“Bring that lamp closer—­quick!” he cried.

Thalassa lifted the lamp from the table and stood beside him.  The yellow glow of the lamp enveloped the livid bluish features of Sisily and the stooping form with the stethoscope.  The instrument of silver and rubber held miraculous possibilities of life and death to Thalassa.  He watched it anxiously—­directed the light upon it.  The shape on the couch remained motionless.

Thalassa’s gaze wandered from the stethoscope to

Dr. Ravenshaw.  The doctor’s bent neck showed white between the top of his shirt and the grey hair above it.  He was wearing no collar, so he must have been going to bed—­when the knock came.  Thalassa’s eyes dwelt on the exposed flesh with a steady yet wondering contemplation.  The lamp in his hand wavered slightly.

Dr. Ravenshaw rose to his feet, oblivious of the man who was staring at his neck from behind.  His downward glance rested on Sisily’s face, and his eyes were grave.  He turned away and walked out of the room, but returned almost immediately with a small mirror.

“Hold the lamp higher,” he said to Thalassa.  “I want the light to fall right on her face.  Higher still—­so.”

He fell on his knees by the couch and held the mirrored side of the glass to Sisily’s lips.  The lamp, held aloft, illumined his face as well as hers.  His features were set and rigid.

Thalassa stood still, his eyes brooding on the sharp outline of the bent mask.  A vague idea, startling and terrible, was magnifying itself in his mind.  Once his glance wandered to Ravenshaw’s neck, then returned with growing fixity to his face, seen at closer range than he had ever beheld it.  In the vivid light the elemental lines beneath the changes of time took on a strange resemblance to a face he had known in the distant past.  A spectral being seemed to rise from the dead and resume life in the kneeling body of Dr. Ravenshaw.

Involuntarily he stepped back, and the likeness vanished in the added distance.  The veil of the past was dropped again.  He could see nothing now but the commonplace whiskered face of an elderly Cornish doctor bending over the inanimate form on the couch.  Again the lamp shook slightly.

“What are you doing with that light?” said Ravenshaw peevishly.  “Cannot you hold it steady?  Bring it closer, man—­closer than that.  Now, hold it there.”

In the nearer vision the elemental lines of a forgotten face again confronted Thalassa beneath the flabby contours of age.  It was like looking at a familiar outline covered by a mask—­a transparent mask.  He stood stock still with uplifted lamp, like a man in a trance, but his eyes never left Dr. Ravenshaw’s face.

Some minutes passed silently before Dr. Ravenshaw withdrew the mirror from Sisily’s lips.  He turned it over and looked closely at the surface of the glass.  The man behind him stared over his shoulder.  Their eyes met in the mirror, and held for a moment fascinated.  In that brief space of time the revelation and recognition were completed.  Dr. Ravenshaw’s glance was the first to break away.  The hard brown eyes watching him followed the direction of his view to a pair of spectacles resting on the table.  Thalassa understood the intention, and harshly forestalled it.