It was this loss of
his present self that brought to him the thought of death. “You came here,” she went on, “with the purpose of seeking it, and the
people felt your presence and are waiting to know what you decide,
whether you will leave them without having found it, or whether—”

Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her face began to change,
growing larger and darker with an expression of age. “It is their thoughts constantly playing about your soul that makes you
feel they watch you. They do not watch you with their eyes. The
purposes of their inner life are calling to you, seeking to claim you. You were all part of the same life long, long ago, and now they want
you back again among them.”

Vezin’s timid heart sank with dread as he listened; but the girl’s eyes
held him with a net of joy so that he had no wish to escape. She
fascinated him, as it were, clean out of his normal self. “Alone, however, the people could never have caught and held you,” she
resumed. “The motive force was not strong enough; it has faded through
all these years. But I”—she paused a moment and looked at him with
complete confidence in her splendid eyes—“I possess the spell to
conquer you and hold you: the spell of old love. I can win you back
again and make you live the old life with me, for the force of the
ancient tie between us, if I choose to use it, is irresistible. And I
do choose to use it. I still want you. And you, dear soul of my dim
past”—she pressed closer to him so that her breath passed across his
eyes, and her voice positively sang—“I mean to have you, for you love
me and are utterly at my mercy.”

Vezin heard, and yet did not hear; understood, yet did not understand. He had passed into a condition of exaltation. The world was beneath his
feet, made of music and flowers, and he was flying somewhere far above
it through the sunshine of pure delight. He was breathless and giddy
with the wonder of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, the
terror of it all, the dreadful thought of death, pressed ever behind
her sentences. For flames shot through her voice out of black smoke and
licked at his soul. And they communicated with one another, it seemed to him, by a process
of swift telepathy, for his French could never have compassed all he
said to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what she said to him was
like the recital of verses long since known. And the mingled pain and
sweetness of it as he listened were almost more than his little soul
could hold. “Yet I came here wholly by chance—” he heard himself saying. “No,” she cried with passion, “you came here because I called to you. I
have called to you for years, and you came with the whole force of the
past behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and I claim you.”

She rose again and moved closer, looking at him with a certain
insolence in the face—the insolence of power. The sun had set behind the towers of the old cathedral and the darkness
rose up from the plain and enveloped them. The music of the band had
ceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung motionless, but the chill of
the autumn evening rose about them and made Vezin shiver. There was no
sound but the sound of their voices and the occasional soft rustle of
the girl’s dress. He could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He
scarcely realised where he was or what he was doing. Some terrible
magic of the imagination drew him deeply down into the tombs of his own
being, telling him in no unfaltering voice that her words shadowed
forth the truth. And this simple little French maid, speaking beside
him with so strange authority, he saw curiously alter into quite
another being. As he stared into her eyes, the picture in his mind grew
and lived, dressing itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree of
reality he was compelled to acknowledge. As once before, he saw her
tall and stately, moving through wild and broken scenery of forests and
mountain caverns, the glare of flames behind her head and clouds of
shifting smoke about her feet. Dark leaves encircled her hair, flying
loosely in the wind, and her limbs shone through the merest rags of
clothing. Others were about her, too, and ardent eyes on all sides cast
delirious glances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only,
one whom she held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some
tempestuous orgy to the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led
circled about a great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over the
scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces and
forms crowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one she held by
the hand he knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape upon the throne
he knew to be her mother. The vision rose within him, rushing to him down the long years of
buried time, crying aloud to him with the voice of memory
reawakened.... And then the scene faded away and he saw the clear
circle of the girl’s eyes gazing steadfastly into his own, and she
became once more the pretty little daughter of the innkeeper, and he
found his voice again. “And you,” he whispered tremblingly—“you child of visions and
enchantment, how is it that you so bewitch me that I loved you even
before I saw?”

She drew herself up beside him with an air of rare dignity. “The call of the Past,” she said; “and besides,” she added proudly, “in
the real life I am a princess—”

“A princess!” he cried. “—and my mother is a queen!”

At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight tore at his heart
and swept him into sheer ecstasy. To hear that sweet singing voice, and
to see those adorable little lips utter such things, upset his balance
beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms and covered her
unresisting face with kisses. But even while he did so, and while the hot passion swept him, he felt
that she was soft and loathsome, and that her answering kisses stained
his very soul.... And when, presently, she had freed herself and
vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning against the wall in
a state of collapse, creeping with horror from the touch of her
yielding body, and inwardly raging at the weakness that he already
dimly realised must prove his undoing. And from the shadows of the old buildings into which she disappeared
there rose in the stillness of the night a singular, long-drawn cry,
which at first he took for laughter, but which later he was sure he
recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat. V

For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, alone with his
surging thoughts and emotions. He understood at length that he had done
the one thing necessary to call down upon him the whole force of this
ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he had acknowledged the
tie of olden days, and had revived it. And the memory of that soft
impalpable caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came back to him
with a shudder. The girl had first mastered him, and then led him to
the one act that was necessary for her purpose.