They had put on a record of Ravel's "Bolero," and he was beating out the rhythm with his fist. He was thinking: "All sculpture has a magical significance, from the Aurignacian Venus to Epstein's 'Genesis.' The underlying intention has always been to produce a manikin capable of being animated by sorcery." He was watching Tansy as she sang "St. Louis Blues" in a hoarsely throbbing voice. It was true, just as Welby had always maintained, that she had a genuine theatrical flair. Make a good chanteuse. He was thinking: "Tansy stopped the Estrey dragon with the knots. But she'll have a hard time doing anything like that again, because Mrs. Gunnison has her book of formulas and can figure out ways to circumvent." They were sharing a highball that would have burned his throat if his throat had not been numb, and he seemed to be getting most of it. He was thinking: "The tarot stick figure of the man and the truck is the key to a group of related sorceries. Cards began as instruments of magic, like sculpture. These sorceries aim at finishing me off. The bull-roarer acts as an amplifier or reinforcement. The thing standing behind me, with the flat voice and heavy hands, is a guardian, to see to it that I do not deviate from the path appointed. Bull-roaring and flat voice were associated in my dream. Narrow corridor. Two weeks more." The strange thing was that these thoughts were not altogether unpleasant. They had a wild, black, poisonous beauty of their own, a lovely, deadly shimmer. They possessed the fascination of the impossible, the incredible. They hinted at unimaginable vistas. Even while they terrorized, they did not lose that chillingly poignant beauty. They were like the visions conjured up by some forbidden drug. They had the lure of an unknown sin and an ultimate blasphemy. He could understand the force that compelled the practitioners of black magic to take any risk. His drunkenness made him feel safe. It had broken his mind down into its ultimate particles, and those particles were incapable of fear because they could not be injured. Just as the iron molecules of a battleship are quite safe from the bomb which blows the battleship apart. But now the particles were whirling crazily. Consciousness was wavering. They were in each other's arms. Tansy was asking eagerly, coaxingly, "All that's mine is yours? All that's yours is mine?" The question awakened a suspicion in his mind, but he could not grasp it clearly. Something made him think that the words held a trap. But what trap? His thoughts stumbled and reeled. She was saying--it sounded like the Bible--"and I have drunk from your cup and eaten from your table--" Her face was a blurred oval, her eyes like misty jewels. "Everything you have is mine? You give it to me without hindrance and of your own free choice?" Somewhere a trap. But the voice was irresistibly coaxing, like tickling fingers. "All you have is mine? Just say it once, Norm, just once. For me."