At the burn of dry tears within her eyelids, she remembered Satan’s exultation over the weeping angels. Even should she weep, her tears, like the crone-soul’s, would be salt—would tantalize, rather than refresh. She choked back her emotion.
“A pretended interest in one’s escort is more gracious than none at all.”
As from a distance, she heard Satan’s reproach. Recalling her thoughts, she concentrated on what he was saying.
“How they hate me, yet how much more they fear me, my fiends! Certainly I have the advantage over rulers of Earth in needing no secret service protectorate. Unfortunately for my subjects, I am immortal. They know that they cannot kill the Master Mind, that mine is the only spirit in Gehenna to which achievement is possible. That fact I prove to them hourly through their sufferings. They call me The Destroyer, yet am I their one great hope of salvation.”
The boast puzzled Dolores. “The Destroyer a saviour?”
He showed surprise at her surprise.
“You don’t like me, my dear shade, or you’d show a more credulous interest in my small confidences about myself.”
“I am interested, really.”
“Although you don’t like me? Never mind. I could make you do so—could make you love me if I chose. But I don’t wish to make you. Hell knows I’ve got my pride!”
He gave up to an attack of his lonely chortles. Evidently he had “amused” himself again. Next moment he seized the point of his Vandyke and straightened his countenance to excessive length.