The other guests had come, so that there were twelve people around the Christmas Eve dinner table, among them Professor Pendragon, in whose quiet face Ruth thought she read some new resolve. Surely he must have some purpose in thus joining the others when he knew that tonight Gloria’s engagement to Prince Aglipogue would be announced, and when his illness would have made his absence seem quite plausible. He moved about so unobtrusively as to make his infirmity almost unnoticed, and now, seated beside Ruth, she found it difficult to believe that he was really paralysed. She talked to him of trivial things, ordinary dinner chat, or listened to the others, wondering within herself what secrets lay behind those smiling masks of triviality.

If Gloria and Pendragon, who had once been married, could meet thus as strangers, if she and Terry knowing their secret, or at least a part of it, could calmly pretend to the world that they did not know, might not all these other people have secrets, too—old memories that wine would not drown, meetings and partings whose pleasure or pain even time could not dim—immortal loves and hates still living, but sealed securely in coffins of conventionality?

Hundreds of candles flashed against dark walls, stained to a semblance of old age; bright scarlet holly berries nestled against their green waxen leaves, and dark, red roses shed their heavy perfume over everything. The dinner was being a great success, for there were no awkward lulls in conversation, and, while Ruth in her youth and innocence did not know it, Angela Peyton-Russell was blessed with an excellent cook, without whose services the faces of the men present would not have been so happy. Ruth did not even observe what she ate, but Prince Aglipogue, upon whose face sat heavy satisfaction, could have told to the smallest grain of condiment exactly what each dish contained.

Some one suggested that there were enough people to dance, and Angela, realizing the advantages of spontaneity in entertainment, eagerly acquiesced. They would dance for an hour or two after dinner and she would have her little “show” later; but the guests themselves would have to supply the music.

The Prince, who could be agreeable when he chose, immediately offered his services and his violin if Miss Gilchrist would accompany him with the piano.

It would all be just like an old-fashioned country dance, and “so delightfully Bohemian,” Angela thought. She was tremendously happy over the success of her Christmas party, and her husband was tremendously satisfied because of the success of his beautiful wife in the luxury of his beautiful home; but Ruth’s heart ached whenever she heard Gloria’s liquid laughter because there were tears in it, and in the steady fire of Professor Pendragon’s dark eyes she saw a flame more pitiful than the funeral pyre of a Sati.

He talked a little, very quietly of trivial things, sometimes to her, sometimes to the others, and Ruth took courage from his calmness. Only as the party grew more gay it seemed to her that under all the sparkle and the gaiety there was a silence louder than the noise, like the heavy hush that falls on nature before the thunder clap and the revealing flash have ushered in a storm. So strong was this sense of waiting that when their host stood with upraised glass, her hand instinctively went out and rested for a brief second on Professor Pendragon’s arm, as if she would shield him. Then she saw Terry looking at her, and remembering what Angela had said to her that afternoon, she quickly withdrew it. There had been no need to touch him, for Pendragon, like the others at the table, turned his attention to John Peyton-Russell, listening to his words as if they held no especial significance for him.

“I want John to make the announcement,” Angela had said. “It gives him such pleasure to make speeches. He simply adores it.”

Evidently she knew her husband’s tastes, for with the halting words and awkward phraseology of the man accustomed to addressing nothing gayer than a board of directors’ meeting, he stumbled at great length and with obvious self-satisfaction through a speech in which he proposed that they drink to the approaching marriage of Gloria Mayfield and Prince Aglipogue.

His words were greeted with enthusiasm by all those to whom they meant nothing except that a more or less famous actress was to marry a fat foreign prince. Ruth heard a woman near her whisper to the man at her right:

“Will this make her third or her fourth?”

And the response:

“I’ve lost count.”

The Prince was responding now—something stilted and elaborate, but Ruth did not hear. The dinner had become a nightmare. She wanted to escape. Concealed in the girdle of her frock was the little revolver that Terry had given her. She could feel its weight, and it comforted her.

