A burning lump rose in her throat.  She turned her head upon the pillow, clasping her hands tightly over her eyes.  Ah, if she had but gone back to him!  They had loved each other, and somehow love would have conquered.  Did not love always conquer?  What were those words that she had read cut deep in the trunk of a dead tree?  They flashed through her brain more vividly than the glancing lightning—­the key to every closed door—­the balm for every wound—­the ladder by which alone the top of the world is reached. Fide et Amore!  By Faith and Love!

There came again to her that curious feeling of revelation.  Looking back, she saw the man on horseback hewing those words while she waited.  The words themselves shone in fiery letters across. her closed eyelids.  She asked herself suddenly, with an awed wonder if perchance her prayer had been answered after all, and she had suffered the message to pass her by. . . .

There came a crash of thunder nearer and more menacing than any that had gone before, startling her almost with a sense of doom, setting every pulse in her body beating.  She uncovered her face and sat up.

Sullenly the echoes rolled away, yet they left behind a strange impression that possessed her with an uncanny force from which she could not shake herself free—­a feeling that amounted to actual conviction that some presence lurked without in the storm, alert and stealthy, waiting for something.

The window was at the side of her bed.  She had but to draw aside the curtain and look out.  It was within reach of her hand.  But for many breathless seconds she dared not.

What it was that stood outside she had no idea, but the thought of Kieff was in her mind—­Kieff the vampire who was dead.

She felt herself grow cold all over.  She had only to cross the narrow room and knock on the main wall of the bungalow to summon Merston.  He would come at a moment’s notice, she knew.  But she felt powerless to move.  Sheer terror bound her limbs.

The thunder slowly ceased, and there followed a brief stillness through which the beating of her heart clamoured wildly.  Yet she was beginning to tell herself that it was no more than a nightmare panic that had caught her, when suddenly something knocked softly upon the closed window beneath which she lay.

She started violently and glanced across the room, measuring the distance to the further wall on which she herself would have to knock to summon help.

Then, while instinctively she debated the point, summoning her strength for the effort, there came another sound close to her—­a low voice speaking her name.

“Sylvia!  Sylvia!  Wake up and let me in!”

She snatched back the curtain in a second.  She knew that voice.  By the shifting gleam of the lightning she saw him, looking in upon her.  Her fear vanished.

Swiftly she sprang to do his bidding.  Had she ever failed to answer any call of his?  She drew back the bolts of her door, and in a moment they were together.