Could it be true that my little friend held locked within her breast the secret of Roddy's tragic end? I glanced again at her face as she strolled by my side. Yes, her countenance was now pale and agitated, its aspect entirely changed from what it had been half an hour before. "Why cannot you tell me something of Aline?" I asked quietly, after a long silence. "Because I am as entirely ignorant of her as you are," she answered without hesitation. "All I know is that she is a strange person--a woman possessed of powers so marvellous as to appear almost supernatural. Indeed, she seems the very incarnation of the Evil One himself. It was because of that I was angry when I knew that her beauty had entranced you." "But you are acquainted with her," I declared. "Your words prove that." "No, I have had no dealings with her," she answered. "I should fear to have, lest I should fall beneath her evil influence." "Then how did you know of my acquaintance with her?" I asked, noting how charming she was, and wondering within myself why during all the years that I had known her I had not discovered the true estimate of her beauty until that afternoon. "The information was conveyed to me," she responded vaguely. "And you believed that I had forgotten you, Muriel?" I said tenderly, in a voice of reproach. "It is certain that you were held powerless under that spell which she can cast over men at will. You reposed in contentment beneath her fascination, and called it love." "But it was not love," I hastened to assure her. "I admired her, it is true, but surely you do not think that I could love a woman who is thus under suspicion?" "Had your friend ever spoken of her?" she inquired after a brief silence. "No," I said. "Aline, however, admitted that she knew him, but strangely enough declared that he had committed suicide at Monte Carlo months before." "Then what she said could not be correct," Muriel observed thoughtfully. "I really don't know what to believe," I answered, bewildered. "Her words were so strange and her influence so subtle and extraordinary that sometimes I feel inclined to think that she was some supernatural and eminently beautiful being who, having wrought in the world the evil which was allotted as her work, has vanished, leaving no more trace than a ray of light in space." "Others who have known her have held similar opinions," my pretty companion said. "Yet she was apparently of flesh and blood like all of us. At any rate, she ate and drank and slept and spoke like every other human being, and certainly her loves and her hatreds were just as intense as those of any one of us." "But her touch was deadly," I said. "As a magician is able to change things, so at her will certain objects dissolved in air, leaving only a handful of ashes behind. In her soft, white hand was a power for the working of evil which was irresistible, an influence which was nothing short of demoniacal."