“Why, that is she! Holy Heavens! It is my nun!”
“The cross—compare the cross!” urged the king, his slender, white hand trembling with agitation.
A frosty current ran through my veins as I compared the pictured cross with that in my companion’s hand. It was the same—not a doubt of it—and the eyes, too, were the same, as also the dress and the whole figure were unmistakably those of the gray nun I had danced with. Yet in those conspicuously large, deep black eyes lay not an expression of peacefulness and mild resignation, but a world of passionate feeling. Having assured the king of the identity of the cross, and he having informed me that it was an ancient heirloom of which no duplicate existed, he bade me accompany him further.
Arrived in the antechamber to his apartments, the king gave an order to one of the attendants on duty there. He walked up and down the room for a few moments in visible excitement, and then, stopping before me, and looking at me searchingly, he asked:
“Have you ever, in the course of your life, met with a manifestation of the supernatural?”
I was so bewildered and nervous that I scarcely could remember enough French to reply:
“May it please your Majesty, I have not.”
“Do you believe in the possibility of the dead returning?”
“Not in the sense of their coming as apparitions. I always was, still am, a skeptic on the point of ghost stories in general, nevertheless I am a Christian, and I believe and know that we continue to live after death.”
The king stared at me mechanically: