The Magician: Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Susie could not persuade herself that Haddo's regret was sincere. The
humility of it aroused her suspicion. She could not get out of her mind
the ugly slyness of that smile which succeeded on his face the first
passionate look of deadly hatred. Her fancy suggested various dark means
whereby Oliver Haddo might take vengeance on his enemy, and she was at
pains to warn Arthur. But he only laughed.

'The man's a funk,' he said. 'Do you think if he'd had anything in him at
all he would have let me kick him without trying to defend himself?'

Haddo's cowardice increased the disgust with which Arthur regarded him.
He was amused by Susie's trepidation.

'What on earth do you suppose he can do? He can't drop a brickbat on my
head. If he shoots me he'll get his head cut off, and he won't be such an
ass as to risk that!'

Margaret was glad that the incident had relieved them of Oliver's
society. She met him in the street a couple of days later, and since
he took off his hat in the French fashion without waiting for her to
acknowledge him, she was able to make her cut more pointed.

She began to discuss with Arthur the date of their marriage. It seemed
to her that she had got out of Paris all it could give her, and she
wished to begin a new life. Her love for Arthur appeared on a sudden
more urgent, and she was filled with delight at the thought of the
happiness she would give him.

A day or two later Susie received a telegram. It ran as follows:

Please meet me at the Gare du Nord, 2:40.

Nancy Clerk

It was an old friend, who was apparently arriving in Paris that
afternoon. A photograph of her, with a bold signature, stood on the
chimney-piece, and Susie gave it an inquisitive glance. She had not seen
Nancy for so long that it surprised her to receive this urgent message.

'What a bore it is!' she said. 'I suppose I must go.'

They meant to have tea on the other side of the river, but the journey to
the station was so long that it would not be worth Susie's while to come
back in the interval; and they arranged therefore to meet at the house to
which they were invited. Susie started a little before two.

Margaret had a class that afternoon and set out two or three minutes
later. As she walked through the courtyard she started nervously, for
Oliver Haddo passed slowly by. He did not seem to see her. Suddenly he
stopped, put his hand to his heart, and fell heavily to the ground. The
_concierge_, the only person at hand, ran forward with a cry. She knelt
down and, looking round with terror, caught sight of Margaret.

'_Oh, mademoiselle, venez vite!_' she cried.

Margaret was obliged to go. Her heart beat horribly. She looked down at
Oliver, and he seemed to be dead. She forgot that she loathed him.
Instinctively she knelt down by his side and loosened his collar. He
opened his eyes. An expression of terrible anguish came into his face.

'For the love of God, take me in for one moment,' he sobbed. 'I shall die
in the street.'

Her heart was moved towards him. He could not go into the poky den,
evil-smelling and airless, of the _concierge_. But with her help Margaret
raised him to his feet, and together they brought him to the studio. He
sank painfully into a chair.

'Shall I fetch you some water?' asked Margaret.

'Can you get a pastille out of my pocket?'

He swallowed a white tabloid, which she took out of a case attached to
his watch-chain.

'I'm very sorry to cause you this trouble,' he gasped. 'I suffer from a
disease of the heart, and sometimes I am very near death.'

'I'm glad that I was able to help you,' she said.

He seemed able to breathe more easily. She left him to himself for a
while, so that he might regain his strength. She took up a book and began
to read. Presently, without moving from his chair, he spoke.

'You must hate me for intruding on you.'

His voice was stronger, and her pity waned as he seemed to recover. She
answered with freezing indifference.

'I couldn't do any less for you than I did. I would have brought a dog
into my room if it seemed hurt.'

'I see that you wish me to go.'

He got up and moved towards the door, but he staggered and with a groan
tumbled to his knees. Margaret sprang forward to help him. She reproached
herself bitterly for those scornful words. The man had barely escaped
death, and she was merciless.

'Oh, please stay as long as you like,' she cried. 'I'm sorry, I didn't
mean to hurt you.'

He dragged himself with difficulty back to the chair, and she,
conscience-stricken, stood over him helplessly. She poured out a
glass of water, but he motioned it away as though he would not be
beholden to her even for that.

'Is there nothing I can do for you at all?' she exclaimed, painfully.

'Nothing, except allow me to sit in this chair,' he gasped.

'I hope you'll remain as long as you choose.'

He did not reply. She sat down again and pretended to read. In a little
while he began to speak. His voice reached her as if from a long way off.

'Will you never forgive me for what I did the other day?'

She answered without looking at him, her back still turned.

'Can it matter to you if I forgive or not?'

'You have not pity. I told you then how sorry I was that a sudden
uncontrollable pain drove me to do a thing which immediately I bitterly
regretted. Don't you think it must have been hard for me, under the
actual circumstances, to confess my fault?'

'I wish you not to speak of it. I don't want to think of that horrible
scene.'

'If you knew how lonely I was and how unhappy, you would have a little
mercy.'

His voice was strangely moved. She could not doubt now that he was
sincere.

'You think me a charlatan because I aim at things that are unknown to
you. You won't try to understand. You won't give me any credit for
striving with all my soul to a very great end.'

She made no reply, and for a time there was silence. His voice was
different now and curiously seductive.

'You look upon me with disgust and scorn. You almost persuaded yourself
to let me die in the street rather than stretch out to me a helping hand.
And if you hadn't been merciful then, almost against your will, I should
have died.'

'It can make no difference to you how I regard you,' she whispered.

She did not know why his soft, low tones mysteriously wrung her
heartstrings. Her pulse began to beat more quickly.

'It makes all the difference in the world. It is horrible to think of
your contempt. I feel your goodness and your purity. I can hardly bear my
own unworthiness. You turn your eyes away from me as though I were
unclean.'

She turned her chair a little and looked at him. She was astonished at
the change in his appearance. His hideous obesity seemed no longer
repellent, for his eyes wore a new expression; they were incredibly
tender now, and they were moist with tears. His mouth was tortured by a
passionate distress. Margaret had never seen so much unhappiness on a
man's face, and an overwhelming remorse seized her.

'I don't want to be unkind to you,' she said.

'I will go. That is how I can best repay you for what you have done.'

The words were so bitter, so humiliated, that the colour rose to her
cheeks.

'I ask you to stay. But let us talk of other things.'

For a moment he kept silence. He seemed no longer to see Margaret, and
she watched him thoughtfully. His eyes rested on a print of _La Gioconda_
which hung on the wall. Suddenly he began to speak. He recited the
honeyed words with which Walter Pater expressed his admiration for that
consummate picture.

'Hers is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come, and the
eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon
the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and
fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one
of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how
would they be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its
maladies has passed. All the thoughts and experience of the world have
etched and moulded there, in that which they have of power to refine and
make expressive the outward form, the animalism of Greece, the lust of
Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages, with its spiritual ambition and
imaginative loves, the return of the Pagan world, the sins of the
Borgias.'

His voice, poignant and musical, blended with the suave music of the
words so that Margaret felt she had never before known their divine
significance. She was intoxicated with their beauty. She wished him to
continue, but had not the strength to speak. As if he guessed her
thought, he went on, and now his voice had a richness in it as of an
organ heard afar off. It was like an overwhelming fragrance and she could
hardly bear it.

'She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she
has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has
been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and
trafficked for strange evils with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was
the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and
all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives
only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments,
and tinged the eyelids and the hands.'

Oliver Haddo began then to speak of Leonardo da Vinci, mingling with his
own fantasies the perfect words of that essay which, so wonderful was his
memory, he seemed to know by heart. He found exotic fancies in the
likeness between Saint John the Baptist, with his soft flesh and waving
hair, and Bacchus, with his ambiguous smile. Seen through his eyes, the
seashore in the Saint Anne had the airless lethargy of some damasked
chapel in a Spanish nunnery, and over the landscapes brooded a wan spirit
of evil that was very troubling. He loved the mysterious pictures in
which the painter had sought to express something beyond the limits of
painting, something of unsatisfied desire and of longing for unhuman
passions. Oliver Haddo found this quality in unlikely places, and his
words gave a new meaning to paintings that Margaret had passed
thoughtlessly by. There was the portrait of a statuary by Bronzino in the
Long Gallery of the Louvre. The features were rather large, the face
rather broad. The expression was sombre, almost surly in the repose of
the painted canvas, and the eyes were brown, almond-shaped like those of
an Oriental; the red lips were exquisitely modelled, and the sensuality
was curiously disturbing; the dark, chestnut hair, cut short, curled over
the head with an infinite grace. The skin was like ivory softened with a
delicate carmine. There was in that beautiful countenance more than
beauty, for what most fascinated the observer was a supreme and
disdainful indifference to the passion of others. It was a vicious face,
except that beauty could never be quite vicious; it was a cruel face,
except that indolence could never be quite cruel. It was a face that
haunted you, and yet your admiration was alloyed with an unreasoning
terror. The hands were nervous and adroit, with long fashioning fingers;
and you felt that at their touch the clay almost moulded itself into
gracious forms. With Haddo's subtle words the character of that man rose
before her, cruel yet indifferent, indolent and passionate, cold yet
sensual; unnatural secrets dwelt in his mind, and mysterious crimes, and
a lust for the knowledge that was arcane. Oliver Haddo was attracted by
all that was unusual, deformed, and monstrous, by the pictures that
represented the hideousness of man or that reminded you of his mortality.
He summoned before Margaret the whole array of Ribera's ghoulish dwarfs,
with their cunning smile, the insane light of their eyes, and their
malice: he dwelt with a horrible fascination upon their malformations,
the humped backs, the club feet, the hydrocephalic heads. He described
the picture by Valdes Leal, in a certain place at Seville, which
represents a priest at the altar; and the altar is sumptuous with gilt
and florid carving. He wears a magnificent cope and a surplice of
exquisite lace, but he wears them as though their weight was more than he
could bear; and in the meagre trembling hands, and in the white, ashen
face, in the dark hollowness of the eyes, there is a bodily corruption
that is terrifying. He seems to hold together with difficulty the bonds
of the flesh, but with no eager yearning of the soul to burst its prison,
only with despair; it is as if the Lord Almighty had forsaken him and the
high heavens were empty of their solace. All the beauty of life appears
forgotten, and there is nothing in the world but decay. A ghastly
putrefaction has attacked already the living man; the worms of the grave,
the piteous horror of mortality, and the darkness before him offer naught
but fear. Beyond, dark night is seen and a turbulent sea, the dark night
of the soul of which the mystics write, and the troublous sea of life
whereon there is no refuge for the weary and the sick at heart.

Then, as if in pursuance of a definite plan, he analysed with a
searching, vehement intensity the curious talent of the modern Frenchman,
Gustave Moreau. Margaret had lately visited the Luxembourg, and his
pictures were fresh in her memory. She had found in them little save a
decorative arrangement marred by faulty drawing; but Oliver Haddo gave
them at once a new, esoteric import. Those effects as of a Florentine
jewel, the clustered colours, emerald and ruby, the deep blue of
sapphires, the atmosphere of scented chambers, the mystic persons who
seem ever about secret, religious rites, combined in his cunning phrases
to create, as it were, a pattern on her soul of morbid and mysterious
intricacy. Those pictures were filled with a strange sense of sin, and
the mind that contemplated them was burdened with the decadence of Rome
and with the passionate vice of the Renaissance; and it was tortured,
too, by all the introspection of this later day.

Margaret listened, rather breathlessly, with the excitement of an
explorer before whom is spread the plain of an undiscovered continent.
The painters she knew spoke of their art technically, and this
imaginative appreciation was new to her. She was horribly fascinated
by the personality that imbued these elaborate sentences. Haddo's eyes
were fixed upon hers, and she responded to his words like a delicate
instrument made for recording the beatings of the heart. She felt an
extraordinary languor. At last he stopped. Margaret neither moved nor
spoke. She might have been under a spell. It seemed to her that she had
no power in her limbs.

'I want to do something for you in return for what you have done for me,'
he said.

He stood up and went to the piano.

'Sit in this chair,' he said.

She did not dream of disobeying. He began to play. Margaret was hardly
surprised that he played marvellously. Yet it was almost incredible that
those fat, large hands should have such a tenderness of touch. His
fingers caressed the notes with a peculiar suavity, and he drew out of
the piano effects which she had scarcely thought possible. He seemed to
put into the notes a troubling, ambiguous passion, and the instrument had
the tremulous emotion of a human being. It was strange and terrifying.
She was vaguely familiar with the music to which she listened; but there
was in it, under his fingers, an exotic savour that made it harmonious
with all that he had said that afternoon. His memory was indeed
astonishing. He had an infinite tact to know the feeling that occupied
Margaret's heart, and what he chose seemed to be exactly that which at
the moment she imperatively needed. Then he began to play things she did
not know. It was music the like of which she had never heard, barbaric,
with a plaintive weirdness that brought to her fancy the moonlit nights
of desert places, with palm trees mute in the windless air, and tawny
distances. She seemed to know tortuous narrow streets, white houses of
silence with strange moon-shadows, and the glow of yellow light within,
and the tinkling of uncouth instruments, and the acrid scents of Eastern
perfumes. It was like a procession passing through her mind of persons
who were not human, yet existed mysteriously, with a life of vampires.
Mona Lisa and Saint John the Baptist, Bacchus and the mother of Mary,
went with enigmatic motions. But the daughter of Herodias raised her
hands as though, engaged for ever in a mystic rite, to invoke outlandish
gods. Her face was very pale, and her dark eyes were sleepless; the
jewels of her girdle gleamed with sombre fires; and her dress was of
colours that have long been lost. The smile, in which was all the sorrow
of the world and all its wickedness, beheld the wan head of the Saint,
and with a voice that was cold with the coldness of death she murmured
the words of the poet:

'I am amorous of thy body, Iokanaan! Thy body is white like the lilies of
a field that the mower hath never mowed. Thy body is white like the snows
that lie on the mountains of Judea, and come down into the valleys. The
roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia are not so white as thy body.
Neither the roses in the garden of the Queen of Arabia, the garden of
spices of the Queen of Arabia, nor the feet of the dawn when they light
on the leaves, nor the breast of the moon when she lies on the breast of
the sea... There is nothing in the world so white as thy body. Suffer me
to touch thy body.'

Oliver Haddo ceased to play. Neither of them stirred. At last Margaret
sought by an effort to regain her self-control.

'I shall begin to think that you really are a magician,' she said,
lightly.

'I could show you strange things if you cared to see them,' he answered,
again raising his eyes to hers.

'I don't think you will ever get me to believe in occult philosophy,'
she laughed.

'Yet it reigned in Persia with the magi, it endowed India with wonderful
traditions, it civilised Greece to the sounds of Orpheus's lyre.'

He stood before Margaret, towering over her in his huge bulk; and there
was a singular fascination in his gaze. It seemed that he spoke only to
conceal from her that he was putting forth now all the power that was in
him.

'It concealed the first principles of science in the calculations of
Pythagoras. It established empires by its oracles, and at its voice
tyrants grew pale upon their thrones. It governed the minds of some by
curiosity, and others it ruled by fear.'

His voice grew very low, and it was so seductive that Margaret's brain
reeled. The sound of it was overpowering like too sweet a fragrance.

