He raised the quiescent figure in his arms and imprinted a passionate kiss upon the low brow.
"Did you not promise me," he whispered, "that before the dawn of another day I should take a living body in my arms and know that it is animated by your soul? Your prophecy has come true and I thank God for it!"
Very gently he lowered the delicate form among the pillows and with a reverent touch placed the hand that he had caressed, within the clasp of its fellow; then he turned and began to pace the shadowy chamber in a state of uncontrollable excitement.
"She warned me," he murmured, "that consequences would arise over which she should have no control; warned me that I should have to confront them. I assured her that I was not only ready, but eager to accept the chances. What was my conviction at that moment compared with the overwhelming conviction that commands me now? Then she was intangible, invisible even,—a spirit; now she is in the flesh and has addressed me with lips of flesh! Be the consequences what they may, this body which has served her soul with the means of reincarnation shall belong to me, as wholly and entirely as her soul, which is mine to all eternity!"
"You do not love that body," whispered the spectral Mentor; "beautiful as in itself it is, it possesses no attraction for you."
"By degrees I shall learn to cherish it," was the undaunted reply; "shortly I shall love it as being her abode."
Argument was out of the question in his existing condition of mental exultation; not that he had quite lost his grip upon himself, since some semblance of common-sense had borne ecstatic fancy company in her flight to the lofty pinnacle upon which she now poised, as his next more material thought gives evidence. He had reached the fire-place in his nervous perambulation and had paused upon the hearth, mechanically setting his gaze upon the smouldering embers.
"I would to heaven," he muttered, "that Paula's spirit had returned to me in any other guise than this! I shudder before the complication that looms upon the near horizon, and yet in what am I to be blamed for what of necessity must transpire in the immediate future? How can I be expected, in the very nature of things, to be able to explain to Drummond the reason that he should cease to cherish his love and relinquish all to me? Would he not consider me hopelessly insane were I to lay before him the reason for my determined action, expose a scheme which even in my eyes seems unparalleled in the history of man? No, no! I am convinced that so occult a compact must remain an inviolable secret between the Infinite and me. I feel myself to be but a mere factor in some great covenant, an instrument, a simple means tending towards an end of which I am in ignorance."
The smouldering embers fell together upon the hearth, emitting one expiring lance of flame, illumining his pallid features grown tense and rigid with resolution.
"I may be forced to dissimulation, even to deceit," he concluded, turning away from the dazzling gleam, "in order to effect my purpose. Already, as it were unconsciously, have I prepared Mrs. Effingham for possible catastrophes. I have told her that her daughter will recover, but in the same breath I warned her that I feared for her mental condition. Why I so warned her, heaven only knows. So far as I know at present that utterance was a lie, a base, ignoble fabrication; but it came unbidden to my lips, and who shall say that it came not at the instigation of some mysterious power beyond and above me? Who shall deny that, since I have ceased to be the man I was, some species of clairvoyant skill has descended upon me as the natural concomitant of the atmosphere of unreality that henceforth I shall breathe?"