Lyf's eyes locked with hers. "Sit down," he said coldly.
And to her surprised consternation, she did. A physical force seemed to flow from him and force her back into the chair. She sat rigidly, seething with a mixture of fear and indignation as Lyf picked up his discourse where he had dropped it.
"You are not satisfied," he said quietly "because you are undernourished, ungainly, and ugly. You would like to be attractive. You wish to be admired. You long to be loved. Yet you are not."
"That's enough!" Miss Twilley snapped. "Neither man nor Devi has the right to insult me in my own house."
"I am not insulting you," Lyf said patiently. "I am telling you the truth. Now as for this business of being well-off, which I infer, means moderately wealthy—you are not. There was a small inheritance from your father, but through mismanagement and inept investments it is today less than fifteen thousand dollars, although it was fifty thousand when you received it a few years ago."
"You are the devil!" she gasped.
"I told you I could read your mind. I'm a telepath."
"I don't believe you. You found out somehow."
"You're not thinking," he said. "How could I? Now, as for your health, you will be dead in six months without my help. You have adenocarcinoma of the pancreas which has already begun to metastasize. You cannot possibly survive with the present state of medicine your race possesses. Of course, your doctors do have ingenious ways of alleviating the pain," he added comfortingly, "like chordotomy and neurectomy."
Miss Twilley didn't recognize the last two words, but they sounded unpleasant. She had been worried about her health, but to hear this quiet-voiced death sentence paralyzed her with a cold crawling terror. "It's not true!" she gasped. Yet she knew it was.