"What do you mean?"
"You have transferred the selfish energies to a higher and more fluid plane."
"Mara!" Theodore came close to the girl and peered curiously into her pale face with vivid curiosity. "Who told you that?"
"It came to me."
"You don't know what you are talking about," he said roughly.
"Perhaps not," she replied dreamily; "but what I mean is plain to you. I can see your soul shivering with shame at being forced to obey the animal."
Theodore shrugged his great shoulders and looked at Patricia. "I sometimes think that Mara is mad," he remarked impolitely; "do you understand?"
"No," answered Patricia truthfully; "what does she mean?"
Mara slipped off the writing-table whereon she had perched herself, and pointed one lean finger at Theodore. "I mean that he is an utterly selfish man, who strives to sweep aside all who stand in his path. By egotism he isolates himself from the Great Whole, and wishes to dwell apart in self-conscious power." She faced Dane, and in the twilight looked like a wavering shadow. "There is nothing you would not do to obtain power, and for that reason your punishment will be greater than that of others."
"Why?" asked Theodore tartly, "seeing that all desire power?"