"Good-by, Rosa," I whispered. "I'm beaten, but my love has not been
conquered."
The next thing I remembered was the paleness of the dawn at the
window. The apparition had vanished for that night, and I was alive.
But I knew that I had touched the skirts of death; I knew that after
another such night I should die.
The morning chocolate arrived, and by force of habit I consumed it. I
felt no interest in any earthly thing; my sole sensation was a dread
of the coming night, which all too soon would be upon me. For several
hours I sat, pale and nerveless, in my room, despising myself for a
weakness and a fear which I could not possibly avoid. I was no longer
my own master; I was the slave, the shrinking chattel of a ghost, and
the thought of my condition was a degradation unspeakable.
During the afternoon a ray of hope flashed upon me. Mrs. Sullivan
Smith was at the Hôtel du Rhin, so Rosa had said; I would call on
her. I remembered her strange demeanor to me on the occasion of our
first meeting, and afterwards at the reception. It seemed clear to me
now that she must have known something. Perhaps she might help me.
I found her in a garish apartment too full of Louis Philippe
furniture, robed in a crimson tea-gown, and apparently doing nothing
whatever. She had the calm quiescence of a Spanish woman. Yet when she
saw me her eyes burned with a sudden dark excitement.
"Carl," she said, with the most staggering abruptness, "you are
dying."
"How do you know?" I said morosely. "Do I look it?"
"Yet the crystal warned you!" she returned, with apparent but not real
inconsequence.
"I want you to tell me," I said eagerly, and with no further pretence.
"You must have known something then, when you made me look in the
crystal. What did you know--and how?"
She sat a moment in thought, stately, half-languid, mysterious.
"First," she said, "let me hear all that has happened. Then I will
tell you."
"Is Sullivan about?" I asked. I felt that if I was to speak I must not
be interrupted by that good-natured worldling.
"Sullivan," she said a little scornfully, with gentle contempt, "is
learning French billiards. You are perfectly safe." She understood.
Then I told her without the least reservation all that had happened to
me, and especially my experiences of the previous night. When I had
finished she looked at me with her large sombre eyes, which were full
of pity, but not of hope. I waited for her words.
"Now, listen," she said. "You shall hear. I was with Lord Clarenceux
when he died."
"You!" I exclaimed. "In Vienna! But even Rosa was not with him. How--"