ceptible to affect the memory:—I suddenly remembered the balcony overhanging the African wildness of the garden, the strange vines that clung with webbed feet to the ruined wall, and the peculiar, heavy, sickly, somnolent smell of the spotted blossoms!—And as I leaned over the patient, I became aware of another perfume in the room, a perfume that impregnated the pillow,—the odor of a woman's hair, the incense of a woman's youth mingling with the phantoms of the flowers, as ambrosia with venom, life with death, a breath from paradise with an exhalation from hell. From the bloodless lips of the sufferer, as from the mouth of one oppressed by some hideous dream, escaped the name of the witch's daughter. And suddenly the house shuddered through all its framework, as if under the weight of invisible blows:—a mighty shaking of walls and windows—the storm knocking at the door.
*
* *
I found myself alone with her; the moans of the dying could not be shut out; and the storm knocked louder and more loudly, de-
