is a sacred right God has given to every woman who is born, a right that not even God Himself can take away from her, I mean the right to—”

A muffled scream interrupted her, a quick catching of the breath by a stout lady, a newcomer, who was seated on a divan, I should have judged this woman to be a rather commonplace person except that her deeply sunken eyes seemed to carry a far away expression as if she saw things that were invisible to others. Now her eyes were fixed on Penelope.

“Oh, the beautiful scarlet light!” she murmured. “There! Don't you see—moving down her arm? And another one—on her shoulder! Scarlet lights! My poor child! My poor child!”

Ordinarily we would have laughed at this, for, of course, we saw no scarlet lights, but somehow now we did not laugh. On the contrary we fell into hushed and wondering attention, and, turning to Roberta, we learned that this was Seraphine, a trance medium who had given séances for years to scientists and occult investigators, and was now assisting Dr. W——, of the American Occult Society.

“A séance! Magnificent! Let us have a séance!” whispered the poet. “Tell us, madam, can you really lift the veil of the future?”

But already Seraphine had settled back on the divan and I saw that her eyes had closed and her breathing was quieter, although her body was shaken from time to time by little tremors as if she were recovering from some great agitation. We watched her wonderingly, and presently she began to speak, at first slowly and painfully, then in her natural tone. Her message was so brief, so startling in its purport that there can be no question of any error in this record.

“Penelope will—cross the ocean,” Seraphine began dreamily. “Her husband will die—very soon. There will be war—soon. She will go to the war and will have honors conferred upon her—on the battlefield. She will—she will,”—the medium's face changed startlingly to a mask of anguish and her bosom heaved. “Oh, my poor child! I see you—I see you going down to—to horror—to terror—Ah!”

She cried out in fright and stopped speaking; then, after a moment of dazed effort, she came back to reality and looked at us as before out of her sunken eyes, a plump little kindly faced woman resting against a blue pillow.

CHAPTER I

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(January, 1919)

VOICES

Penelope moved nervously in her chair, evidently very much troubled about something as she waited in the doctor's office. Her two years in France had added a touch of mystery to her strange beauty. Her eyes were more veiled in their burning, as if she had glimpsed something that had frightened her; yet they were eyes that, even unintentionally, carried a message to men, an alluring, appealing message to men. With her red mouth, her fascinatingly unsymmetrical mouth, and her sinuous body Penelope Wells at thirty-three was the kind of woman men look at twice and remember. She was dressed in black.

When Dr. William Owen entered the front room of his Ninth Street office he greeted her with the rough kindliness that a big man in his profession, a big-hearted man, shows to a young woman whose case interests him and whose personality is attractive.

“I got your note, Mrs. Wells,” he began, “and I had a letter about you from my young friend, Captain Herrick. I needn't say that I had already read about your bravery in the newspapers. The whole country has been sounding your praises. When did you get back to New York?”

“About a week ago, doctor. I came on a troop ship with several other nurses. I—I wish I had never come.”

There was a note of pathetic, ominous sadness in her voice. Even in his first study of this lovely face, the doctor's experienced eye told him that here was a case of complicated nervous breakdown. He wondered if she could have had a slight touch of shell shock. What a ghastly thing for a high spirited, sensitive young woman to be out on those battle fields in France!

“You mustn't say that, Mrs. Wells. We are all very proud of you. Think of having the croix de guerre pinned on your dress by the commanding general before a whole regiment! Pretty fine for an American woman!”

Penelope Wells sat quite still, playing with the flexible serpent ring on her thumb, and looked at the doctor out of her wonderful deep eyes that seemed to burn with a mysterious fire. Could there be something Oriental about her—or—or Indian, the physician wondered.

“Doctor,” she said, in a low tone, “I have come to tell you the truth about myself, and the truth is that I deserve no credit for what I did that day, because I—I did not want to live. I wanted them to kill me, I took every chance so that they would kill me; but God willed it differently, the shells and bullets swept all around me, cut through my dress, through my hair, but did not harm me.”

“Tell me a little more about it, just quietly. How did you happen to go out there? Was it because you heard that Captain Herrick was wounded? That's the way the papers cabled the story. Was that true?” Then, seeing her face darken, he added: “Perhaps I ought not to ask that question?”

“Oh, yes, I want you to. I want you to know everything about me—everything. That's why I am here. Captain Herrick says you are a great specialist in nervous troubles, and I have a feeling that unless you can help me nobody can.”

“Well, I have helped some people who felt pretty blue about life—perhaps I can help you. Now, then, what is the immediate trouble? Any aches or pains? I must say you seem to be in splendid health,” he smiled at her with cheery admiration.

“It isn't my body. I have no physical suffering. I eat well enough, I sleep well, except—my dreams. I have horrible, torturing dreams, doctor. I'm afraid to go to sleep. I have the same dreams over and over again, especially two dreams that haunt me.”

“How long have you had these dreams?”

“Ever since I went out that dreadful day from Montidier—when the Germans almost broke through. They told me Captain Herrick was lying there helpless, out beyond our lines. So I went to him. I don't know how I got there, but—I found him. He was wounded in the thigh and a German beast was standing over him when I came up. He was going to run him through with a bayonet. And somehow, I—I don't know how I did it, but I caught up a pistol from a dead soldier and I shot the German.”

“Good Lord! You don't say! They didn't have that in the papers! What a woman! No wonder you've had bad dreams!”

Penelope passed a slender hand over her eyes as if to brush away evil memories, then she said wearily: “It isn't that, they are not ordinary dreams.”

“Well, what kind of dreams are they? You say there are two dreams?”

“There are two that I have had over and over