as far above pettiness and spitefulness as every man should be, but as
every man is not."

"I wasn't like it before I knew Mrs. Chumley and--Don."

"You were always true to yourself, and there is no higher creed. Flamby,
I have received some papers which Don left with Nevin to be delivered to
me. You thought me so mean and lowly, so ignorant and so vainglorious
that I could judge a girl worthy of Don's love to be unworthy of my
friendship. You were right. No! please don't speak--yet You were right,
but you suffered in silence, and you did not hate me. I don't ask you to
forgive me, I only thank you very, very sincerely."

Flamby held a handkerchief tightly between her teeth, and stared fixedly
at a photograph of one of her propaganda pictures which hung on the wall
to the right of the bedroom door.

"There on your bureau," continued Paul, "lies my second book. It
contains the key to mysteries which have baffled men since the world
began. I do not say it with vanity; vanity is dead within me. I say it
with fear, for _I_ did not unravel those mysteries; I did not write that
book."

"Oh," whispered Flamby.

"Yes--again you saw clearly, little wonder-girl. Don has told me how you
traced the black thread running through the woof of _The Gates_, and
that black thread was _truth_. It is truth that slays and truth that
damns. Not for a million ages can men be sufficiently advanced to know
and to live. Hypocrisy triumphs; for the few is the fruit of
knowledge--for the multitude, the husk. I have seen the Light of the
World, but I stand in the shadow. Yet from the bottom of my heart I
thank God that at the price of happiness I have bought escape from a sin
more deadly than that which any man has committed. Only by renouncing
the world may we win the world. This is the lesson of Golgotha. Behind
the curtain of the War move forces of incalculable evil which first
found expression in Germany to-day as they found expression there in the
Middle Ages. It was in a Rhine monastery that the first Black Mass was
sung. It was in a Rhine town that Lucifer opened his new campaign
against mankind; it was in German soil that he planted his seed. Flamby,
I tell you that the Hohenzollerns are a haunted race, ruling a haunted
land, doomed and cursed. About them are obscene spirits wearing the
semblance of men--of men gross and heavy, and leaden-eyed; and upon each
brow is the mark of the Bull, the sigil of Hell."

Flamby watched him, liste