Dr. Owen could not resist the power of this appeal. He was deeply moved in spite of himself. "You say you can prove that Mrs. Wells is possessed by an evil spirit? How can you prove it?" "Give me permission to take Penelope to Dr. Leroy's hospital for a few days--will you?" she begged. "You will see for yourself that I am right." "See for myself? Great heavens! You don't mean to tell me that--?" the doctor stopped short before the vivid memory of those white shapes that this woman once before had so strangely evoked. Seraphine stood silent in deep concentration, then she said slowly: "Yes, that is what I mean. I believe that God, for His great purposes, will let you _see_ this evil spirit." CHAPTER XIII TERROR (_Statement by Seraphine_) At the request of Dr. William Owen I am writing this account of what happened last night after Roberta Vallis' party. What happened during the party was terrible enough, but what came later, after the doctor and the guests had gone and we three women were alone together, Roberta and Penelope and I, was infinitely worse. I am told to put down details of the night, as far as I can remember them, so that these may be kept in the records of the American Occult Society. There never was a clearer case of an evil spirit working destructively against a living person, although other noble souls have faced a similar ordeal, especially returned soldiers and Red Cross workers, and some have not survived it. Remember those pitiful, unaccountable suicides of our bravest and our fairest. In every case _there was a reason_! Penelope did not go home after the party, she was in no condition to do so, but stayed at Roberta's, and I stayed with her, at least I promised to stay, for I knew she needed me. I knew that the greatest danger was still threatening her. When the guests had gone we took off our things (Roberta let me have her little spare room on the mezzanine floor and she gave Penelope her own big bedroom with the old French furniture), then a Russian singer, a tall blond, Margaret G----, came in from the next apartment and we talked for a long time. Pen and Bobby smoke cigarettes and drank cordials; they drank in a nervous, hysterical way, as if they felt they _must_ drink, and, strangely enough, the more they drank the more intensely sober they became. _I understood this!_ Such talk! Miss Gordon had just returned to America by way of Tokio. She had been in London, Paris, Petrograd, Cairo; and, everywhere, as a result of the war, she said, she found a mad carnival of recklessness and extravagance. Everywhere the old standards of decency and honor had been set aside, greed and lust were rampant, the whole human race seemed to be swept as with a mighty tide, by three fierce desires--for money, for pleasure, for sensuality. And God had been forgotten!