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The circling halo of the Madonna in her sky-blue gown shone, patterned into a rose by the Byzantine cross, whose delicate red outline, melted in the reflection, darkened with a tincture of blood this orient gleaming in its pearls. From her childhood Vera had used to cast her great eyes of compassion on the pure and maternal features of the hereditary Madonna; her nature, alas! allowed her to consecrate only a superstitious love to the figure, but this she offered sometimes, naively and thoughtfully, when she passed in front of the lamp.

At the sight of this the Count, touched in the most secret places of his soul, straightened himself, and quickly blew out the holy flame. Then, feeling with outstretched hand in the gloom for a bell-cord, he rang.

A servant appeared, an old man attired in black. In his hand was a lamp; he set it down before the portrait of the Countess. A shiver of superstitious terror ran through him as he turned and saw his master standing erect and smiling as if nothing had come to pass.

“Raymond,” said the Count in calm tones, “we are worn out with fatigue this evening, the Countess and I. You will serve supper about ten o’clock. —And by the way, we have made up our minds that from to-morrow we shall isolate ourselves here more completely than ever. None of my servants, except yourself, must pass the night under this roof. You will send them three years’ wages, and they must go. Then you will close the bar of the gateway, and light the torches downstairs in the dining-room; you will be enough for our needs. For the future we shall receive nobody.”

The old man was trembling, watching him attentively.

The Count lit a cigar and went down into the gardens.

At first the servant imagined that grief, too crushing, too desperate, had unhinged his master’s mind. He had been familiar with him from his childhood, and instantly understood that the shock of too sudden an awakening could easily be fatal to this sleep-walker. His duty, to begin with, was respect for such a secret.

He bowed his head. A devoted complicity in this religious phantasy. . . ?To obey. . . ?To continue to serve them without taking heed of Death?–What a strange fancy! Would it endure for one night. . . ?To-morrow perhaps, alas. . . ! Who could tell. . . ?Maybe. . . But after all, a sacred project! What right had he to reflect like this. . . ?

He left the chamber, carried out his orders to the letter, and that same evening the unwonted mode of life began.

A terrible mirage—this is what had to be brought into being!

The pain of the first days faded quickly away. Raymond, at first with stupefaction, afterwards from a sort of deference and fondness, had adapted himself so skillfully to a natural demeanour, that before three weeks had passed he felt at moments that he was himself the dupe of his good-will. The suppressed thought was fading!Sometimes, experiencing a kind of dizziness, he felt compelled to assure himself that the Countess was no more, positively was dead. He became adept in the melancholy pretence, and every moment he grew more forgetful of reality. Before long he needed to reflect more than once to convince himself and pull himself together. He realized clearly that in the end he would surrender utterly to the terrifying magnetism wherewith the Count, little by little, was infusing the atmosphere around them. A fear came over him, a quiet, uncertain fear.

D’Athol, in fact, was living in an absolute denial of the fact of his loved one’s death. So closely was the form of the young woman fused with his own that he could not but find her always with him. Now, on a garden seat on sunny days, he was reading aloud the poems that she loved. Now, in the evening, by the fireside, with two cups of tea on the little round table, he was chattering with the Illusion, who, for his eyes, sat smiling there in the other arm-chair.