“The same that I brought.”
“You will take them from here and return them to the place from which you took them. Afterward, you will go to the ball and forget where you have been—or what you have done.”
“Forget!” she answered, in the same strange, toneless accents.
“Forget utterly! Forget! Obey!”
She repeated the words slowly, and each accent was perfectly clear, although it seemed as if she uttered them without knowing that she was speaking.
It was an awe-inspiring spectacle—this fair young girl, in the fripperies of her handsome ball dress, standing there, talking to an image, and never taking her gaze from its unnatural eyes.
“That is all. You will go down the steps and seat yourself in that chair. Soon the packet of papers will be given to you. Then you will be taken downstairs to the car that brought you, and be left at the corner of your own avenue. You will not know. When you are in your home you will do as you have been commanded. Then—you will forget. Obey!”
Slowly she descended, and, with unseeing gaze, walked to the chair and sat down. From force of habit alone, she arranged her skirts, allowing her long train, which had escaped from the loop that ordinarily held it up, to sweep the floor.
“Say, chief! Are you there?”
It was Patsy Garvan. He had come out from behind the idol, and was looking about the room for his chief. He took no notice of the girl in the chair, and she betrayed no consciousness of having heard or seen him.