I had taken but a few strides when a strong grasp
upon my shoulder arrested me. I came near crying
out with terror: the dead man, the sword still fixed
in his breast, stood beside me! Pulling out the sword
with his disengaged hand, he flung it from him, the
moonlight glinting upon the jewels of its hilt and the
unsullied steel of its blade. It fell with a clang upon
the sidewalk ahead and--vanished! The man,
swarthy as before, relaxed his grasp upon my shoul-
der and looked at me with the same cynical regard
that I had observed on first meeting him. The dead
have not that look--it partly restored me, and turn-
ing my head backward, I saw the smooth white
expanse of sidewalk, unbroken from street to street.
'What is all this nonsense, you devil?' I de-
manded, fiercely enough, though weak and trembling
in every limb.
'It is what some are pleased to call jugglery,' he
answered, with a light, hard laugh.
He turned down Dupont Street and I saw him
no more until we met in the Auburn ravine.
3
On the day after my second meeting with Dr.
Dorrimore I did not see him: the clerk in the Put-
nam House explained that a slight illness confined
him to his rooms. That afternoon at the railway
station I was surprised and made happy by the
unexpected arrival of Miss Margaret Corray and
her mother, from Oakland.
This is not a love story. I am no story-teller, and
love as it is cannot be portrayed in a literature domi-
nated and enthralled by the debasing tyranny which
'sentences letters' in the name of the Young Girl.
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