Dolores’ moan went unheard in the instant protest of the demon cabinet. But their controller did not trouble to repeat his order. Not so much as a gesture or nod of dismissal did he vouchsafe as they, not daring to vent their spleen over being excluded from this culminating séance, filed out one by one. Although several times before Dolores had been alone with His Highness, she never had feared as now the Evil Mind. Her face returned to her palms. In darting speculation over what he next might say or do, she awaited his displeasure. Unendurably the silence lasted. She at last glanced up from morbid curiosity. He was not looking at her. The green glow, so weird from his gray eyes, shafted well to one side and past her. She noticed that he was at once unusually attractive because unusually repulsive to-night. The concentration into which he had sunk drew out of her like a magnet a certain sympathy for the very evil he would do her. She shuddered in ghoulish anticipation. More slowly lagged the seconds. More unnatural it seemed that still he did not look at her. Had there remained in his mind a shadow of Old Sam’s suggestion that he had a weakness for her? Doubt of what might lurk in his averted eyes obsessed her. “Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you look at me?” she urged aloud. “Please look at me.” She would better have remained in doubt. To see what was in his eyes, to try to grasp the odious meaning of the glance now fixed upon her---- As she swayed backward in her chair, he proceeded to enlighten her. “I get it.” “_It_, Your Majesty?” “It--you--the secret power that has made you the desire of men and devils. Who would have thought to look at you that it was only a case of lust beget lust?” “Oh, don’t say that!” He leered. “Why a pretense of apology between two bad ones like us? Instead of protesting virtues of which you ought to be ashamed, realize that your guilt as charged makes your desirability one-hundred-per-cent-plus down here, as it did on Earth.” Evidently not interested in her agreement, he turned away and began to pace the floor. “This has been a red-letter night to me. Do you know, you’re not telling a good story--not good at all. It has elements that quite hold me. We’ve had the vamp in books, over the footlights and on the screen. I thought I knew the types and methods forward and backward--especially back. But your delineation of a young girl who is without design because herself unconscious of the prurience in her, who appeals to the best in men by her guilelessness and the worst by her sleeping desire, who, although intending well, spreads disaster in her wake---- No matter what its claims to truth, sweet Grief, it makes a damned bad story.” He stopped directly before her in time to hear a murmured appeal to her guardian companions. “Innocentia, must I believe these dreadful things about myself? If they are not true, help me to prove them false, dear, _dear_ Amor.”