“After dusk one requires a ticket to pass through the gates,” he said. “She is there. She will be standing like one of the Caryatides, the moon on her face, hatless. And perhaps her feet will be bare.”
“Oh, but this is madness!” I exclaimed. “What is she to you or you to her?”
“I wonder,” he answered helplessly. Then, obeying an impulse he seemed unable to control, he held out a ticket.
“Take this!” he said. “It will admit you through the gates. She will be waiting.”
“No,” said I. “It is you she wants.”
“But I can’t go. I may not. I daren’t. I told her I wouldn’t.”
And, with a deep sigh, he turned and walked into the hotel.
All that night I lay midway between reality and dreams. My senses mingled, and I knew not what was reality and what was phantasy. Was it possible I should see her at breakfast next morning? Was there really such a woman or had I imagined her? Had I been dreaming these last thirty-six hours?
The spirit of her was in my brain and in my veins like a drug. At length I must have slept, for I heard whisperings and a voice of menace, and again a loud voice threatening mankind and me, and then voluptuous sighings and secret whisperings; mænads rushed to and fro in ghostly meadows, and on them the moon poured golden blood; and then again the voice reached me and each word it uttered was like a heavy weight falling upon my bleeding heart.
I awoke and sat up in bed and: