t bow to her and make some kind of obeisance. The impulse was
fierce and irresistible, as of long habit. He glanced quickly about him.
There was no one there. Then he deliberately inclined his head toward
her. He bowed.

"Enfin! M'sieur s'est donc decide. C'est bien alors. J'en suis
contente."

Her words came to him sonorously as through a great open space.

Then the great figure came suddenly across the flagged hall at him and
seized his trembling hands. Some overpowering force moved with her and
caught him.

"On pourrait faire un p'tit tour ensemble, n'est-ce pas? Nous y allons
cette nuit et il faut s'exercer un peu d'avance pour cela. Ilse, Ilse,
viens donc ici. Viens vite!"

And she whirled him round in the opening steps of some dance that seemed
oddly and horribly familiar. They made no sound on the stones, this
strangely assorted couple. It was all soft and stealthy. And presently,
when the air seemed to thicken like smoke, and a red glare as of flame
shot through it, he was aware that some one else had joined them and
that his hand the mother had released was now tightly held by the
daughter. Ilse had come in answer to the call, and he saw her with
leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, clothed in tattered vestiges
of some curious garment, beautiful as the night, and horribly, odiously,
loathsomely seductive.

"To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!" they cried. "On to the Witches'
Sabbath!"

Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the women on each side of him,
to the wildest measure he had ever imagined, yet which he dimly,
dreadfully remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and went out,
and they were left in total darkness. And the devil woke in his heart
with a thousand vile suggestions and made him afraid.

Suddenly they released his hands and he heard the voice of the mother
cry that it was time, and they must go. Which way they went he did not
pause to see. He only realised that he was free, and he blundered
through the darkness till he found the stairs and then tore up them to
his room as though all hell was at his heels.

He flung himself on the sofa, with his face in his hands, and groaned.
Swiftly reviewing a dozen ways of immediate escape, all equally
impossible, he finally decided that the only thing to do for the moment
was to sit quiet and wait. He must see what was going to happen. At
least in the privacy of his own bedroom he would be fairly safe. The
door was locked. He crosse