over. I was not learned enough to tell what
the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange,
outcast academies of astrology, alchemy--magic, in short. It contained
what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled
round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the
gold.

Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom?
What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why
muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of
language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from
even the college-bred Phillida's?

She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her
wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and
the warning come to others of our household group? Vere, Phillida, the
Swedish woman, Cristina--all had lived here for weeks without any
experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the
house. The danger, then, was only for me?

Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?

The gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On
impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow
eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with
convulsive pleasure, it breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the
scent so familiar to my own senses.

"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from
it, either, would you?"

Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed
toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the
pomander in my waistcoat pocket.

I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing which had visited me.
Better confront that fact! It was real. Only, real in what sense? What
human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so
hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight,
without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain?

Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at
by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and
magnificent charlatans, these many centuries? Were there other races
between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose
destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives
and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these
beings, inimical t