“When one greatly needs, one sends for one’s mother.”
“I gave you all when I left.”
“I sent for you to work a spell for me! I want Paradise, my Mother. But my hands can not reach it. So I have sent for you to help me.”
Isabel was capable of reverting to the superstition of her blood! To win her aspirations, whatever they might be, she had resurrected the Charm-Woman. They were all like that. Rosalie had told him that in order to win his love she had steadily taken magic potions.
The voices died down for a moment. Chad sat wondering. He fancied he saw a tremor in the curtains that screened Isabel’s apartment. Two words of the droning syllables back flared audible again.
“A medicine!”
Chad stirred uneasily. He did not wish to hear about any more potions. Just then from the spot where he had seen the curtains tremble, Dicky-Dicky the dwarf emerged hurriedly and passed without seeing him.
“He’s been listening!” Chad concluded. Eavesdropping was a common oriental pastime; but the appearance of the dwarf indicated that he had understood something in that interview beyond that Chad had not. What mischief were Isabel and her mother up to? Some new political scheming, perhaps.
Suddenly Isabel, her face like a spot of darkness against the lighted room, appeared. Chad rose startled, as if some black whirlwind were approaching him. Here was the passion of the Levant that he always veiled—that dreadful ravening primeval force that assailed and overthrew his ideals. Of course, innately, he had always expected Isabel to be like this. He knew instinctively that she was a volcano around which they had sat in false peace.
Something had shaken terribly Isabel’s exotic universe. Some secret word had come perhaps of the bursting of the bubble—hers and Orcullu’s. Whatever this emotion was, it broke from deeper sources than he could divine. It took him several moments to open his mouth in the face of it.