"How long will this dreadful trance last ?" inquired her Ladyship.

"Impossible to say. She may recover in a week; she may be cataleptic for a year. The great point is, that she should never for a moment be left alone."

"You will come often, Doctor Tachbrook," said her Ladyship.

He kept his promise. The trance lasted only five days. It terminated, by a fortunate accident, during one of the Doctor's visits. He was alone with his patient, watching with the curiosity of a physicist the unchanged, unlighted colour of her wide open eyes. Suddenly, as he was gazing upon them, he fancied that a scintilla of violet light came from their pupils.

"She is coming back," he thought, and prepared for her the magic draught.

He was right. He continued looking into her eyes, and it seemed to him as if they exerted upon his a strange magnetic power. He was aware that she claimed to possess this power, at that time new and startling, though old, at least, as the Pyramids; and,

though by nature and profession incredulous, he could not help feeling that there was some strange attraction in this young woman's eyes.

The violet scintilla grew to a definite flame of light. The eye began to live. A look of recognition gradually grew there. Sobieska shuddered and moved. The Doctor brought the glass to her lips, and she drank a little.

"Yes, I knew you would be here," she began to say, speaking slowly and painfully; "I saw you from the window of papa's palace." "You must not talk now," said the Doctor, or you will tire yourself. Drink a little and rest."

"or

She obeyed. After a while, however, she grew restless, and said to the Doctor"How long have I been away?" "Five days," he said.

Yes; that is what I reckoned. I have been to see papa, who is in some other world. He has a lovely palace there, and a great park with deer, where he hunts, and a gallery of pictures of all the famous things he did in this world. There is one by Rembrandt of his cutting down an officer who insulted a lady

that was taken prisoner. It is such a delightful place! From its windows you can see the earth-for they are made of telescopic glass, so that the most distant things seem close by. I saw you quite clearly sitting in this room, and looking at what you thought was me, though it was merely my body. Papa pointed you out to me, and I knew you at once."

Doctor Tachbrook listened, with a kind of belief that the young lady could not yet have gathered up her scattered senses. Her next

remark made him feel certain thereon.

Fancy what papa said! He said, 'You will marry that learned physician.' How would you like such a fate, Doctor Tachbrook ?"

CHAPTER II.

A STRANGE STORY,

"She is a woman, therefore may be won."

It will be evident to persons of discernment that our singular Polish maiden was not quite restored to her normal condition, and wholly awakened from her trance, at the time when she informed her sage medical adviser that it was her fate to marry him, and consequently his to marry her.

Although she possessed the mystic constitution of the Delphic sybil, she did not lack the modesty of the ordinary maid.

When she was thoroughly awakened to the material everyday world, she did not remember that she had made love in an unusual manner to Doctor Tachbrook whilst on the way to earth and in the portal of the Chamber of Dreams.

h

There is a curious fact which we ought to note with reference to abnormal states of being. A man when drunk has been proved to remember circumstances which occurred in a previous state of inebriation, while in his sober condition he had been utterly unable to recall them. His drunken memory is tenacious only of his drunken actions; when sober he remembers clearly only what he did while sober.

Sobieska Chlopicki, though her eyes never wholly lost the mysterious magnetism which was their birthright, yet returned absolutely from her dreamland to her old life.

Doctor Tachbrook did not become quite restored to the serene plane of existence upon which he had formerly stood.

He was a man with a considerable taste for mystery, though he possessed a keen clear brain which allowed it to be obfuscated by no hallucinatory cobwebs. The medical profession, in however materialistic and incredulous armour it may fence itself, nevertheless, is not quite blind to the occult influences of which sometimes a glimmering is vouchsafed to the student. However much in outward art the

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