The spirit-girl realized that the time had come for her to speak, but she could not force her tongue. Gone was her self-reliance of the early dawn. She had come prepared, but not for this. Overwhelmed she felt by his declaration as she had not been by his threats. The sensation was familiar; recalled those days of uncertainty in the Cabot home when she had been tried by the evasive ways of John. Then her fear had been for him and, through him, for herself. Now he and she were included only as infinitesimal atoms in the universal disaster that impended. Look high as Heaven, look low as Hell, she was afraid. “How dark it is growing!” She shuddered. “Is it so dark you cannot see that I am on my knees, still asking you?” “How can you ask me, when you know where my heart belongs?” His lips lifted over his fang-like teeth, in sudden reversion to type. “No heart that I want can belong anywhere else,” he snarled. “You have seen that mongrel lover of yours turn yellow with cowardice.” “I have seen him,” she corrected, “conquer cowardice.” “We won’t quibble. The obstinacy of the female heart is more often a fault than a virtue. Open your mind to conviction. Can you imagine me feeling cowardice? I’ve tried to give you an idea of how bad I am. At least I have shown enough inherent evil to awaken some slight admiration.” “But our standards are very different, Your Lowness. I don’t admire this ruthlessness you boast. The sensations from love and hate are very much alike, they say. Isn’t it possible that you are mistaken in the absolutism of your wickedness? Don’t you suppose that you are capable of a pulse-beat of mercy for one who----” The flash of lightning that shivered through the thickening gloom of the great room seemed to illuminate her broken query with significance. The answering rumble of thunder was no less menacing than his reply. “This is heresy. You weaken your capacity for sin with every such thought. Good as you are, I’ll make you in time bad as I am. As the queen-consort you shall become the wickedest thought of my mind, the most vicious desire of my soul. Deadlier than death, you shall give and keep giving life to my love. Undying love--that would be a delicate morsel, would it not, little gourmet of the hearts of men?” “All real love is undying,” she maintained. Her eyes held on the distant curtain. Its alternating electric stripes were writhing like snakes, as if tormented by a wind stronger than its dynamo. “At least, passion is not. Undying passion--that would be something new even to you, eh? Do you remember, siren, my mention of an ‘experiment’?”