Through the seven courses of that most remarkable of feasts, the spirit-girl Dolores exerted herself to please their Satanic host, for sake of her babe if not herself. Splendid beyond words was his appearance, from his scintillant crown to the hem of a mantle charged to imitate iridescent metal cloth. Corporal Sam Cummings she scarcely had recognized, so changed was he by the steel-scaled costume of an old-time knight in which he came arrayed, a veritable “armour of light.” Without vanity, she appreciated the kindly soldier-soul’s gasp at first sight of her, having herself been surprised by the achievement of the mistress of robes. A twist of green flame bound her hair and suspended one large drop, like an emerald of great price, low upon her brow. The rays of her body garment clung close, representing a material sewn through with threads of gold. This fell only to her pearl-roped ankles, but a long cloak of translucent green waved behind her when she moved, like the following billows of the sea. Her beauty she had learned to deplore. To-night she feared it. Something worse than admiration had shone in the lurid gaze of the prime minister and lesser courtier demons, something disturbing in the silent, critical inspection of His Highness. Gracious enough had been Satan’s manner. Not until he sampled the last course of the delusive seven did his irritation break bounds. He demanded the presence of the first chef. “What was my last promise if you didn’t concoct something I could taste?” he demanded of that unworthy. “Why do you suppose I had you heat-tormented to suicide in the _Brillon_ kitchens in Paris if I didn’t expect you to do better by me gastronomically than your predecessors? I have been improvising tortures for cook-soul failures for more centuries than the blades of near-grass used to tint this pistache ice. Bah, heats me to look at it! Soon as I can replace you, into the hole for Traitors to Mothers you drop.” The wretch wrung his hands. “Not there, your Majesty! I loved my _mère_. And is not my present labor futile enough? Almost do I despair of tempting the palate of an immortal, with nothing but chimeras as ingredients--with flour of the bleached dust of hopes and paprika and baking-powder of imaginary ground brick or brimstone.” “I do not grant that your labor is futile,” Satan snapped. “Surely you’ll agree that the Ruler of Greater Gehenna deserves the Epicurean joys afforded gluttonous nobodies of Earth? I want to _eat_, I tell you. Of course I am more or less immaterial. Every soul in Shadow Land is, the new-comers less, the old-timers more. But the appetites of Earth appeal more to me than the self-sufficiency of the angels. I intend to have them--and to have them satisfied. If by to-morrow you have not risen to the concoction of something to tempt me, into the hole for Traitors to----” With what sincerity she could assume, Dolores interposed. “I am sure I never tasted a more delicious pasty.”