"All kinds of poor people have blinded themselves making these pretty things," she said, as Sir Charles came up beside her. "My only apparent usefulness is to buy them, I suppose." He offered her one of the automatic pistols. "It's loaded," he cautioned her, solemnly. "What an odd gift!" she said, surprised, taking it gingerly into her gloved hand. "Is it really for me? And why?" "Are you timid about firearms?" he asked, jestingly. "No.... I don't know anything about them--except to keep my finger away from the trigger. I know enough to do that." He supposed that she also was jesting, and her fastidious handling of the weapon amused him. And when she asked him if it was safe to carry in her muff, he assured her very gravely that she might venture to do so. "Turn it loose on the first burglar," he added, "and his regeneration will begin in all the forty-nine odours of sanctity." Strelsa smiled without comprehending. Cyrille Caldera was standing just beyond them, apparently interested in antique jewellery, trying the effect of various linked gems against her lilac gown, and inviting Quarren's opinion of the results. Their backs were turned; Ricky's blond head seemed to come unreasonably close to Cyrille's at moments. Once Mrs. Caldera thoughtlessly laid a pretty hand on his arm as though in emphasis. Their unheard conversation was evidently amusing them. Strelsa's smile remained unaltered; people were coming constantly to pay their respects to her; and they lingered, attracted and amused by her unusual gaiety, charm, and wit. Her mind seemed suddenly to have become crystal clear; her gay retorts to lively badinage, and her laughing epigrams were deliciously spontaneous. A slight exhilaration, without apparent reason, was transforming her, swiftly, into an incarnation entirely unknown even to herself. Conscious of a wonderful mood never before experienced, perfectly aware of her unusual brilliancy and beauty, surprised and interested in the sudden revelation of powers within her still unexercised, she felt herself, for the first time in her life, in contact with things heretofore impalpable--and, in spirit, with delicate fingers, she gathered up instinctively those intangible threads with which man is guided as surely as though driven in chains of steel. And all the while she was aware of Quarren's boyish head bending almost too near to Cyrille Caldera's over the trays of antique jewels; and all the while she was conscious of the transfiguration in process--that not only a new self was being evolved for her out of the débris of the old, but that the world itself was changing around her--and a new Heaven and a new earth were being born--and a new hell.