He could not resist an involuntary start as he caught his first glimpse of the extraordinary scene within. The whole interior of the room was revealed to him. Around the walls were seated three young men of professional appearance. Nick recognized them all. They were Doctor Chester, Doctor Willard, and Doctor Graves, three of Grantley’s former satellites. They were leaning forward or throwing themselves back in different attitudes of cruel enjoyment and derision, while Grantley stood at one side, his hawklike face thrust out, his keen, pitiless eyes fixed malignantly on the figure in the center of the room. Nick’s heart went out in pity toward that pathetic figure, although he could hardly believe his eyes. It was that of Helga Lund, but so changed as to be almost unrecognizable. Her splendid golden hair hung in a matted, disordered snarl about her face, which was pale and smudged with grime. She was clothed in the cheapest of calico wrappers, hideously colored, soiled and torn, beneath which showed her bare, dust-stained feet. She had thrown herself upon her knees, as the part required; her outstretched hands were intertwined beseechingly, and her wonderful eyes were raised to Grantley’s face. In them was the hurt, fearful look of a faithful but abused dog in the presence of a cruel master. Her tattered sleeves revealed numerous bruises on her perfectly formed arms. The part of the play which Grantley had ordered her to render was that in which the heroine pleaded with her angry lover for his forgiveness of some past act of hers, which she had bitterly repented. She was reciting the powerful lines now. They had always held her great audiences breathless, but how different was this pitiable travesty! It would have been hard enough at best for her to make them ring true when delivered before such unsympathetic listeners and in such an incongruous garb, but she was not at her best. On the contrary, her performance was infinitely worse than any one would have supposed possible. She had unconsciously adopted every one of the hypnotist’s brutal suggestions. There was not a vestige of her famous grace in any of her movements. The most ungainly slattern could not have been more awkward. Her words were spoken parrotlike, as if learned by rote, without the slightest understanding of their meaning. For the most part, they succeeded one another without any attempt at emphasis, and when emphasis was used, it was invariably in the wrong place. It was her voice itself, however, which gave Nick and Chick their greatest shock. The Lund, as she was generally called in Europe, had always been celebrated for her remarkably musical voice; but this sorry-looking creature’s voice was alternately shrill and harsh. It pierced and rasped and set the teeth on edge, just as the sound of a file does.