Approvingly the Satanic chuckle sounded. “Consistent to fanaticism in your part! As you like. But let’s get to the end. Forget the asterisks. Pull up the curtain. Give us the expurgated lines.” “If I am fanatic in my desire to be decent, you are an atheist. I tell you I cannot--will not go on!” From strength of her abhorrence the spirit-girl started up and faced him. “Punish me as you like. Anything is better than to strip my soul to your unholy gaze.” “_Anything?_” He seized her arm with the sear of a red-hot iron. “I’ll give you one second to fête your fancy upon what your punishment might be. You’ll pay in full, you helliot, if you cheat me of an experiment that I plan to make. You’ve given me an idea more seducing than any of my own inception. If it works out, it will net you more than it will me. Come a day, you being what you are and I what I am----” “I wish to hear no new ideas for me. I cannot endure more to-night.” At her sustained effort to combat his will he leaned so close over her that her face felt scorched from his mental insistence, more offensive than the physical insistence of any man of Earth. She struggled toward her chair; there fell face forward on the board. He--without looking, she saw--swept after her like some ravening bird of prey. Strong, long talons clutched her. Almost had they shaken her access of strength from her when---- “Better let up on her, Your Demnition Pow-Wows.” A carping voice offered the advice. A tall, strong-looking ghoul swaggered into the light from the comparative darkness outside the door. “Sin, you infernal eaves-dropper, how dare you----” “Leaves-dropper, rather--table-leaves-dropper.” With incredible bravado Old Original winked into the Balial glare. “May I assume the compliment to my invisibility that you failed to notice me humbly awaiting Your Damnity’s convenience without?” “Impudently awaiting My Damnity’s inconvenience, you mean. You may _not_. That I didn’t notice you was due to the super-visibility of our royal _raconteuse_.” “Who will recount no more if you continue to torture her. Having recommended her to your inclemency in the first place, I feel more than less responsible. The wages of sin are best paid by death--you’ll concede that to me, Excellency? Yet you do not, I am sure, wish her to die.” “Low-brow, she cannot die.” The old hoax returned a confident leer. “That I grow more high-brow with every age let me demonstrate through a reminder of how the greatest roughness is the gentlest. What diverts you in her--her very virile hope--may die before that Day. Am I right or wrong in saying that you owe me, if not her, some consideration?” “Wrong you are. You did throw me the acorn from which a giant oak may grow.” “And hasn’t she sirened you along bad and improper? Hasn’t she been square with you?” “Yes, she’s been square. There wasn’t a right angle to all the past Delilahs ever damned by man or me.”