’I will do nothing till I have made quite sure that Margaret was foully murdered.’

He turned on his heel and walked quickly away.  It was late now, and they found a frugal meal waiting for them in the little sitting-room.  It seemed no use to delay it till Arthur came back, and silently, sorrowfully, they ate.  Afterwards, the doctor smoked cigarettes, while Susie sat at the open window and looked at the stars.  She thought of Margaret, of her beauty and her charming frankness, of her fall and of her miserable end; and she began to cry quietly.  She knew enough of the facts now to be aware that the wretched girl was not to blame for anything that had happened.  A cruel fate had fallen upon her, and she had been as powerless as in the old tales Phaedra, the daughter of Minos, or Myrrha of the beautiful hair.  The hours passed, and still Arthur did not return.  Susie thought now only of him, and she was frightfully anxious.

But at last he came in.  The night was far advanced.  He put down his hat and sat down.  For a long while he looked silently at Dr. Porhoet.

‘What is it, my friend?’ asked the good doctor at length.

’Do you remember that you told us once of an experiment you made in Alexandria?’ he said, after some hesitation.

He spoke in a curious voice.

’You told us that you took a boy, and when he looked in a magic mirror, he saw things which he could not possibly have known.’

‘I remember very well,’ said the doctor.

’I was much inclined to laugh at you at the time.  I was convinced that the boy was a knave who deceived you.’

‘Yes?’

’Of late I’ve thought of that story often.  Some hidden recess of my memory has been opened, and I seem to remember strange things.  Was I the boy who looked in the ink?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor quietly.

Arthur did not say anything.  A profound silence fell upon them, while Susie and the doctor watched him intently.  They wondered what was in his mind.

‘There is a side of my character which I did not know till lately,’ Arthur said at last.  ’When first it dawned upon me, I fought against it.  I said to myself that deep down in all of us, a relic from the long past, is the remains of the superstition that blinded our fathers; and it is needful for the man of science to fight against it with all his might.  And yet it was stronger than I. Perhaps my birth, my early years, in those Eastern lands where everyone believes in the supernatural, affected me although I did not know it.  I began to remember vague, mysterious things, which I never knew had been part of my knowledge.  And at last one day it seemed that a new window was opened on to my soul, and I saw with extraordinary clearness the incident which you had described.  I knew suddenly it was part of my own experience.  I saw you take me by the hand and pour the ink on my palm and bid me look at it.  I felt again the strange glow that thrilled me, and with an indescribable bitterness I saw things in the mirror which were not there before.  I saw people whom I had never seen.  I saw them perform certain actions.  And some force I knew not, obliged me to speak.  And at length everything grew dim, and I was as exhausted as if I had not eaten all day.’