"No matter. I quite understand. If you did wish to find yourself in the picture," he went on with emphasis, "you would find yourself there. I knew you were psychic, and all you tell me makes me more certain than ever."
Patricia shuddered. "Don't talk about these uncanny things. I don't like them: they make me uncomfortable."
Theodore laughed in a constrained manner, and with a spoon threw some powder on the charcoal. At once a thick bluish smoke arose like a column, and a strong perfume spread through the chill atmosphere of the room. "A pleasant scent, is it not, Miss Carrol?" said Dane, restoring the box to its cupboard and fixing his eyes on the girl's face. "It is made after a recipe of Moses. 'Sweet spices, stacte, and onycha and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight.' You will find those words in Exodus. Result of mingling such things a sacred incense, as this is. Smell it; breathe it; the perfume is beautiful."
It was assuredly a wonderful smell, but too overpoweringly sweet. Patricia drew in a deep breath through her nostrils, and the fragrance seemed to impregnate her whole being. She began to feel languid and singularly content, and unwilling to move. And all the time Dane's vividly blue eyes were fixed on her face. They seemed to be sapphire flames. But as she breathed the perfume and looked into his deep eyes, she heard a movement and removed her own eyes--with an effort, as it appeared to her now confused senses. She then saw that Mara was on her feet, moving towards the door. But not as an ordinary human being would walk. She rather appeared to be dancing in a rhythmic way, swaying from side to side, and waving her arms gracefully. With clasped hands she seemed to be shaking some invisible instrument. Theodore put out his hand to stay her, but she waved him aside and danced--if it could be called dancing--through the door. As she disappeared, Patricia tried vainly to rise.
"I must go to her! she is ill!" murmured Patricia, and then fell back in the chair again, enveloped--as it seemed to her--in a dense cloud of perfumed smoke. Her eyes closed, her breath seemed to leave her, and then she appeared to go away to a league-long goal.
Where she went, or how she went, she could not say. Her inward perceptions were only conscious of a vividly brilliant atmosphere through which she passed as swiftly as a swallow. And far away she heard a thin voice, like one speaking through a telephone, bidding her search for the danger. It was the voice of Theodore.
But as Patricia, in her dream or trance, or whatever was her state of being, passed swiftly on, soaring to some unknown end, she became aware that her flight was being stopped. She faltered, paused, then turned, and came swiftly back with the speed of light. Her senses returned to feel water being poured on her forehead, and to feel also the cool night air. She was out of doors, and in the arms of a man, who bathed her face.
"Don't move; don't move," said the man anxiously; "you have fainted."
"Who are you?" asked Patricia, gazing upward at the handsome face.
"I am Basil," said the man, "and my brother has been trying his devilries on you."