I tell you that for this art nothing is impossible. It commands the
elements, and knows the language of the stars, and directs the planets
in their courses. The moon at its bidding falls blood-red from the sky.
The dead rise up and form into ominous words the night wind that moans
through their skulls. Heaven and Hell are in its province; and all forms,
lovely and hideous; and love and hate. With Circe's wand it can change
men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous
humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who
knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and
immortality by its quintessence.'

Margaret could not hear what he said. A gradual lethargy seized her under
his baleful glance, and she had not even the strength to wish to free
herself. She seemed bound to him already by hidden chains.

'If you have powers, show them,' she whispered, hardly conscious that she
spoke.

Suddenly he released the enormous tension with which he held her. Like a
man who has exerted all his strength to some end, the victory won, he
loosened his muscles, with a faint sigh of exhaustion. Margaret did not
speak, but she knew that something horrible was about to happen. Her
heart beat like a prisoned bird, with helpless flutterings, but it seemed
too late now to draw back. Her words by a mystic influence had settled
something beyond possibility of recall.

On the stove was a small bowl of polished brass in which water was kept
in order to give a certain moisture to the air. Oliver Haddo put his hand
in his pocket and drew out a little silver box. He tapped it, with a
smile, as a man taps a snuff-box, and it opened. He took an infinitesimal
quantity of a blue powder that it contained and threw it on the water in
the brass bowl. Immediately a bright flame sprang up, and Margaret gave a
cry of alarm. Oliver looked at her quickly and motioned her to remain
still. She saw that the water was on fire. It was burning as brilliantly,
as hotly, as if it were common gas; and it burned with the same dry,
hoarse roar. Suddenly it was extinguished. She leaned forward and saw
that the bowl was empty.

The water had been consumed, as though it were straw, and not a drop
remained. She passed her hand absently across her forehead.

'But water cannot burn,' she muttered to herself.

It seemed that Haddo knew what she thought, for he smiled strangely.

'Do you know that nothing more destructive can be invented than this blue
powder, and I have enough to burn up all the water in Paris? Who dreamt
that water might burn like chaff?'

He paused, seeming to forget her presence. He looked thoughtfully at the
little silver box.

'But it can be made only in trivial quantities, at enormous expense and
with exceeding labour; it is so volatile that you cannot keep it for
three days. I have sometimes thought that with a little ingenuity I might
make it more stable, I might so modify it that, like radium, it lost no
strength as it burned; and then I should possess the greatest secret that
has ever been in the mind of man. For there would be no end of it. It
would continue to burn while there was a drop of water on the earth, and
the whole world would be consumed. But it would be a frightful thing to
have in one's hands; for once it were cast upon the waters, the doom of
all that existed would be sealed beyond repeal.'

He took a long breath, and his eyes glittered with a devilish ardour. His
voice was hoarse with overwhelming emotion.

'Sometimes I am haunted by the wild desire to have seen the great and
final scene when the irrevocable flames poured down the river, hurrying
along the streams of the earth, searching out the moisture in all growing
things, tearing it even from the eternal rocks; when the flames poured
down like the rushing of the wind, and all that lived fled from before
them till they came to the sea; and the sea itself was consumed in
vehement fire.'

Margaret shuddered, but she did not think the man was mad. She had
ceased to judge him. He took one more particle of that atrocious powder
and put it in the bowl. Again he thrust his hand in his pocket and
brought out a handful of some crumbling substance that might have been
dried leaves, leaves of different sorts, broken and powdery. There was
a trace of moisture in them still, for a low flame sprang up immediately
at the bottom of the dish, and a thick vapour filled the room. It had a
singular and pungent odour that Margaret did not know. It was difficult
to breathe, and she coughed. She wanted to beg Oliver to stop, but could
not. He took the bowl in his hands and brought it to her.

'Look,' he commanded.

She bent forward, and at the bottom saw a blue fire, of a peculiar
solidity, as though it consisted of molten metal. It was not still, but
writhed strangely, like serpents of fire tortured by their own unearthly
ardour.

