But this was an untruth--they did interest him--and very much, too. He seldom, indeed, thought of anything else. Had Gladys fallen in love with Bromley Burnham? Could she resist the fascinations of so handsome a man? He did not, of course, pay any heed to the gossip that coupled her name with dukes and other notorieties. He knew Gladys too well for that, but when he saw her thus photographed, clasped in the arms of Bromley Burnham, he had grave apprehensions. He longed to see her--to ask her if she were still free; but his every attempt failed. She always avoided him, and there was no other alternative save to further his scheme--his scheme for crushing the Sorcery Company--and to hope for the best. And in these dark days of his life, when he was tormented by the yellow demon of jealousy, and at the same time endured hunger, Lilian Rosenberg was his solacing angel. Utterly regardless of appearances--she did not exaggerate when she said, "I am not conventional; I don't care twopence for Mrs. Grundy." She visited him in his garret, and she seldom went empty-handed. "I don't want your things," he rudely expostulated, when she loaded his table with cold chicken, jellies and potted meats. "I'm not starving." "Yes, you are," she said, "and you've got to eat all I bring you." And she made him eat. She made him, too, go for walks with her, and she insisted that he should go with her on Saturday afternoons for long rambles in the country, knowing all the time that Kelson was eating his heart out for love of her, and prophesying all kinds of terrible happenings to himself, unless she returned his affections. Up to this point, at all events, Shiel did not allow his friendship with Lilian to blind him to the fact that he was cultivating her acquaintance with a set object. He frequently sounded her to see how much she knew of the inner workings of the Firm, and he satisfied himself that she knew very little. "They never discuss their powers in my presence," she told him, "but I see them do very queer things, Mr. Kelson seldom walks to his room, he flies. He takes a little jump into the air, moves his arms and legs as if he were swimming, and flies upstairs and along the corridor. And what do you think happened the other day? Some men were carrying into the building a huge, oak chest and several large pictures that Mr. Hamar had bought at a sale, when Mr. Kelson arrived on the scene. "'There is no need to lift these things,' he said to the men, 'put them down.' He then made some rapid signs in the air and muttered something; whereupon the chest and pictures rose in the air, and followed him into the building, and up the stairs to their respective quarters." "The men must have been surprised," Shiel said. "Surprised!" Lilian Rosenberg ejaculated. "They were simply bowled over, and looked at one another with such idiotic expressions in their bulging eyes and gaping mouths, that I nearly died with laughter."