nriot helped him deliberately.

"Drawing what you see, yes," Vance replied, the voice turned graver in
spite of himself. "She wants--she hopes to catch the outlines of
anything that happens--"

"Comes."

"Exactly. Determine the shape of anything that comes. You may remember
your conversation of the other night with her. She is very certain of
success."

This was direct enough at any rate. It was as formal as an invitation to
a dinner, and as guileless. The thing he thought he wanted lay within
his reach. He had merely to say yes. He did say yes; but first he looked
about him instinctively, as for guidance. He looked at the stars
twinkling high above the distant Libyan Plateau; at the long arms of the
Desert, gleaming weirdly white in the moonlight, and reaching towards
him down every opening between the houses; at the heavy mass of the
Mokattam Hills, guarding the Arabian Wilderness with strange, peaked
barriers, their sand-carved ridges dark and still above the Wadi Hof.

These questionings attracted no response. The Desert watched him, but it
did not answer. There was only the shrill whistling cry of the lizards,
and the sing-song of a white-robed Arab gliding down the sandy street.
And through these sounds he heard his own voice answer: "I will
come--yes. But how can I help? Tell me what you propose--your plan?"

And the face of Vance, seen plainly in the electric glare, betrayed his
satisfaction. The opposing things in the fellow's mind of darkness
fought visibly in his eyes and skin. The sordid motive, planning a
dreadful act, leaped to his face, and with it a flash of this other
yearning that sought unearthly knowledge, perhaps believed it too. No
wonder there was conflict written on his features.

Then all expression vanished again; he leaned forward, lowering his
voice.

"You remember our conversation about there being types of life too vast
to manifest in a single body, and my aunt's belief that these were known
to certain of the older religious systems of the world?"

"Perfectly."

"Her experiment, then, is to bring one of these great Powers back--we
possess the sympathetic ritual that can rouse some among them to
activity--and win it down into the sphere of our minds, our minds
heightened, you see, by ceremonial to that stage of clairvoyant vision
which can perceive them."

"And then?" They might have been discussing the building of a house, so
naturally followed answer upon question. But the wh