"I'll do anything—anything to please you—if only you shtay with me."
She sat down, and his arm once again encircled her.
"Now," she said, pushing his face away. "Tell me!"
Bit by bit she drew out of him the whole history of the compact with the Unknown, how in stage five, the stage they were about to enter, they would have fresh powers conferred upon them—their present power, i. e. of working spells and causing diseases, being then cancelled; how they would obtain supreme power over women when they reached the final stage—stage seven; and how the compact would be broken and their ruin brought about, should either of them marry, or should anything happen before this final stage was reached, to disunite them.
Lilian could account for a great deal now. The uncanny feeling she had always experienced in the building; the curious enigmatical shadows she had seen hovering about the doorways and flitting down the passages; the extraordinary nature of the feats and spells; Hamar's mutterings and his fury, whenever Kelson spoke to her—were no longer wholly unintelligible. But she must know all. She must be most exacting.
Finally, she got from Curtis everything there was to be got from him, and she laughed immoderately, when he excused himself on the grounds that it was all Leon's doings—Leon had told him to offer her a little compensation for the loss of her escort.
"And you have compensated me more than enough," Lilian Rosenberg said. "Now you shall have your reward," and she kissed him—kissed him three times for luck.
"But you're not going?" he said, staggering to his feet and attempting to hold her. "You're not going till the roshy morning sun shines shaucily in on us."
"Oh, yes, I am," she said. "I've had quite enough of you! Good-bye!"
And before he could prevent her, she had run to the front door and let herself out.