'Breathe very deeply.'

She did as he told her. A sudden trembling came over her, and darkness
fell across her eyes. She tried to cry out, but could utter no sound. Her
brain reeled. It seemed to her that Haddo bade her cover her face. She
gasped for breath, and it was as if the earth spun under her feet. She
appeared to travel at an immeasurable speed. She made a slight movement,
and Haddo told her not to look round. An immense terror seized her. She
did not know whither she was borne, and still they went quickly, quickly;
and the hurricane itself would have lagged behind them. At last their
motion ceased; and Oliver was holding her arm.

'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'Open your eyes and stand up.'

The night had fallen; but it was not the comfortable night that soothes
the troubled minds of mortal men; it was a night that agitated the soul
mysteriously so that each nerve in the body tingled. There was a lurid
darkness which displayed and yet distorted the objects that surrounded
them. No moon shone in the sky, but small stars appeared to dance on the
heather, vague night-fires like spirits of the damned. They stood in a
vast and troubled waste, with huge stony boulders and leafless trees,
rugged and gnarled like tortured souls in pain. It was as if there had
been a devastating storm, and the country reposed after the flood of
rain and the tempestuous wind and the lightning. All things about them
appeared dumbly to suffer, like a man racked by torments who has not the
strength even to realize that his agony has ceased. Margaret heard the
flight of monstrous birds, and they seemed to whisper strange things
on their passage. Oliver took her hand. He led her steadily to a
cross-road, and she did not know if they walked amid rocks or tombs.

She heard the sound of a trumpet, and from all parts, strangely appearing
where before was nothing, a turbulent assembly surged about her. That
vast empty space was suddenly filled by shadowy forms, and they swept
along like the waves of the sea, crowding upon one another's heels. And
it seemed that all the mighty dead appeared before her; and she saw grim
tyrants, and painted courtesans, and Roman emperors in their purple, and
sultans of the East. All those fierce evil women of olden time passed by
her side, and now it was Mona Lisa and now the subtle daughter of
Herodias. And Jezebel looked out upon her from beneath her painted brows,
and Cleopatra turned away a wan, lewd face; and she saw the insatiable
mouth and the wanton eyes of Messalina, and Fustine was haggard with the
eternal fires of lust. She saw cardinals in their scarlet, and warriors
in their steel, gay gentlemen in periwigs, and ladies in powder and
patch. And on a sudden, like leaves by the wind, all these were driven
before the silent throngs of the oppressed; and they were innumerable as
the sands of the sea. Their thin faces were earthy with want and
cavernous from disease, and their eyes were dull with despair. They
passed in their tattered motley, some in the fantastic rags of the
beggars of Albrecht D�rer and some in the grey cerecloths of Le Nain;
many wore the blouses and the caps of the rabble in France, and many the
dingy, smoke-grimed weeds of English poor. And they surged onward like a
riotous crowd in narrow streets flying in terror before the mounted
troops. It seemed as though all the world were gathered there in strange
confusion.

