As he strode back and forth his foot struck something. He bent and
picked up the object. It was a grey mask with a long curtain. He
carried it to the candle-light and inspected it. A grey mask: what was
such a thing doing in Quebec? There were no masks in Quebec save those
which nature herself gave to man, that ever-changing mask called the
human face. A grey mask: what did it recall to him? Ah! Like a bar
of light the memory of it returned to him. The mysterious woman of the
Corne d'Abondance! But this mask could not be hers, since she was by
now in Spain. With a movement almost unconscious he held the silken
fabric close to his face and inhaled . . . vervain!

"Monsieur," said a soft but thrilling voice from the doorway, "will you
return to me my mask, which I dropped in this room a few moments ago?"

As he raised his head the woman stopped, transfixed.

"Diane?" leaped from the Chevalier's lips. He caught the back of a
chair to steady himself. He was mad, he knew he was mad; it had come
at last, this loosing of reason.




CHAPTER XIX

A PAGE FROM MYTHOLOGY BY THE WAY AND A LETTER

A man's brain can accept only so many blows or surprises at one time;
after that he becomes dazed, incapable of lucid thought. At this
moment it seemed to the Chevalier that he was passing through some