“Because you have been courteous—considerate—and you don’t know—oh, you don’t realise what spiritual peril is!—What your soul and body have to fear if you—if you win me over—if you ever manage to make of me a friend!”
He said: “People follow and threaten you. We know that. I understand also that association with you involves me, and that I shall no doubt be menaced with bodily harm.”
He laid his hand on hers where it still rested on his sleeves:
“But that’s my business, Miss Norne,” he added with a smile. “So, otherwise, it being merely a plain business affair between you and me, I think I may also venture my immortal soul alone with you in my room.”
The girl flushed darkly.
“You have misunderstood,” she said.
He looked at her coolly, intently; and arrived at no conclusion. Young, very lovely, confessedly without moral principle, he still could not believe her actually depraved. “What did you mean?” he said bluntly.
“In companionship with the lost, one might lose one’s way—unawares.... Do you know that there is an Evil loose in the world which is bent upon conquest by obtaining control of men’s minds?”
“No,” he replied, amused.
“And that, through the capture of men’s minds and souls the destruction of civilisation is being planned?”