still, he wondered? He opened the tall French window, and once again went out, hatless, into the driving wet.

XIV

"Mr. Rivers regrets that he is unable to receive you to-night, sir."

Laurence looked round with something approaching a start at Renshaw, the butler, whose respectful, colourless voice broke in thus upon his meditations. The dining-room struck him as hotter and more oppressive than ever—by contrast probably with the buffeting wind and driving mist in which he had paced the lime-tree walk for a good hour before the dressing-bell rang. To-night the glass bowl, supported by the wanton, dancing, Etruscan figures, was filled with tuberoses and carmine-stained Japanese lilies; and the odour given off by these acted on the young man's brain as opium or hashish might have acted—at least so it appeared to him. The longer he meditated, the less could he distinguish between real and unreal, fact and phantasy. The best accredited articles of his moral and scientific creed had passed into the region of the open question. Speculation ran riot, all the accustomed landmarks of his thought being for the time submerged; while the wildest and most extravagant ideas presented themselves as within the range of practical action. That last read letter of Agnes Rivers, and his own resemblance to her lover, had inflamed his imagination and his heart. Even in their one night's intercourse, he had seen intelligence, purpose, gaiety, return to her. Now the daring conception that such a process might be continued, until his sweet and mysterious companion recovered all the senses and attributes of living womanhood, formed itself in his mind. Was it not conceivable that this appearance might be materialised, so that the fair and gracious spirit should once again inhabit a human body, and know all those dear joys of love and motherhood which had been—by some evil fortune, some catastrophe, as he supposed—denied to her? An immense ambition to be the instrument of this restoration, this recovery, grew within him. He would work a miracle, he would be as God, clothing the soul with flesh, raising the dead. And this by no exercise of charlatanism, by no dabbling in old-world superstitions, or dealings in folly of White Magic or of Black; but simply by force of will, by the action of mind on mind, by the incalculable power of a great love. It was impious, perhaps. Morally it was doubtful—circumstanced as he, Laurence, was. But it was the most magnificent experiment ever offered either to man of science, or to poet. Here was the opportunity he had desired, had waited for. Here was his chance in life!

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