"It's no kind your doctors can treat, Pat. Did you ever hear of a madman who stood aside and rationally watched the working of his own insanity? And that's what I'm forced to do. And yet--this other isn't insane either. Were its actions insane?" Pat shuddered. "I--don't know," she said in low tones. "I guess not." "No. Horrible, cruel, bestial, devilishly cunning, evil--but not insane. I don't know what it is, Pat. I know that the fight has to be made by me alone. There's nothing, nobody in the world, that can help." "Nick!" she wailed. "I'm sorry, Pat dear. You understand now why I was so reluctant to fall in love with you. I was afraid to love you; now I know I was right." "Nick!" she cried, then paused hopelessly. After a moment she continued, "Yesterday I was determined to forget you, and now--now I don't care if this whole tale of yours is a mesh of fantastic lies, I love you! I'd love you even if your real self were that--that other creature, and even if I knew that this was just a trap. I'd love you anyway." "Pat," he said seriously, "don't you believe me? Why should I offer to give you up if this were--what you said? Wouldn't I be pleading for another chance, making promises, finding excuses?" "Oh, I believe you, Nick! It isn't that; I was just thinking how strange it is that I could hate you so two nights past and love you so tonight." "Oh God, Pat! Even you can't know how much I love you; and to win you and then be forced to give you up--" He groaned. The girl reached out her hand and covered his; it was the first time during the evening that she had touched him, and the feel of his flesh sent a tingle through her. She was miserably distraught. "Honey," she murmured brokenly. "Nick, Honey." He looked at her. "Do you suppose there's a chance to beat the thing?" he asked. "I'd not ask you to wait, Pat, but if I only glimpsed a chance--" "I'll wait. I don't think I could do anything else but wait for you." "If I only knew what I had to fight!" he whispered. "If I only knew that!" A sudden memory leaped into Pat's mind. "Nick," she said huskily, "I think I know." "What do you mean, Pat?" "It's something Magda--the cook--said to me. It's foolish, superstitious, but Nick, what else can it be?" "Tell me!" "Well, she was talking to me yesterday, and she said that when she was a child in the old country, she had seen a man once--" she hesitated--"a man who was possessed by a devil. Nick, I think you're possessed by a devil!" He stared at her. "Pat," he said hoarsely, "that's--an impossibility!" "I know, but what else can it be?" "Out of the Dark Ages," he muttered. "An echo of the Black Mass and witchcraft, but--" "What did they do," asked the girl, "to people they thought were possessed?" "Exorcism!" he whispered. "And how did they--exorcise?" "I don't know," he said in a low voice. "Pat, that's an impossible idea, but--I don't know!" he ended.