"Yet, if that is so, how can she fool others so neatly?
"Listen, Clive: I was at a dance at the Faithorn's; tremendous excitement among pin-heads and débutantes! Athalie was expected, professionally. And sure enough, just before supper, in strolls a radiant, wonderful young thing making them all look like badly faded guinea-hens—and somehow I get the impression that
she is receiving her hostess instead of the contrary. Talk about self-possession and absolute simplicity! She had 'em all on the bench. Happening to catch my eye she held out her hand with one of those smiles she can be guilty of—just plain assassination, Clive!—and I stuck to her until the pin-heads crowded me out, and the rubbering women got my shoulders all over paint. And now here's where she gets 'em. There's no curtained corner, no pasteboard trophies, no gipsy shawls and bangles, no lowering of lights, no closed doors, no whispers.
"Whoever asks her anything spooky she answers in a sweet and natural voice, as though replying to an ordinary question. She makes no mystery of it. Sometimes she can't answer, and she says so without any excuse or embarrassment. Sometimes her replies are vague or involved or even apparently meaningless. She admits very frankly that she is not always able to understand what her reply means.
"However she says enough—tells, reveals, discovers, offers sound enough advice—to make her the plaything of the season.
"And it's a cinch that she scores more bull's eyes than blanks. I had a séance with her. Never mind what she told me. Anyway it was devilish clever,—and true as far as I knew. And I suppose the chances are good that the whole business will happen to me. Watch me.
"I think Athalie must have cleared a lot of money already. Mrs. Faithorn told me she gave her a cheque for five hundred that evening. And Athalie's private
business must be pretty good because all the afternoon until five o'clock carriages and motors are coming and going. And you ought to see who's in 'em. Your prospective father-in-law was in one! Perhaps he wanted inside information about Dominion Fuel—that damn stock which has done a few things to me since I monkeyed with it.
"But you should see the old dragons and dowagers and death-heads, and frumps who go to see Athalie! And the younger married bunch, too. I understand one has to ask for an appointment a week ahead.
"So she must be making every sort of money. And yet she lives simply enough—sky floor of a new office-apartment building on Long Acre—hoisted way up in the air above everything. You look out and see nothing but city and river and bay and haze on every side as far as the horizon's circle. At night it's just an endless waste of electric lights. There's very little sound from the street roar below. It's still up there in the sky, and sunny; silent and snowy; quiet and rainy; noiseless and dark—according to the hours, seasons, and meteorological conditions, my son. And it's some joint, believe me, with the dark old mahogany trim and furniture and the dull rich effects in azure and gold; and the Beluch carpets full of sombre purple and dusky fire, and the white cat on the window-sill watching you put of its sapphire blue eyes.