A while ago the strange actions of this fantastic household had keenly amused him, for Rowland was a product of an unimaginative age, a Nomad of the Cities, bent upon a great errand which had nothing to do with priesthoods. But now the startling sequence of events, culminating in the mention of his mother's name and the death of Ivanitch had made him aware that the arm of coincidence was long, or that Destiny was playing a hand with so sure an intention that he, Phil Rowland, for all his materialism, must accept the facts and what came of them. Destiny! Perhaps. For a year Rowland had believed it his destiny to be killed in battle, instead of which he had lived the life of a dog in a prison camp, and escaped into freedom. But a priest of a secret order, ordained twenty-seven years ago when in the smug security of the orderly Rowland house in West Fifty-ninth Street, he had been born--the thing was unthinkable! But there before him, treading soberly, her slender figure clad in a modish frock which must have come from the Rue de la Paix, was Tanya; and there behind him, in the arms of Picard, Issad and the shock-headed man, was the dead Ivanitch, in token that the prediction of the legends of Nemi had been fulfilled.
He followed the girl into the house and upstairs, where she helped him remove his coat and shirt and bathed and anointed the slight cut in his shoulder. If in his mind he was uncertain as to the judgment of the Twentieth Century upon his extraordinary adventure, he was very sure that Tanya Korasov at least was very real, her fingers very soft, her touch brave, and her expressions of solicitude very genuine. And it was sufficient for Rowland to believe that an intelligence such as that which burned behind her fine level brows, could not be guilty of the worship of false gods. Intelligent, sane and feminine to her finger tips.... The sanity of Tanya more even than the madness of Ivanitch gave credence to the story that she was to tell him....
"Thanks, Mademoiselle," he said gently, when she had finished. "You are very good, to one who has brought so much trouble and distress upon you."
She looked up at him quickly and then away, while into her eyes came a rapt expression as that of one who sees a vision.
"Distress!" she said listlessly, and then slowly, "No, it is not that. Monsieur Ivanitch was nothing to me. But Death--such a death can be nothing less--than horrible."
Her lip trembled, she shuddered a little and he saw that a reaction had set in. She rose to hide her weakness and walked the length of the room.
"Forgive me. I should have gone last night----"
"No, no," she said hysterically. "You can bear no blame--nor I. He attacked you yonder. You had to defend yourself----"
She broke off, clasping her hands and turning away from him.
"How could I have known that you were--that you ... I thought it mere timidity, nervousness on his part--fear born of the danger that had so long hung over him--I knew the legend of Nemi. But Monsieur----" she threw out her arms wildly--"I--I am no dreamer of dreams, no mystic, no fanatic. I have never believed that such strange things could come to pass. But Kirylo Ivanitch had a vision. You were Death! You were stalking him there and he knew----" She laughed hysterically and turned away from him again. "You see, Monsieur, I--I am not quite myself."