Hilda
looked at Rex, wondering what the real nature of the strange man might
be, pleased by what he had said and yet surprised that he should have
said so much. Rex met her fixed gaze and turned his head away
instantly. Greif took a fresh glass. 'Your health, my dear Rex,' he
said. He always called him Rex from old habit.
'Your health, dear cousin Horst!' exclaimed Hilda.
Rex started, and took the beaker nearest to him.
'I drink to Hilda's mother,' he said in an odd voice. He looked towards
Frau von Sigmundskron, but in her place there seemed to sit another
woman, one so like Hilda's self that no human eye could have detected a
point in which the one did not resemble the other. He raised the glass
to his lips. It was empty, and his lips met only the air.
'Fill before drinking!' laughed Greif.
Rex's hand trembled, as he set down the goblet. The mistake was
rectified in an instant and Rex drank the baroness's health. This time
as he looked at her, he saw her white hair and delicate thin face in
all their reality. The shadow was gone. He had pledged its emptiness in
an empty glass.
That night his light burned late, and the owls, if they had looked,
might have seen his shadow pass and repass many hundreds of times
behind the curtain of the open window. Hour after hour he paced his
lonely room, asking himself the meaning of what was happening in his
brain. It seemed to him that he was suffering from an extraordinary
hallucination, which he had indulged until it had taken possession of
his whole being.
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