“The Devil is a woman,” tremulously insisted the girl. “Have you forgotten Klingsor and his ‘Rose of Hell’?” With Van Zorn she disappeared.
II
When he reached his room Invern sat on the bed. These new people puzzled him. He had shaken off the Hollin brothers, telling them they were idiots to have introduced such an old lunatic to him.
“But we thought you liked occult Johnnies!” had been their doleful answer; and then Oswald bade them seek the old Nick himself, but leave him to his own thoughts; many had clustered about his consciousness during that afternoon; the principal one, the girl. Who was she? With, all the boastings of the brothers that Count Van Zorn was welcome in distinguished musical circles, Oswald made up his mind to a decided negative. That man never went into the polite world nowadays, though he may have done so years before. An undefinable atmosphere of caducity and malodorous gentility clung to this disciple of music and the arts esoteric. How came it then that June Tilney, so mundane, so charming, so youthfully alert, could tolerate the vulture? What a vulture’s glance suggesting inexpressible horrors was his brief, warning look! Oswald grew dizzy. “By God!” he groaned, “no, not that! But surely some sort of diabolic business!”
Why not go? Nothing but boredom could result at the worst, and boredom in his life was rapidly merging into a contempt for existence, contempt for this damnable Parisian morass. His ambition had winged away years before. Occasionally at dusk, on white summer nights, he seemed to discern a flash of some shining substance aloft, and felt his eyes fill, while in his ears he heard the humming of a great colored melody. Then he would make marks in his note-book and the next day forget his infrequent visitor; he believed in old-fashioned inspiration, but when it did arrive he was too indifferent to open the doors of his heart.
The Devil? Any belief but the dull, cynical unfaith of his existence, any conviction, even a wicked one, any act of the will, rather than the motiveless, stagnant days he was leading. Why not call on the Count? Why not see June Tilney again? He recalled vaguely the freshness of her face, of her presence. Yes, alert was the word, alert, as if she were guarding herself against an enemy. Ah! hiding a secret. That was in her light fencing, feathery raillery, cold despondency, half-smothered anger, fierce outburst, and, at the close, in her obstinate reiteration. What did it all mean? He sat on his bed and wondered.
And in the dim light of early evening he heard his name called, once, twice—with the memory of June Tilney’s warning earlier in the day pressing thick upon his spirit, he rushed into the hallway from whose vacancy came no response to his excited challenge. Yet he could have sworn to the voice, a soundless voice which had said to him: “Don’t go! Don’t go!” Oswald put on his hat, picked up his walking-stick, and left the house....
III
He wandered up and down the Boul’ Mich’ obsessed by his ideas, and the clocks in the cafés were pointing to five minutes of eleven when he turned from the Avenue du Maine into the little street, closed at one end, which bears the name of the adjacent avenue. Invern had never been before in this Impasse du Maine, though he had passed it daily for ten years. He remembered it as a place where painters and sculptors resided; it was dark, and the buildings for the most part were dingy, yet his impression, as he slowly moved along the lower side of the street, was not a depressing one. He reached the number given him as the bells in the neighboring church began to sound the hour. He had not time to summon the concierge when a hand was laid upon his arm; a woman, wearing a hood, and enveloped in a long cloak, peered at him through a heavy veil. He knew that it was June Tilney and his heart began to pump up the blood into his temples. She stooped as if endeavoring to hide her identity, and in her hand she carried a little cane.
“Don’t go in!” she adjured the young man who, astounded by this apparition, regarded her with open-mouthed disquiet.