Then all again was void; and Margaret's gaze was riveted upon a great,
ruined tree that stood in that waste place, alone, in ghastly desolation;
and though a dead thing, it seemed to suffer a more than human pain. The
lightning had torn it asunder, but the wind of centuries had sought
in vain to drag up its roots. The tortured branches, bare of any twig,
were like a Titan's arms, convulsed with intolerable anguish. And in a
moment she grew sick with fear, for a change came into the tree, and the
tremulousness of life was in it; the rough bark was changed into brutish
flesh and the twisted branches into human arms. It became a monstrous,
goat-legged thing, more vast than the creatures of nightmare. She saw the
horns and the long beard, the great hairy legs with their hoofs, and the
man's rapacious hands. The face was horrible with lust and cruelty, and
yet it was divine. It was Pan, playing on his pipes, and the lecherous
eyes caressed her with a hideous tenderness. But even while she looked,
as the mist of early day, rising, discloses a fair country, the animal
part of that ghoulish creature seemed to fall away, and she saw a lovely
youth, titanic but sublime, leaning against a massive rock. He was more
beautiful than the Adam of Michelangelo who wakes into life at the call
of the Almighty; and, like him freshly created, he had the adorable
languor of one who feels still in his limbs the soft rain on the loose
brown earth. Naked and full of majesty he lay, the outcast son of the
morning; and she dared not look upon his face, for she knew it was
impossible to bear the undying pain that darkened it with ruthless
shadows. Impelled by a great curiosity, she sought to come nearer,
but the vast figure seemed strangely to dissolve into a cloud; and
immediately she felt herself again surrounded by a hurrying throng.
Then came all legendary monsters and foul beasts of a madman's fancy;
in the darkness she saw enormous toads, with paws pressed to their
flanks, and huge limping scarabs, shelled creatures the like of which
she had never seen, and noisome brutes with horny scales and round crabs'
eyes, uncouth primeval things, and winged serpents, and creeping animals
begotten of the slime. She heard shrill cries and peals of laughter and
the terrifying rattle of men at the point of death. Haggard women,
dishevelled and lewd, carried wine; and when they spilt it there were
stains like the stains of blood. And it seemed to Margaret that a fire
burned in her veins, and her soul fled from her body; but a new soul
came in its place, and suddenly she knew all that was obscene. She took
part in some festival of hideous lust, and the wickedness of the world
was patent to her eyes. She saw things so vile that she screamed in
terror, and she heard Oliver laugh in derision by her side. It was a
scene of indescribable horror, and she put her hands to her eyes so that
she might not see.

She felt Oliver Haddo take her hands. She would not let him drag them
away. Then she heard him speak.

'You need not be afraid.'

His voice was quite natural once more, and she realized with a start that
she was sitting quietly in the studio. She looked around her with
frightened eyes. Everything was exactly as it had been. The early night
of autumn was fallen, and the only light in the room came from the fire.
There was still that vague, acrid scent of the substance which Haddo had
burned.

'Shall I light the candles?' he said.

He struck a match and lit those which were on the piano. They threw a
strange light. Then Margaret suddenly remembered all that she had seen,
and she remembered that Haddo had stood by her side. Shame seized her,
intolerable shame, so that the colour, rising to her cheeks, seemed
actually to burn them. She hid her face in her hands and burst into
tears.

'Go away,' she said. 'For God's sake, go.'

He looked at her for a moment; and the smile came to his lips which Susie
had seen after his tussle with Arthur, when last he was in the studio.

'When you want me you will find me in the Rue de Vaugiraud, number 209,'
he said. 'Knock at the second door on the left, on the third floor.'

She did not answer. She could only think of her appalling shame.

'I'll write it down for you in case you forget.'

He scribbled the address on a sheet of paper that he found on the table.
Margaret took no notice, but sobbed as though her heart would break.
Suddenly, looking up with a start, she saw that he was gone. She had not
heard him open the door or close it. She sank down on her knees and
prayed desperately, as though some terrible danger threatened her.

But when she heard Susie's key in the door, Margaret sprang to her feet.
She stood with her back to the fireplace, her hands behind her, in the
attitude of a prisoner protesting his innocence. Susie was too much
annoyed to observe this agitation.

'Why on earth didn't you come to tea?' she asked. 'I couldn't make out
what had become of you.'

'I had a dreadful headache,' answered Margaret, trying to control
herself.

Susie flung herself down wearily in a chair. Margaret forced herself to
speak.

'Had Nancy anything particular to say to you?' she asked.

'She never turned up,' answered Susie irritably. 'I can't understand it.
I waited till the train came in, but there was no sign of her. Then I
thought she might have hit upon that time by chance and was not coming
from England, so I walked about the station for half an hour.'

She went to the chimneypiece, on which had been left the telegram that
summoned her to the Gare du Nord, and read it again. She gave a little
cry of surprise.

'How stupid of me! I never noticed the postmark. It was sent from the Rue
Littr�.'

This was less than ten minutes' walk from the studio. Susie looked at the
message with perplexity.

'I wonder if someone has been playing a silly practical joke on me.' She
shrugged her shoulders. 'But it's too foolish. If I were a suspicious
woman,' she smiled, 'I should think you had sent it yourself to get me
out of the way.'

The idea flashed through Margaret that Oliver Haddo was the author of it.
He might easily have seen Nancy's name on the photograph during his first
visit to the studio. She had no time to think before she answered
lightly.

'If I wanted to get rid of you, I should have no hesitation in saying
so.'

'I suppose no one has been here?' asked Susie.

'No one.'

The lie slipped from Margaret's lips before she had made up her mind to
tell it. Her heart gave a great beat against her chest. She felt herself
redden.

Susie got up to light a cigarette. She wished to rest her nerves. The box
was on the table and, as she helped herself, her eyes fell carelessly on
the address that Haddo had left. She picked it up and read it aloud.

'Who on earth lives there?' she asked.

'I don't know at all,' answered Margaret.

She braced herself for further questions, but Susie, without interest,
put down the sheet of paper and struck a match.

Margaret was ashamed. Her nature was singularly truthful, and it troubled
her extraordinarily that she had lied to her greatest friend. Something
stronger than herself seemed to impel her. She would have given much to
confess her two falsehoods, but had not the courage. She could not bear
that Susie's implicit trust in her straightforwardness should be
destroyed; and the admission that Oliver Haddo had been there would
entail a further acknowledgment of the nameless horrors she had
witnessed. Susie would think her mad.

There was a knock at the door; and Margaret, her nerves shattered by all
that she had endured, could hardly restrain a cry of terror. She feared
that Haddo had returned. But it was Arthur Burdon. She greeted him with
a passionate relief that was unusual, for she was by nature a woman of
great self-possession. She felt excessively weak, physically exhausted
as though she had gone a long journey, and her mind was highly wrought.
Margaret remembered that her state had been the same on her first arrival
in Paris, when, in her eagerness to get a preliminary glimpse of its
marvels, she had hurried till her bones ached from one celebrated
monument to another. They began to speak of trivial things. Margaret
tried to join calmly in the conversation, but her voice sounded
unnatural, and she fancied that more than once Arthur gave her a curious
look. At length she could control herself no longer and burst into a
sudden flood of tears. In a moment, uncomprehending but affectionate, he
caught her in his arms. He asked tenderly what was the matter. He sought
to comfort her. She wept ungovernably, clinging to him for protection.

'Oh, it's nothing,' she gasped. 'I don't know what is the matter with me.
I'm only nervous and frightened.'

Arthur had an idea that women were often afflicted with what he described
by the old-fashioned name of vapours, and was not disposed to pay much
attention to this vehement distress. He soothed her as he would have done
a child.

'Oh, take care of me, Arthur. I'm so afraid that some dreadful thing will
happen to me. I want all your strength. Promise that you'll never forsake
me.'

He laughed, as he kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile.

'Why can't we be married at once?' she asked. 'I don't want to wait any
longer. I shan't feel safe till I'm actually your wife.'

He reasoned with her very gently. After all, they were to be married in a
few weeks. They could not easily hasten matters, for their house was not
yet ready, and she needed time to get her clothes. The date had been
fixed by her. She listened sullenly to his words. Their wisdom was plain,
and she did not see how she could possibly insist. Even if she told him
all that had passed he would not believe her; he would think she was
suffering from some trick of her morbid fancy.

'If anything happens to me,' she answered, with the dark, anguished eyes
of a hunted beast, 'you will be to blame.'

'I promise you that nothing will happen.'

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