Dolores understood that the struggles of the spirit-dame and the wail that came from the depths were in resistance of his mental brutality. Yet she, too, was moved to action by a thought.
Stepping close to the edge, she contested Satan’s clutch of the old shade; drew her back; bade her begone.
“Lift your prayers upward, mother,” she breathed in a voice of the night-winds. “I have heard that only God Himself can save.”
Her shoulders were seized in a fiendish clutch.
“Enough of that only-God drivel! You trying to checkmate me?”
As she was twisted around to meet the Mind-Master’s glare, she shook at the clash of his will against her own; knew herself conquered; realized that, without being dragged, she was returning to the rim of the Wantons’ Well. She was going over ... over....
“Might as well end it now as later on,” Satan snarled. “How are you going to like it down there, Dolores Trent—down where your world has sent you—down where there is no difference?”
All was over then, thought the spirit-girl. And her baby——
She had heard his laughter quite a while before she began to understand. Opening her eyes, she saw that she still stood on hella-firma. In time she must have been willed back from the brink. Nearby sat His Majesty, shaken by unholy mirth.