Somehow the dinner ended and Ruth with the others followed Angela to a drawing-room that had been denuded of rugs for dancing. A few months before Ruth would have thought all these people charming, the women beautiful, the men distinguished. Now they were repulsive to her. How could they listen unprotesting to the announcement that Gloria, the beautiful and good (no power on earth could have persuaded Ruth that Gloria was not good), was to marry an ugly ogre like Prince Aglipogue?

His fat face wreathed in smiles now, he stood, tucking his violin under his third chin, and then he played—he played, and even Ruth forgot the source of the music. It was not Prince Aglipogue that played, but some slender, dark Hungarian gypsy whose music was addressed to an unattainable princess, ’neath whose window he stood, bathed in moonlight. She threw a rose to him and he crushed it against a heart that broke with joyous pain of loving.

Some little time he played before any one danced; then the insensate callousness of people who “must be amused” triumphed over the music and the stupid gyrations of the modern dance which every one had been forced to learn in self-protection—for those who do not dance must watch, and the insult to the eyes is too great to be borne.

Perhaps after all the music of Aglipogue’s violin did move them; perhaps it was only that they had dined too well; perhaps because the company was so small that twice men found themselves dancing with their own wives; for any, or all, or none of these reasons, they tired of dancing early and were ready for Angela’s much-advertised “show.”

Terry had been dancing with Ruth, and she knew that there was something that he wanted to say to her. She guessed that it was something about Gloria, but she did not want to talk to Terry about Gloria. He could not understand and she regretted that she had tried to make him understand. She could not discuss Gloria with any one, not even Terry. She knew what she had to do and her whole mind was set on that. If she talked to Terry his lack of faith would weaken her purpose. She left him now, abruptly, ignoring the look of reproach in his eyes, and walked beside Professor Pendragon, who was moving slowly on his crutches, a little behind the others. She meant to stay close beside him through the rest of the night.

In the room that had been the scene of the children’s party that afternoon a stage had been put up—a low platform covered with a black velvet carpet and divided in half by a black curtain on which the signs of the Zodiac were embroidered in gold thread. The Christmas tree was still in the room, but unlighted and shoved away into an obscure corner. To Ruth it looked pitiful, like an old man, Father Christmas perhaps, who sat back watching with sorrowful eyes the unchristmas-like amusements of modern humanity. There was a piano on the stage. For a woman who was herself “unmusical,” Angela had more pianos in her house than any one in the world, Ruth decided.

In a semicircle, very close to the stage, chairs had been placed, and here the company seated themselves, with much more or less witty comment about what they might expect from behind the mysterious curtain. Behind them was another row of chairs, which, carrying out Mr. Peyton-Russell’s “lord of the manor” pose, the household servants had been invited to occupy. They came, with quiet curiosity, one or two of the maids stifling yawns that led Ruth to suspect they would much rather have gone to bed.

The semi-circular arrangement of the chairs made those at the ends of the row much closer to the stage than those in the centre. On one of these end chairs sat Professor Pendragon, his crutches resting beside him on the floor, and next to him sat Ruth. Then came some of the dinner guests, the other house guests, including Gloria and Prince Aglipogue, being at the farther end of the row; the room was dimly lighted and the stage itself had only one light, a ghostly green lamp, seemingly suspended in the middle of the black curtain, in the shape of a waning moon. Instinctively voices were hushed and people talked to each other in whispers. Only Ruth and Professor Pendragon did not speak. She could not know of what he was thinking, but she knew that in herself thought was suspended. She sat watching her hand clasping the tiny revolver concealed in her girdle.

John Peyton-Russell then announced that Miss Gilchrist (if she had a Christian name no one ever heard it) had consented to recite some of her own poems. The relaxation of the company, almost visible, was half disappointment, half relief. The stage set had led them to expect something unusual, and they were only going to be bored.

Miss Gilchrist seated herself at the piano, on which she accompanied herself. Ruth did not know if her words were as bad as her music, for she did not understand them, and from certain whispered comments she knew that no one else did, with the possible exception of Miss Gilchrist herself.

