Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/185

 “Don’t you know me?” asked the voice. “I want you to understand, old fellow, that I still live.”

“Maurice?” I gasped.

“Yes, Maurice.”

“For Heaven’s sake”

“No. Not for heaven’s sake, for your sake! It is an awful bother for me to do this, but I am partly selfish in it,  and Mirrikh is helping me out. I want to say two things to you, George, and I want you to understand that it is  Maurice De Veber, and no one else, who talks to you—do  you hear?”

“Say on! I hear, but I think I’m going mad!”

“Mad! Not a bit of it! You are the same clear headed fellow you always were; you are simply dealing with forces  and conditions which you don’t understand—that is all.”

“And you?”

“I am right here with you.”

“I cannot believe it.”

“Believe it or not it is a fact, George; but no more. I cannot hold this medium any longer without injuring her. What I want to say is this: Watch my body, for as sure as there is a God in heaven I shall return to you. Beware of the Doctor. He will play you false.”

“Maurice! “Maurice!” I cried. “You have my promise. So long as your body remains as it is, so long will I guard it. Maurice! Speak again! Tell me”

I stopped abruptly.

Again the shudder passed over Walla; her eyes opened; she stood there blinking stupidly.

“What—what is the matter?” she gasped. “What have you been doing to me, Mr. Wylde?”

, dong! Ding, dong! Ding, dong!

The lamasery bell was tolling—tolling the funeral knell of a shrine which for all I know stood as we see it now in  the day’s of Gladstone’s Juventus Mundi; for the world  when young in Europe was very old in Asia. God alone