THE LADY IN FETTERS
will of man is sometimes as strong as that, eh? I don't know. But I did not feel repentant. My conscience was clear. And I lived calmly on until the next Spring. But then my mind grew disturbed, and the clearer became the nights the worse it was with me. My distress increased more and more. At last, on the anniversary of his death, he suddenly came to me and spent many hours torturing me as he had done in life."
"Ah-ha, he came!" said Kragaef, with sudden malice.
"Of course you understand," said Mme Omejina, "that it was not the deceased come from his grave. He was too well brought up and too much of a townsman for such a fraud as that. He knew how to arrange it differently. He took possession of the will and spirit of a man who, like yourself, came to me that night and tortured me long and cruelly. And when he went away and left me powerless from suffering, I wept as if I had been a ruined girl. But my soul was calm, and I did not think of him again until the following year. But every year when the white nights come on I am tormented with distress, and on the night of his death my torturer comes to me."
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