Adjacently, on the upper reaches of Broadway, Ma Tamby was shopping. The sun now, gone from the river, was painting other spheres. From a corner, shadows crept. They devoured the floor, absorbed the piano, assimilated the room. They left pits where they passed. They enveloped Cassy. Suddenly, she shivered. She had been far away, outside of the world, in a region to which the clamouring street could not mount. Her thoughts had lifted her to a land that had the colours, clear and yet capricious, of which dreams are made. There beauty stood, and truth with beauty, and so indistinguishably that the two were one. But truth, detaching herself, showed her candid face. The shadows elongating, reached up and darkened it. The candour remained, but the candour had become terrible. Cassy saw it. She saw that the land to which she had been lifted was the land of beauty and horror. It was then she shivered. Instantly something touched her. There was no one. The land, the beauty, the horror had faded. No longer on the heights, she was in a trivial room in Harlem. She was awake. She was absolutely alone. None the less something that was nothing, something invisible, inaudible, intangible, imperceptible, something emanating from the depths where events crouch, prepared to pounce, had touched her. She knew it, she felt it. Her impulse was to scream, to rush away. But from what? It was all imaginary. Common-sense, that can be so traitorous, told her that. Then, immediately, before the wireless from the unknown, which modern occultism calls the impact, could impel her, the room was invaded. Ma Tamby, tramping in, switching on the lights, was exclaiming and gesticulating at her and at Paliser, who had followed and who was standing in the doorway. "Dearie! For God's sake! The child's asleep! In all my born days I never knew the likes of that!" Icily Cassy eyed her. "What have you there?" "Where? What? This?" Feelingly the woman exhibited a nice, big package. "Why, the things I bought for you!" "And do you for a moment suppose that I am going to carry a bundle?" "Saints alive, child! Didn't you tell me----" But now Paliser, in his cultured voice, intervened. "If I may have it?" He took it, moved to the window, leaned from it, called: "Mike! You see this? Then see too that you don't muff it." The bundle vanished. He turned to Cassy. "I telephoned to Dr. Grantly. He is a clergyman. It might seem uncivil to keep him waiting." Cassy saw him at once--a starchy old man, with a white tie and little side whiskers, who lived--and would die--in a closed circle of thought.