So long and so strangely did he continue to contemplate her that Dolores risked his displeasure by covering her face with her hands. Again he surprised her. “Your methods are unlike those of any in the whole Well of Wantons. At times it is hard to believe the worst of you. Looking straight into your eyes, one sees----” His pause she interrupted with an almost beseeching reminder. “Does one--what?” “Well, what has been your experience? Doesn’t one?” His laugh was an insult. Denied the eyes in whose royal purple shadows lurked “that look” which, underscored by the lines about her smileless mouth, had got on his imagination, he soon tired of the joke at her expense. “You are a helliot for looks, no doubt of that,” he remarked crisply. “What I want to know is--can you _fight_?” “Fight, Your--Your Lowness? Why should I fight?” He did not answer either himself or her. His manner changed. He appeared chiefly impatient. “You’d think I could manufacture time, the way I’m wasting it. With the crimes of the mortal world awaiting my direction, I itinerate you through this tour. Not that I think the education will be wasted on you. My original conviction that it won’t be is strengthened. But I must get back.” “I am ready to return at once, sir.” “You look more than ready. This is a case, however, where the longest way round may prove the shortest home.” He put The Hawk to its highest speed. It seemed that they might beat the winds in any race, beat thought, beat even light. With the edges of cleft air, Satan’s instructions cut into Dolores’ consciousness. “The scenes we’re about to skirt will demonstrate why I’ve striven through the ages for numbers. Look you toward the east.” Urged by a certain hard-suppressed excitement in his voice, Dolores strained her sight in the direction of his gesture. Approaching them from the doubtful distances, came a vast company of uniformed shades. On either side stretched countless tents. “Can it be that you keep up--” she hesitated over the improbable thought--“an army?” “The Hordes of Hades.” The splendid head threw back until its red beard stabbed the forward air. The steel-cold voice slashed like a sword. “Focus what imagination you have on their probable numbers--unheard-of billions strong. Try to conceive the ruthlessness possible to demons freed from the fear of death. Consider the impossibility of the most arrant coward’s desertion with my brand stamped on his brow.” In her effort to obey, expression failed the spirit-girl. Glancing around at her, Satan frowned. “Nothing to say, as usual? You’ve not yet suspected, then, that the basic principle of Gehenna is militaristic? Where would any autocrat be without defense for his autocracy?” “This army, of what race is it come?”