Some one else—a pretty, blond young thing with a “parlour voice,” sang an old English Christmas carol that sounded like sacrilege. Then Prince Aglipogue sang. Ruth never hated him so much as when he sang because then as at no other time he created the illusion of an understanding soul. His painting was obvious trickery; his violin playing of a quality that did not discredit the composer, for he had been trained to a parrot-like perfection; but when he sang he created the illusion of greatness—Purcell, Brahms, Richard Strauss—it did not matter whose music he sang; one felt that he understood, and it angered Ruth that when she closed her eyes she forgot the singer and could understand how Gloria might marry and even love the possessor of this voice.

Aglipogue always maintained that the war had ruined his career. He had an opera engagement in Germany in 1914, and when the war came he could not go to fill it. So he had remained in the States, and his amazing versatility had enabled him to earn a living as an artist. Now the end of the war had opened new opportunities and he was going to South America in concert work. Ruth had never quite believed his boasting. She did not think that any man’s work could be bigger than himself—that any artist could express something bigger than that contained in his own soul; and the soul of Prince Aglipogue was a weak, cowardly, hateful thing. Yet his voice moved her, attracted and repelled, cast a spell over her, exotic, fascinating, yet sinister as if the music were only a prelude to the wicked necromancy of the Hindoo that was to follow.

The voice ceased, and Prince Aglipogue, alone of all the company unmoved by his own voice, resumed his place at Gloria’s side. For a brief breathing minute no one moved. John Peyton-Russell seemed to have forgotten his cue. Then he rose and told them that the real surprise was to come, an exhibition of magic by Karkotaka, a famous Indian Mahatma. It was the first time that Ruth had ever heard George’s Hindoo name and she suspected that it was no more his real name than was George. She thought she remembered an Indian story in which a certain Karkotaka figured as king of the serpents, a sort of demi-god.

All eyes were on the dark curtain now, but if they expected it to rise or to be drawn aside they were disappointed. Instead, it parted silently and Karkotaka, George, glided through, dressed not in the costume of a Brahman, but of a mediÆval prince of India. Instead of a turban he wore a high jewelled headdress. A single piece of cloth, dark blue in colour and gemmed with small gold stars, was draped about him, leaving one arm and shoulder bare, and descending to his feet, which were encased in jewelled sandals. Even Ruth, who had expected something extraordinary, gasped as he stood bowing before them. The dignity that had shown even through his servant’s dress was now one hundred times more apparent. He moved with a lithe grace as became the king of the serpents, slowly moving his bare bronze arms until it seemed to Ruth they coiled and writhed like living snakes. Under his headdress his eyes gleamed more brightly than the jewels above.

He had come upon the stage with nothing in his hands, and except for the piano it was empty, certainly empty of all the paraphernalia of legerdemain. Then, suddenly he held in his hand a small brass bowl. He made a sign to some one in the back of the room, who had evidently been detailed to help him, and a servant gave him a carafe of ice water. This he set down beside the bowl. Then he offered the bowl to the spectators for examination. Ruth noticed that he was so close to them that it was not even necessary to step down from the low stage. Two or three men who “Never saw a trick yet I couldn’t see through” examined the bowl with sceptical eyes and pronounced it quite ordinary. Then George poured ice water from the carafe into the bowl and again offered it for inspection. Several people touched it with their hands and pronounced the water with which it was quite filled to be ice cold. Then George set the bowl down before him and covered it with a small silk handkerchief. He waved his hands over it three times, removed the handkerchief, and they saw steam rising from the ice water. Again George offered the bowl for inspection. Terry dipped his fingers into the water and as quickly removed them with an exclamation of pain. The water was almost too hot to touch.

