“I can see no reason.  But—­”

“Tut, tut.”

For already this whispered conversation had elicited a look like a stab from a lady before them.

Ernest held fast to the edge of a chair.  He must cling to some reality, or else drift rudderless in a dim sea of vague apprehensions.

Or was Jack right?

Was his mind giving way?  No!  No!  No!  There must be a monstrous secret somewhere, but what matter?  Did anything matter?  He had called on his mate like a ship lost in the fog.  For the first time he had not responded.  He had not understood.  The bitterness of tears rose to the boy’s eyes.

Above it all, melodiously, ebbed and flowed the rich accents of Reginald
Clarke.

Ernest listened to the words of his own play coming from the older man’s mouth.  The horrible fascination of the scene held him entranced.  He saw the creations of his mind pass in review before him, as a man might look upon the face of his double grinning at him from behind a door in the hideous hours of night.

They were all there!  The mad king.  The subtle-witted courtiers.  The sombre-hearted Prince.  The Queen-Mother who had loved a jester better than her royal mate, and the fruit of their shameful alliance, the Princess Marigold, a creature woven of sunshine and sin.

Swiftly the action progressed.  Shadows of impending death darkened the house of the King.  In the horrible agony of the rack the old jester confessed.  Stripped of his cap and bells, crowned with a wreath of blood, he looked so pathetically funny that the Princess Marigold could not help laughing between her tears.

The Queen stood there all trembling and pale.  Without a complaint she saw her lover die.  The executioner’s sword smote the old man’s head straight from the trunk.  It rolled at the feet of the King, who tossed it to Marigold.  The little Princess kissed it and covered the grinning horror with her yellow veil.

The last words died away.

There was no applause.  Only silence.  All were stricken with the dread that men feel in the house of God or His awful presence in genius.

But the boy lay back in his chair.  The cold sweat had gathered on his brow and his temples throbbed.  Nature had mercifully clogged his head with blood.  The rush of it drowned the crying voice of the nerves, deadening for a while both consciousness and pain.

XII

Somehow the night had passed—­somehow in bitterness, in anguish.  But it had passed.

Ernest’s lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted Reginald in the studio.

Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in his most characteristic pose, supporting his head with his hand and looking with clear piercing eyes searchingly at the boy.

“Yes,” he observed, “it’s a most curious psychical phenomenon.”