“Does she come often?”

“Every single evening when I am alone—­and—­sometimes, she melts into my arms and stays with me all night.  Binko—­Ah!—­you remember Binko!”—­for Sabine’s face had suddenly lit up—­and at this passionate joy and emotion flooded Michael’s and they both stopped dead short in their talk and Sabine took a quick breath that was almost a gasp.

“I remember—­nothing,” she said very fast, “how should I?  The girl whose ghost you are speaking of ceased to exist five years ago—­but I—­recognize the portrait—­I knew her in life—­and she told me about the dog—­he had fat paws and quantities of wrinkles, I think she said.”

“Yes, that is Binko!” and his master beamed rapturously.  “He is the most beautifully ugly bulldog in the world, but the poor old boy is getting on, he is seven years old now.  Would not you like to see him—­again—­I mean from what you have heard!”

“I love animals, especially dogs—­but tell me, is he not afraid of the ghost?”

Michael drank some champagne, even under all his unhappiness he was greatly enjoying himself.  “Not at all, he loves her to come as much as I do.  She haunts—­both my rooms—­and the chapel, too—­she wears a white dress and has some stephanotis in her hair—­and I am somehow compelled to enact a whole scene with her—­there before the altar with all the candles blazing—­and it seems as if I put a ring upon her hand—­like the one you are wearing there—­she has lovely hands.”

The color began to die out of Sabine’s cheeks and a strange look grew in her eyes.  The footmen were removing the fish plates, but she was oblivious of that.  Then the tones of Michael’s voice changed and grew deeper.

“Soon all the vision fades into gloom, and the only thing I can see is that she is tearing my ring off and throwing it away into the darkness.”

“And do you try to prevent her from doing this?” Sabine hardly spoke above a whisper, while she absently refused an entree which was being handed.  To talk of ghosts and such like things had been easy enough, but she had not bargained for him turning the conversation into one of serious meaning.  She could not, however, prevent herself from continuing it, she had never been so interested in her life.

“No—­I cannot do that—­there is an archangel standing between.”

At this moment Mrs. Howard’s other neighbor claimed her attention; he was a man to whom she had been talking at tea, and who was already filled with admiration for her.

Michael had time for breathing space, and to consider whether the course he was pursuing was wisdom or not.  That it was madly exciting, he knew—­but where was it leading to?  What did she mean?  Did she feel at all? or was she one of the clever coquettes of her nation, a more refined Daisy Van der Horn—­just going to lead him on into showing his emotion for her, and then going to punish and humiliate him?  He must put a firmer guard