In truth, both host and guest were self-absorbed in emotion roused by the play, but emotion quite antipodal. His shaved face showed plainly his astonishment; worked with his darkling rage. Hers lifted roofward a glory that so outshone the super-lighted dome as to suggest the far-distant source of that radiance which no Avernian device might dim.
“It was not what I expected—the picture,” Satan remarked, with ominous restraint. “The titling was good, but the plot didn’t fit. The damned turn-turtle didn’t turn!”
Dolores was too charged with an inspired decision to realize his displeasure. She turned to him; stretched out her hand; touched his arm.
“You said you could put me in spiritual connection with the women of Earth,” she reminded him. “Could you also with men—with John?”
“And why, pray, with John?”
The cruelty of the smile which had been so charming awhile back should have warned her, but she must have been blinded by that light from within.
“Didn’t you see how he suffered from self-reproach? Don’t you realize that he still is suffering?” She sighed in her voice of sad winds. “Surely you gathered from the picture that all those age-long minutes of the time I died from doubt, he still loved me—that he loves me now? I want to implore his forgiveness.”
Her smile, timid from its rarity, strained to disappear, although she tried to hold it.
“I’ve done my best to please you,” she wheedled nervously. “Won’t you do this for me—just free my spirit for one short hour by the time of Earth?”
“So! You’d rather go back to that puny mortal than on and on—with me?”