"No. I tell you he is a living coffin. There is nothing in him to energize a pure motive. He might give a fortune to the poor, but it would be for his own gain. He could not suffer for the poor, or love them. Dead within, he is detached from the great centres of virtue and purity--from all that carries the race forward, and will save us at the last. You see his frightful dependence upon this temporal physical instrument, since all the records of the past and the unwritten pages of the future are wiped out? Isn't it a sheer black horror, Paula,--to know that from the great tide of hopeful humanity, one is set apart; to know that the amazing force which has carried one from a cell in the ooze to thinking manhood must end with this red frightened heart; to be forced, for the continuance of life, to feed upon the strength of one woman after another--always fairer and finer----" The look of hatred in the speaker's face had become a banner of havoc. "Can he not stop that kind of devouring?" Paula exclaimed. "Would there not be hope--if he battled with that--put _that_ vampirism behind?" Madame Nestor regarded the other steadily, until all distortion of feature had given away to her accustomed mildness. Then she uttered an unforgettable question: "_Can a tiger eat grains?_" Vast ranges of terrible understanding were suggested. "It is my duty, if I ever had a duty," the caller went on, "to make you know Bellingham as I know him. You must have no pity." "Is there really no fact by which his age can be determined?" "None that I know. Twenty-five years ago, when he left me hideously wise and pitifully drained, he looked as he does now." "But why, oh why, do you always think of me with Bellingham?" Paula asked hopelessly. "I watched his face when he regarded you last night. I knew the look." "What is to prevent me from never seeing him? He cannot force himself upon me here--in the flesh.... Certainly you would not tell him where I am, where I go--if I begged you not to!" Madame Nestor shuddered. "No, Paula. It is because you are frightened and tormented that such a thought comes. It is I who am showing you the real Bellingham. He menaces my race. None but big-souled women are useful to him now. He is drawn to them, as one hungry, as one always hungry. It is he first who is drawn. Then they begin to feel and respond to his occult attraction. The time might have come when you would worship him--had I not warned you. I did. I was quite his--until I learned. A woman knows no laws in the midst of an attraction like this. No other man suffices----" "But why--why do you prepare _me_? Do you think I cannot resist?" Paula asked furiously. She felt the bonds about her already. The blood rose hot and rebellious at the thought of being bound. It was the old hideous fear of a locked room--the shut-in horror which meant suffocation.