excite him further, Ethel had related to Ernest the story of her
remarkable interview with Reginald Clarke. In the long silence that
ensued, the wings of his soul brushed against hers for the first time,
and Love by a thousand tender chains of common suffering welded their
beings into one.

Caressingly the ivory of her fingers passed through the gold of his hair
and over his brow, as if to banish the demon-eyes that stared at him
across the hideous spaces of the past. In a rush a thousand incidents
came back to him, mute witnesses of a damning truth. His play, the
dreams that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mind
upon his novel which hitherto he had ascribed to nervous disease--all,
piling fact on fact, became one monstrous monument of Reginald Clarke's
crime. At last Ernest understood the parting words of Abel Felton and
the look in Ethel's eye on the night when he had first linked his fate
with the other man's. Walkham's experience, too, and Reginald's remarks
on the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed toward the
new and horrible spectre that Ethel's revelation had raised in place of
his host.

And then, again, the other Reginald appeared, crowned with the lyric
wreath. From his lips golden cadences fell, sweeter than the smell of
many flowers or the sound of a silver bell. He was once more the divine
master, whose godlike features bore no trace of malice and who had
raised him to a place very near his heart.

"No," he cried, "it is impossible. It's all a dream, a horrible
nightmare."

"But he has himself confessed it," she interjected.