Page:The Dead Man's Tale.pdf/7

 which was what I desired most to prevent.

I could not play the Mr. Hvde to his Dr. Jekyll if Louis maintained his normal virility.

Velma's fears, too, I knew were growing more acute. As insistently as she could, without betraying too openly her alarm, she pressed him to give up the bank position and seek work in the open air—work that would prove less devitalizing to a person of his peculiar temperament.

One of the results of debility from overwork is, apparently, that it deprives the victim of his initiative, makes him fearful of giving up his hold upon the meager means of sustenance that he has. lest he shall be unable to grasp another. Louis was in debt, earning scarcely enough for their living expenses, too proud to let Velmna help as she longed to do, his game leg putting him at a disadvantage in the industrial field. In fact, he was in just the predicament I desired, but I knew that in time her wishes would prevail.

The circumstance, however, that deprived me of all hope of completely usurping his place was this: I could not, for any length of time, face the gaze of Velma's eyes. The personified truth, the purity that dwelt in them, seemed to dissolve my power, to beat me back into the secondary relationship I had come to occupy toward Louis.

He was sometimes tempted to tell her, "You give me my one grip on sanity."

I have witnessed his panic at the thought of losing her, at the thought that some day she might give him up in disgust at his aberrations, and abandon him to the formless "thin9* that haunted him.

Curious—to be of the world and yet not of it—to enjoy a perspective that reveals the hidden side of effects, which seem so mysterious from the material side of the veil. But I would gladly have given all the advantages of my disembodied state for one hour of flesh-and-blood companionship with Velma.

My alternative plan was this.

If I could not enter her worid, what was to prevent me from bringing Velma into mine?

VI.

DARING? To be sure.

Unversed as I was in the laws that govern this mystery of passing from the physical into another state of existence, I could only hope that the plan would work. It might—and that was enough for me. I took a gambler's chance. By risking all,I might gain all—might gain—

The thought of what I might gain transported me to a heaven of pain and ecstasy.

Velma and I—in a world apart—a world of our own—free from the sordid trammels that mar the perfection of the rosiest earth-existence. Velma and I—together through all eternity!

This much reason I had for hoping! I observed that other persons passed through the change called death, and that some entered a state of being in which I was conscious of them and they of me. Uninteresting creatures they were, almost wholly preoccupied with their former earth-interests; but they were as much in the world as I had been in the world of Velma and Louis before that fragment of shrapnel ruled me out of the game.

A few, it was true, on passing from their physical habitations, seemed to emerge into a sphere to which I could not follow. This troubled me. Velma might do likewise. Yet I refused to admit the probability—refused to consider the possible failure of my plan. The very intensity of my longing would draw her to me.

The gulf that separated us was spanned by the grave. Once Velma had crossed to my side of the abyss, there would be no going back to Louis.

Yet I was cunning. She must not come to me with overpowering regrets that would cause her to hover about Louis as I now hovered about her. If I could inspire her with horror and loathing for him—ah! if I only could I!

As a preliminary step, I must induce Louis to buy the instrument with which