enberg was his solacing angel. Utterly regardless of
appearances--she did not exaggerate when she said, "I am not
conventional; I don't care twopence for Mrs. Grundy." She visited him
in his garret, and she seldom went empty-handed.

"I don't want your things," he rudely expostulated, when she loaded
his table with cold chicken, jellies and potted meats. "I'm not
starving."

"Yes, you are," she said, "and you've got to eat all I bring you." And
she made him eat. She made him, too, go for walks with her, and she
insisted that he should go with her on Saturday afternoons for long
rambles in the country, knowing all the time that Kelson was eating
his heart out for love of her, and prophesying all kinds of terrible
happenings to himself, unless she returned his affections.

Up to this point, at all events, Shiel did not allow his friendship
with Lilian to blind him to the fact that he was cultivating her
acquaintance with a set object. He frequently sounded her to see how
much she knew of the inner workings of the Firm, and he satisfied
himself that she knew very little.

"They never discuss their powers in my presence," she told him, "but I
see them do very queer things, Mr. Kelson seldom walks to his room, he
flies. He takes a little jump into the air, moves his arms and legs as
if he were swimming, and flies upstairs and along the corridor. And
what do you think happened the other day? Some men were carrying into
the building a huge, oak chest and several large pictures that Mr.
Hamar had bought at a sale, when Mr. Kelson arrived on the scene.

"'There is no need to lift these things,' he said to the men, 'put
them down.' He then made some rapid signs in the air and muttered
something; whereupon the chest and pictures rose in the air, and
followed him into the building, and up the stairs to their respective
quarters."

"The men must have been surprised," Shiel said.

"Surprised!" Lilian Rosenberg ejaculated. "They were simply bowled
over, and looked at one another with such idiotic expressions in their
bulging eyes and gaping mouths, that I nearly died with laughter."

"And you've no idea how Kelson did that trick?"

"None, excepting, of course, that the signs he made, and what he said,
must have had something to do with it."

It was on the tip of Shiel's tongue to ask her, if she would try and
find out for him, but he checked himself. Even at this juncture of
their friendship he dare not appear too curious.