This idea also seemed to explain why Tansy's apparently pacific action had upset the Balance. What would any country think if in the midst of a war, its enemy scuttled all his battleships and dismantled all his aircraft, apparently laying himself wide open to attack? For the realistic mind, there could only be one likely answer. Namely, that the enemy had discovered a weapon far more potent than battleships or aircraft, and was planning to ask for a peace that would turn out to be a trap. The only thing would be to strike instantly and hard, before the secret weapon could be brought into play. "I think--" he started to say. Then something--perhaps a faint _whishing_ in the air or a slight creaking of the floor under the heavy carpet, or some less tangible sensation--caused him to glance around. With a writhing jerk sideways, he managed--just managed--to get his head out of the path of that descending metal flail, which was all he saw at first. With a shocking _swish_ it crashed downward against the heavy back of the chair, and there its force was broken. But his shoulder, which took only the end of the blow, went numb. Clawing at the chair arm with his good hand, he threw himself forward against the table and whirled around. He recoiled from the sight as from another blow, throwing back his good hand to save himself from overbalancing. She was poised in the center of the room, having sprung back catlike after the first blow failed. Almost stiff-legged, but with the weight forward. In stocking feet--the slippers that might have made a noise were laid by the rocking chair. In her hand was the steel poker, stealthily lifted from the stand by the fireplace, so as not to make the slightest warning rattle. There was life in her face now. But it was life that champed the teeth and drooled, life that pinched and flared the nostrils with every breath, life that switched hair from the eyes with quick, angry flirts, life that glared redly and steadily. And there was more than that. With a low snarl she lifted the poker and struck, not at him, but at the chandelier overhead. Yet, even as pitch darkness flooded the tightly curtained room, he realized what that more-than-animal life was. There was no one conclusive reason, but from a multitude of almost indefinable impressions--too many to be realized separately--he knew with chilling certainty that the bestial spirit animating Tansy's body, the crude and unfinished soul conjured into her body--possessing her body as it used to be said demons possessed the bodies of the insane--was the same soul that had animated the stone creature that had crept from the roof. And then the darkness was complete.