And then, sounding across this sea of mental confusion like a bell through a fog, came the voice of John Silence bringing me back to a consciousness of the reality of it all—­

“Sangree—­in his Double!”

And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly saw that it was indeed the face of the Canadian, but his face turned animal, yet mingled with the brute expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul seen sometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog,—­the face of an animal shot with vivid streaks of the human.

The doctor called to him softly under his breath—­

“Sangree!  Sangree, you poor afflicted creature!  Do you know me?  Can you understand what it is you’re doing in your ’Body of Desire’?”

For the first time since its appearance the creature moved.  Its ears twitched and it shifted the weight of its body on to the hind legs.  Then, lifting its head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long jaws and gave vent to a dismal and prolonged howling.

But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the breath caught and strangled in my throat and it seemed that my heart missed a beat; for, though the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time entirely human.  But, more than that, it was the cry I had so often heard in the Western States of America where the Indians still fight and hunt and struggle—­it was the cry of the Redskin!

“The Indian blood!” whispered John Silence, when I caught his arm for support; “the ancestral cry.”

And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken human voice, mingling with the savage howl of the brute beast, pierced straight to my very heart and touched there something that no music, no voice, passionate or tender, of man, woman or child has ever stirred before or since for one second into life.  It echoed away among the fog and the trees and lost itself somewhere out over the hidden sea.  And some part of myself—­something that was far more than the mere act of intense listening—­went out with it, and for several minutes I lost consciousness of my surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the pain of another stricken fellow-creature.

Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to myself.

“Hark!” he said aloud.  “Hark!”

His tone galvanised me afresh.  We stood listening side by side.

Far across the island, faintly sounding through the trees and brushwood, came a similar, answering cry.  Shrill, yet wonderfully musical, shaking the heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies description, we heard it rise and fall upon the night air.

“It’s across the lagoon,” Dr. Silence cried, but this time in full tones that paid no tribute to caution.  “It’s Joan!  She’s answering him!”

Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that same instant the animal lowered its head, and, muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canter that took it off into the mist and out of our sight like a thing of wind and vision.