He would go to his rooms and work for a while. But as he
walked slowly down, jostled by many passers-by, still not wholly
detached from that phantasmal past, there came upon him a shock so
sudden and so overwhelming that the very pavement seemed to yawn at his
feet. Towards him two women were slowly walking, holding their own in
the press of the crowd, one with horrified eyes already fastened upon
him, the other as yet unconscious of his presence. Nearer and nearer
they came, and although every impulse of his body bade him fly, his