Then from nowhere appeared the little mound of sand and watering pot indispensable to any self-respecting Indian fakir. Several people whispered, “The mango tree—that’s an old one.” Throughout George had not spoken one word. He seemed to be unconscious of his audience except when he asked them to examine something. To Ruth there seemed in his studied leisure a conscious effort to disguise haste. He bent now over the sand, pouring water on it and pressing it up into a little hillock of mud; then he covered it with a cloth, beneath which his hands were still busy. Then he moved away and seemed to be muttering charms. When he returned and removed the cloth there was the little mango sprout with its two leathery leaves. Again the plant was covered, next time to appear several inches tall with more leaves, and so on until it had reached a height of more than a foot.

It was all very wonderful, as was also the fountain of water that sprang from the tip of his index finger, until he seemed to chide it, whereupon it disappeared from his hand and was seen spouting from the top of the piano. Dissatisfied, he lit a candle and, calling to the water, made it spring from the candle flame itself. Then he called again, spread out his arms, and the stream, leaving the still lighted candle, separated and sprang from his five outspread fingertips.

In an ordinary music hall the people who watched would doubtless have conceded that it was clever, but here in an ordinary drawing-room in an ordinary country house in the Berkshires on Christmas Eve, the performance became something more than legerdemain. It bordered on the supernatural and they sat silent and fascinated.

Suddenly with an annoyed gesture he threw up his hands, apparently throwing off the water, which instantaneously began to flow in myriad streams from his headdress, reminding Ruth of Shiva, who, with his hair, separated the flow of the sacred river when it came down from the Himalayas. George removed his headdress, disclosing a close white turban beneath, and the flow of the fountain died as unceremoniously as it had begun.

The servant who was standing nearby waiting for his signal now handed George an ordinary walking stick, which George silently offered for inspection. After some examination it was agreed that it was a very ordinary walking stick indeed. George whirled it about his head and dropped it before his feet—it was a writhing snake. Several women screamed. Fountains were pretty, but they were in no mood for snakes. George picked up the snake again and whirled it around his head. It was an ordinary walking stick, though the men hesitated to re-examine it for proof.

George balanced the stick on his finger, holding his arm out straight before him, and it began to writhe and twist, a snake with open, hissing mouth and darting tongue. He dropped it—the same women screamed again, then laughed hysterically as they saw the common piece of wood before them.

“This sort of thing is all very well from a distance, but I don’t really care for snakes at such close quarters,” Ruth heard some one whisper.

Ruth glanced at Professor Pendragon beside her, but his eyes were fixed on George. There was an eager light in his eyes as if he, too, were waiting, and his firm set lips were curved in a smile. Again her hand sought Terry’s gift. If all these people here were the victims of hypnotic illusions, she at least must keep one corner of her brain free and untouched. Pendragon’s presence there was proof that he had decided to fight, and she must help him. In the semi-darkness of the room she could not see Gloria, but she heard her laughter like thin bells over snow-covered hills—it seemed to echo round the room, and she fancied that George, bending over the task of clearing away the things with which he had been working, winced as he heard it, as if the frost of her mirth had bitten into his heart.

The stage was all clear again now, and he bowed deeply before them three times. There was a restless movement among the watchers. Perhaps they thought this was the end, but Ruth waited, her heart high up in her throat and standing still with fear that she would somehow fail to do the thing she had decided upon.

George moved slowly backward toward the curtain and parted it with his two hands, still facing them. Then reaching back he grasped a heavy object behind him and dragged it into the centre of the stage, the curtains closing behind him. He stood back now and they could see what looked like a large ebony chest. He knelt before it, and Ruth could see that there was more of reverence than utility in his attitude, as he lifted the deep lid that seemed to divide the chest in half. Before her eyes she saw forming the altar she had twice seen before. The side of the lifted top made a wide platform. It was there that It would lie. From a compartment in the lifted half he took an antique lamp, which he set on what now looked like the base of the altar. Ruth had removed the revolver from her girdle—the cold metal saved her from screaming aloud as George lit the lamp—a pale blue flame from which, on the instant, heavy, odorous spirals of smoke began to rise, filling the silent room with the insidious perfume of idolatry. For a moment the smoke seemed to blind her eyes. Then she saw—