"To be sure," the Russian declared, "I have stopped doing that, you know. I didn't want to end by being shunned."
"I suppose you still have the gift?"
"No doubt."
The limousine halted. Across its path rumbled a street car mistily bright behind the rain, crowded with people who represented a rational humanity aloof from the little compartment in which were shut up these two victims of remarkable beliefs. Then, the limousine moving on, the blurred phantasmagoria closed in again:—and the northern vista took on the ambiguity of Lilla's life, a compound of darknesses and deceptive gleams, stretching away toward what? She uttered:
"Nevertheless, to know the future!" And as the Russian remained mute and motionless, she faltered, "No matter what one learned, the suspense would be over."
"Would it, indeed?"
"I am desperate," Lilla responded in low tones.
After a while Madame Zanidov, with a compassionate austerity, responded:
"Remember, then, that it is you who wished this."
Their hands touched. In the rushing limousine, in this fluidity of lights and darkness, they were intent on the phenomenon that both believed to be a revelation of fate. At last the clairvoyant quietly began: