"And you needn't pretend you're not worried," she went on, her voice reacting irritably to his silence. "Because I know you are. And tomorrow Pollard will ask for your resignation. What are you staring at?" "Nothing," he answered, hastily averting his glance. "You saw a smudge on my nose!" "Oh, no. No." With an incredulous sniff, she took out her mirror, glanced at it puzzledly for a moment, then with a shrug held it up for a detailed inspection of her face. Now was the moment, if only he could gauge it right. He was taut with expectation, cold with a feeling that the threads of destiny had come into his hands. The second hand of the wall clock seemed to stand still. He dared not wait longer. In a soft yet straining voice he uttered the words, "Break glass. Shatter soul. Scatter glass. Come soul." With a swift crackling, not very loud, yet with a tinkle to it, the mirror in Mrs. Gunnison's hand puffed into a little cloud of iridescent dust. Instantly he felt a weight add itself to his mind, a tangible darkness press down upon his thoughts. And his mind seemed to grasp instinctively at the darkness and hold it there. The gasp of astonishment or fear that issued from Mrs. Gunnison's lips was cut short. What seemed a loose, stupid look flowed slowly over her face, but that was only because her face lost all expression whatsoever. He stepped up to her and took her arm. "Come with me," he said. "It's your best chance." Docilely she followed him into the hall. Near the stairs they met Miss Miller, returning with a handful of large cards. "I'm very sorry to have put you to the trouble," he told her. "But it turned out that we didn't need them. You had better return them to the Recorder's Office." The girl nodded with a polite but somewhat wry smile. Professors! * * * * * As Norman escorted Mrs. Gunnison out of the Administration Building, the darkness pressing upon his thoughts parted--as black storm clouds might part at sunset, letting through a narrow beam of crimson light. So, through the painfully bright slit in the darkness lying against his thoughts, there poured a flood of impotent red rage, of obscene anger. In a moment this cleared, and an intelligible thought appeared. This thought, as the rage preceding it, was so intolerably _like_ Mrs. Gunnison, such an intense concentration of what he had known only in diluted form, that his mind almost lost its hold on the dark entity pressing against it. For a moment his thoughts quailed at the touch of naked personality. He stared ahead, and his steps wandered like those of a drunken man. But only for a moment. "How did you do it?" was the thought. His own thoughts rallied, and, before he realized it, had answered: