ercome me. She was about to die--by violence. An assassin was
coming--he was near her. She could hardly breathe. It was almost beyond
her power to rise from the bed and search the apartment, but she did
this. There was nothing, and yet the terror persisted. She huddled
herself under the bed-covers and waited, saying her prayers. And when I
entered the apartment and came down the passage--so slowly, so
stealthily!--she _knew_ it was the murderer coming to kill her. And when
I paused at her bedside--how long it was before I drew the curtain!--she
almost died again, waiting for the blow.

Of course I did not leave Penelope after this, but comforted her and
prayed with her and rejoiced that her madness was past. Then we tried to
sleep, locked in each other's arms, but, shortly after six, there came a
timid knock at the door and, all of a tremble, Jeanne entered,
Penelope's French maid who had come with her mistress to Roberta's party
and had occupied a small room overhead, and she told us with hysterical
sobs that she had not closed her eyes all night for ghastly visions of
Penelope murdered in her bed.

Now it is easy to scoff at premonitions and haunting fears, but there
can be no doubt that on this night an evil spirit was present in
Roberta's apartment, a hideous, destructive entity that came
and--wavered in its deadly purpose against Penelope, then--_manifested
to Roberta Vallis in the adjoining apartment_, for when I went in
there a little later I found Roberta--she who had mocked God and defied
the powers of evil--I found her in her bed, her face convulsed with a
look of indescribable terror--_dead!_

The hotel doctor reported it as a case of heart failure, but Doctor
William Owen, who has an honest mind, acknowledged that all this was
beyond his understanding. This tragedy made him realize at last that
there may be sinister agencies in us and about us that cannot be dealt
with by mere medical skill. And, at my pleading, he directed that Mrs.
Wells be placed immediately in the care of Dr. Edgar Leroy.

Thank God, my precious Penelope will receive psychic treatment before it
is too late. There is no other hope for her but this.

CHAPTER XIV

POSSESSED

(_From Penelope's Diary_)

_At Dr. Leroy's Sanitarium._

I understand why people kill themselves. There was an hour last night,
that horrible hour between four and five (I have seen so many hospital
patients die then), when I was resolved to kill myse