“I look--‘very well.’” He aped her effortful tone. “Didst note her burst of enthusiasm? In gratitude, she’s not so different from the rest of womankind. What one of them ever realized that a man would rather remove a mountain from the physiognomy of the earth than the beard from his face? As for the horns from his head!” “But really, I do like it--very well indeed!” “‘Very well indeed’!” Satan threw out his hands in a farcical gesture of despair. “What man who shaves his beard to please a woman ever really pleases her?” “To please me, Your Lowness?” “Sin’s idea. That silhouette you drew of your pet philanthropist shows you to have preconceived ideas of the looks of latter-day devils. I haven’t spent centuries catering to human preconceptions for nothing. Presto, even John Cabot’s crime toward you is no blacker than my cut-faced clothes! My tie is a bit off--that is _on_--color, as it were. But I notice that no man is held accountable for his taste in cravats. Maybe I _was_ dressed like a character part.” With the frank self-appreciation of a husband who has just been hectored into an evening suit by his wife, he turned for a critical survey of her appearance. “Glad to see you looking fit to go out with me,” he approved. “I have planned to take you to a show.” “To hear you preach?” She put the assumption rather eagerly. “I am so glad. I have hoped each night you would take me. Frequently when hearing you talk, I have wondered whether you would--whether you wouldn’t----” She faltered at his look of amazement. “If I wouldn’t just what, child?” he encouraged with all the unctuous kindliness of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Willard. “Wouldn’t teach me the Scriptures. You seem to know them by heart.” “By head, not by heart. There’s a difference, you know. Ingersoll knew them by head.” Satan’s chuckles began with contemplation of her idea. “Really, you are either the most naïve or the most intriguing of lost souls.” “But seriously,” she insisted. “Oh, _seriously_!” He laughed the more. “Well, seriously, my poor child, I’d advise you to remember the clay feet of the ‘Sporting Parson.’ Far be it from me to try to improve a perfectly bad mind. ‘The Little Book shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey, but shall make thy belly bitter.’ That’s one of my own handy, illiterate translations. M’lady, the carriage awaits. Time we were on our way.” He was pleased to drive her to the promised entertainment in his favorite Hawk. While drifting through the drab air of night in Gehenna, lit only by that “pale, abiding light” whose dynamo was beyond control of his electricians, he explained the kind of “show” to which he was escorting her. In it he was not to star, no. It was only a motion picture, but one in which he felt that she, as well as he, would take interest.