"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human associations of which I knew nothing. "You mean--hypnotism?" She laughed with half-sad raillery. "How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a time, the jewel called beryl was thought unrivaled as a mirror into which a magician might look to see reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections of the future. But by and by magicians grew wiser. They found any crystal would serve as well as a beryl. Later still, they found a little water poured in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a fantasm. So one wrote: '_There is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the magick is in the Seer himself._'" "Well, Desire?" "Well, Roger--if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism, then every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer." "You read of the Thing----?" "No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew It through sympathy with one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a pomander into the fire----" "I will never do that!" "No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits." "It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds the powerful spell." "You--value the braid so much?" "I value only one other beauty as highly." "Yes, Roger?" "Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid." Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing. The fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone. I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too, with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair. A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an outline. I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Michell's reality. CHAPTER XIII