A hungry man would have known no repletion from the entire offering which sufficed for these two, forgotten of appetite. Wafers of dark bread, a poached egg, pickles, a heart of lettuce and a divided melon, cake and tea--yet how fully they fared!... They were talking about children and fairy tales over the teacups, when Paula encountered again that sinister mental seizure--the occultist's influence creeping back from her reason to that part of the brain man holds in common with animals.... The lights of the room dimmed; her companion became invisible. Bellingham was calling: "Come to me--won't you come and help me in my excellent labors? Come to me, Paula. We can lift the world together--you and I. Wonderful are the things for me to show you--you who are already so wise and so very beautiful. Paula Linster,--come to me!" Again and again the words were laid upon her intelligence, until she heard them only. All the rest was an anterior murmuring, as of wind and rivers. The words were pressed down upon the surfaces of her brain, like leaf after leaf of gold-beaters' film--and hammered and hammered there.... He was in a great gray room, sitting at a desk, but staring at her, as if there were no walls or streets between--just a little bit of blackness.... She seemed to know just where to go. She felt the place for her was there in the great gray room--a wonderful need for her there.... But a door opened into the room where he sat--a door she had not seen, for she had not taken her eyes from his face. A woman came in, a pale woman, a shell of beauty. The huge tousled head at the desk turned from her to the woman who entered. Paula saw his profile alter hideously.... Her own bright room filled her eyes again, and the ashen horror on the countenance of Madame Nestor, who seemed vaguely to see it all. "I think I should have gone to him," Paula murmured, in the slow, flat tone of one not yet quite normally conscious. "There is but one way, you poor distressed child--to build about you a fortress of purity--which he cannot penetrate----" "I think I should have known the car to take--the place to enter," Paula went on, unheeding, "the elevator entrance--the door of the room----" Madame Nestor continued to implore her to pray. Paula shivered finally, and stared at the other for a few seconds, as if recalling the words the visitor had spoken, and the past she had lived with Bellingham. Her terrible rage toward herself spread and covered Madame Nestor. Did not the latter still dip here, there, and everywhere in the occult and weird? Might she not have something to do with the projectiles of Desire? "I think I'd better be alone now," she said hoarsely. "One does not feel like invoking the Pure Presence--when one is chosen for such defilement." THIRD CHAPTER CERTAIN DEVELOPING INCIDENTS ARE CAUGHT INTO THE CURRENT OF NARRATIVE--ALSO A SUPPER WITH REIFFERSCHEID