Au revoir!" and with a kind parting gesture, he left me.
I watched his stately figure disappear in the shadow of the passage leading to his own study, and then I hastened to Zara's room.

The musical episode in the chapel had certainly startled me, and the words of Heliobas were full of mysterious meaning; but, strange to say, I was in no way rendered anxious or alarmed by the prospect I had before me of being "lifted up," as my physician had expressed it.

I thought of Raffaello Cellini and his history, and I determined within myself that no cowardly hesitation or fear should prevent me from making the attempt to see what he professed to have seen.

I found Zara reading.
She looked up as I entered, and greeted me with her usual bright smile.
"You have had a long practice," she began; "I thought you were never coming." I sat down beside her, and related at once all that had happened to me that afternoon.

Zara listened with deep and almost breathless interest.
"You are quite resolved," she said, when I had concluded, "to let Casimir exert his force upon you ?" "I am quite resolved," I answered.
"And you have no fear ?" "None that I am just now conscious of." Zara's eyes became darker and deeper in the gravity of her intense meditation.