"To-night?" he said. "Not the woman who sat beside him? The woman with the big eyes? She and Bale-Corphew! The idea is absurd!"
"Undeniable, nevertheless. I have deduced the story. The lady is a widow—no relations—too much freedom—vague aspirations after the ideal. She has sounded society and found it too shallow; sounded philosophy and found it too deep; and upon her horizon of desires and disappointments has loomed the colossal presence of Bale-Corphew—enthusiast, mystic, leader of a fascinatingly unorthodox sect. What is the result? The lady—too feminine to be truly modern, too modern to be wholly womanly—is viewing life through new glasses, and by their medium seeing Horatio invested with a halo otherwise invisible."
The Prophet remained quiet and silent; then he rose slowly from his seat and walked round the table. "Devereaux," he said, laconically, "only the Prophet is going to wear a halo here."
The Precursor's sharply marked, expressive eyebrows went up in quick comment.
"Can even a latter-day Prophet afford autocracy?"
For a space the Prophet made no response; then he took a step forward and laid his hand impressively on his friend's shoulder.
"Devereaux," he said, in a new voice—a voice that unconsciously held something of the command that had marked it in the chapel—"the Prophet of the Mystics has come to rule. He has not come to follow the laws that others—that men like Bale-Corphew—have seen fit to make. He has come to be a law unto himself!"
