ou till you do!" Lilian Rosenberg said.

"I'll make you."

"Oh, no, you won't," Lilian Rosenberg cried, disengaging herself from
his grasp, and rising. "Don't you dare touch me. I'm going."

Curtis watched her with a helpless grin. Then he suddenly cried out,
"Come back! Come back, I shay!"

"Well, will you do as I want?" Lilian Rosenberg said.

"I'll do anything--anything to please you--if only you shtay with me."

She sat down, and his arm once again encircled her.

"Now," she said, pushing his face away. "Tell me!"

Bit by bit she drew out of him the whole history of the compact with
the Unknown, how in stage five, the stage they were about to enter,
they would have fresh powers conferred upon them--their present power,
_i.e._ of working spells and causing diseases, being then cancelled;
how they would obtain supreme power over women when they reached the
final stage--stage seven; and how the compact would be broken and
their ruin brought about, should either of them marry, or should
anything happen before this final stage was reached, to disunite them.

Lilian could account for a great deal now. The uncanny feeling she had
always experienced in the building; the curious enigmatical shadows
she had seen hovering about the doorways and flitting down the
passages; the extraordinary nature of the feats and spells; Hamar's
mutterings and his fury, whenever Kelson spoke to her--were no longer
wholly unintelligible. But she must know all. She must be most
exacting.

Finally, she got from Curtis everything there was to be got from him,
and she laughed immoderately, when he excused himself on the grounds
that it was all Leon's doings--Leon had told him to offer her a little
compensation for the loss of her escort.

"And you have compensated me more than enough," Lilian Rosenberg said.
"Now you shall have your reward," and she kissed him--kissed him three
times for luck.

"But you're not going?" he said, staggering to his feet and attempting
to hold her. "You're not going till the roshy morning sun shines
shaucily in on us."

"Oh, yes, I am," she said. "I've had quite enough of you! Good-bye!"

And before he could prevent her, she had run to the front door and let
herself out.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN HYDE PARK AT NIGHT

But now that Lilian Rosenberg was possessed of all this information
respecting the trio, she was once again in doubt how to act, or
whether to act at all. Supposing she were to attempt