happened to her? Or to himself. Remembrance rushed in upon him. The
odd pedlar! The scene with Jan! But surely all that had been a
dream? Yet there upon the littered desk still stood the pedlar's
silver flask, together with the twin stained glasses.

Nicholas tried to think, but his brain was in a whirl. A ray of
sunshine streaming through the window fell across the dusty room.
Nicholas had never seen the sun, that he could recollect.
Involuntarily he stretched his hands towards it, felt a pang of grief
when it vanished, leaving only the grey light. He drew the rusty
bolts, flung open the great door. A strange world lay before him, a
new world of lights and shadows, that wooed him with their beauty--a
world of low, soft voices that called to him. There came to him again
that bitter sense of having been robbed.

"I could have been so happy all these years," murmured old Nicholas to
himself. "It is just the little town I could have loved--so quaint,
so quiet, so homelike. I might have had friends, old cronies,
children of my own maybe--"

A vision of the sleeping Christina flashed before his eyes. She had
come to him a child, feeling only gratitude towards him. Had he had
eyes with which to see her, all things might have been different.

Was it too late? He is not so old--not so very old. New life is in
his veins. She still loves Jan, but that was the Jan of yesterday.
In the future, Jan's every word and deed will be prompted by the evil
soul that was once the soul of Nicholas Snyders--that Nicholas Snyders
remembers well. Can any woman love that, let the case be as handsome
as you will?