"Impossible!" I cried. "Nonsense! You seek to conceal your evil deeds beneath a cloak of improbabilities, and fancy I am sufficiently credulous to believe them!" "Surely heated argument is useless," she observed. "I love a man who is your friend, and you love a woman who is mine. Plainly speaking, our interests are identical, are they not? Your love is in hiding. She had a reason for fleeing from you, just as my lover's religious views caused him to endeavour to escape me. He knew me not, or he would not have endeavoured to hide himself from me. You, who know me better, are aware that from me there is no escape; that I spare not my enemies nor those who hate me. Before my touch men and things wither as grass cast into an oven." "True, I love Muriel," I said. "She is in hiding, and you, if you will, can direct me to where she is." Aline, the mysterious handmaiden of evil, paused. Her full breast rose beneath her thin summer bodice and fell slowly, and for an instant her well-arched brows were knit as she thought deeply. "Yes," she answered at length. "Your surmise is correct. I am aware where your love has concealed herself." "Little escapes you," I observed, a strange feeling of terror creeping over me. "Sin is always more powerful than righteousness, and cunning more invincible than honesty of purpose. Why will you not impart to me the knowledge that I seek, and tell me where I may find Muriel? As you have very truly said, our interests are identical. I am ready to make any compact with you, in return for your assistance." "Very well," she answered quickly, with a little undue eagerness, I thought. Then, fixing me again with her eyes, she said: "Once you gave yourself to me body and soul and implored me to love you. But I spurned you--not because I entertained any affection for you, but for the sake of the one woman who loved you--Muriel Moore." "Then you knew Muriel?" I interrupted quickly, in an endeavour to at least clear up that single fact. "No," she answered, "I did not know her. A reader of the heart, I was, however, aware that she was madly enamoured of you, therefore I was frank enough to urge you to reciprocate her love, and thus obtain felicity. Well, she has hidden herself from you, but you shall find her on one condition--namely, that you render yourself passive in my hands-- that you give yourself entirely to me." "What do you mean?" I gasped, holding back instinctively and glaring at her. "Are you the Devil himself that you should make this proposal which in the mediaeval legend Mephistopheles made to Faust?" "My intentions are of no concern," she responded, in a strange voice like one speaking afar off. "Will you, or will you not accept my conditions?" "But to give myself to you when I love another is impossible!" I protested.