I remember that we played it twice, and it was just as the singer reached the beginning of the final chorus that Charlotte, who sat nearest the door, made a quick move and shivered, as though with cold.

From where I sat, near the dining-room door, I could see through into the hall.  Charlotte’s action made me think that the door might have become unlatched, allowing a draught to come through.  Afterwards she said that she had felt something rather like a breeze pass her chair.

In the middle of the room stood a long, massive table, of conventional library type.  Overhead was a heavy, burnished copper fixture, from which a cluster of electric bulbs threw their brilliance upward, so that the room was evenly lighted with the diffused rays as reflected from the ceiling.  Thus, there were no shadows to confuse the problem.

The chorus of the song was almost through when I heard from the direction of the table a faint sound, as though someone had drawn fingers lightly across the polished oak.  I listened; the sound was not repeated, at least not loud enough for me to catch it above the music.  Next moment, however, the record came to an end; Jerome leaned forward to put on another, and Charlotte opened her mouth as though to suggest what the new selection might be.  But she never said the words.

It began with a scintillating iridescence, up on the ceiling, not eight feet from where I sat.  As I looked the spot grew, and spread, and flared out.  It was blue like the elusive blue of the gem; only, it was more like flame—­the flame of electrical apparatus.

Then, down from that blinding radiance there crept, rather than dropped a single thread of incandescence, vivid, with a tinge of the colour from which it had surged.  Down it crept to the floor; it was like an irregular streak of lightning, hanging motionless between ceiling and floor, just for the fraction of a second.  All in total silence.

And then the radiance vanished, disappeared, snuffed out as one might snuff out a candle.  And in its stead—­

There appeared a fourth person in the room.

XXII

THE ROUSING OF A MIND

It was a girl.  Not the Nervina.  No; this girl was quite another person.

Even now I find it curiously hard to describe her.  For me to say that she was the picture of innocence, of purity, and of youth, is still to leave unsaid the secret of her loveliness.

For this stranger, coming out of the thin air into our midst, held me with a glorious fascination.  From the first I felt no misgivings, such as Harry confesses he experienced when he fell under the Nervina’s charm.  I knew as I watched the stranger’s wondering, puzzled features, that I had never before seen anyone so lovely, so attractive, and so utterly beyond suspicion.

It was only later that I noted her amazingly delicate complexion, fair as her hair was golden; her deep blue eyes, round face, and the girlish supple figure; or her robe-like garments of very soft, white material.  For she commenced almost instantly to talk.