The blood came into Christian’s face. He let go the knob of the door. “Eva Sorel is here?” he murmured. He pulled himself together, and opened the door to an empty room that was carpeted in red, and the walls of which were hidden by ebony cases. Almost at the same moment the opposite door was thrown open; and, followed by four gentlemen, Eva Sorel crossed the threshold. Christian stood perfectly still. “Eidolon!” Eva cried, and she folded her hands in that inimitably enthusiastic and happy gesture of hers. VIII Christian did not know the gentlemen who were with her. Their features and garments showed them to be foreigners. Accustomed to surprising events in Eva’s daily life, they regarded Christian with cool curiosity. Eva’s whole form was wrapped in a grey mole-skin coat. Her fur cap was trimmed with an aigrette of herons’ feathers, held by a marvellous ruby clasp. From under the cap her honey-coloured hair struggled forth. The wintry air had given her skin an exquisite delicate tinge of pink. With a few steps she came stormily to Christian, and her white gloved hands sought both of his. Her great and flaming looks drove his conscious joy and his perceptions of her presence back upon his soul, and fear appeared upon his features. He found himself as defenceless as a ball flung by another’s hand. He awaited his goal. “Did you buy Ignifer?” That was her first question. Since he was silent, she turned with raised brows to David Markuse. The merchant bowed and said: “I thought that I could no longer count on you, Madame. I am sorry with all my heart.” “You are right. I hesitated too long.” Eva spoke her melodious German, with its slightly foreign intonation. Turning to Christian she went on: “Perhaps it makes no difference, Eidolon, whether you have it or I. It is like a heart that ambition has turned to crystal. But you are not ambitious. If you were, we should have met here like two birds swept by a storm into the same cave. The preciousness of the stone almost makes it ghostly to me, and I would permit no one to give it to me who was not conscious of its significance. And who is there? What do they give one? Wares from a shop, that is all.” David Markuse looked at her in admiration, and nodded. “It is said to bring misfortune to its possessors,” Christian almost whispered. “Do you intend to test yourself, Eidolon, and put it to the proof? Will you challenge the demon to prevail against you? Ah, that is what allured me, too. Its name made me envious. As I held it, it seemed like the navel of Buddha, from which one cannot divert one’s thought, if one has once seen it.” She noticed that the people about them seemed to make Christian hesitate, so she took his arm, and drew him behind the curtains of a window-niche. “That it brings misfortune to people is certain,” Christian repeated mechanically. “How can I keep it, Eva, since you desired it?”