She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

"But why—why do you prepare me? Do you think I cannot resist?" Paula asked furiously. She felt the bonds about her already. The blood rose hot and rebellious at the thought of being bound. It was the old hideous fear of a locked room—the shut-in horror which meant suffocation.

"If I thought you could not resist, Paula," Madame Nestor said, "I should advise you to flee to the remotest country—this moment. I should implore you never to allow from your side your best and strongest friend. But I have studied your brain, your strength, your heart. I love you for the thought that has come to me—that it is you, Paula Linster, who is destined to free the race from this destroyer."

Often in the last half-hour had come a great inward revolt against the trend of her caller's words. It passed through Paula again, yet she inquired how she could thus be the means.

"By resisting him. Bellingham once told me—trust him, this was after I was fully his—that if I had matched his force with a psychic resistance equally as strong—it would mortally have weakened him. So if he seeks to subvert your will and fails, this great one-pointed power of his, developed who knows how long—will turn and rend itself. This is an occult law."

Paula could understand this—the wild beast of physical desire rending itself at the last—but not the conception of hopelessness—Bellingham cut off from immortality. The woman divined her thoughts.

"Again I beg of you," she said in excitement, "not to let a thought of pity for him insinuate itself in your brain—not the finest point of it! Think of yourself, of the Great Good which must sustain you, of the benefit to your race—think of the women less strong! Fail in this, and Bellingham will absorb your splendid forces, and let you fall back into the common as I did—to rise again, ah, so bitterly, so wearily!... But I cannot imagine you failing, you strong young queen, and the women like me, the legion of emptied shells he has left behind—we shall canonize you, Paula, if you shatter the vampire's power."

Thoughts came too fast for speech now. They burned Paula's mind—a destructive activity, because ineffectual. She wanted to speak of the shameful experience of the morning, but she could not bring the words to confession.

"I had almost forgotten," she said lightly at length, "that it is well for one to eat and drink. Stay, won't you please, and share a bite of supper with me, Madame Nestor? We'll talk of other things. I am deadly tired of Bellingham."

A hungry man would have known no repletion from the entire offering which sufficed for these two, forgotten of appetite. Wafers of dark bread, a poached egg, pickles, a heart of lettuce and a divided melon, cake and tea—yet how fully they fared!... They were talking about children and fairy tales over the teacups, when Paula encountered again that sinister mental seizure—the occultist's influence creeping back from her reason to that part of the brain man holds in common with animals.... The lights of the room dimmed; her companion became invisible. Bellingham was calling: "Come to me—won't you come and help me in my excellent labors? Come to me, Paula. We can lift the world together—you and I. Wonderful are the things for me to show you—you who are already so wise and so very beautiful. Paula Linster,—come to me!"

Again and again the words were laid upon her intelligence, until she heard them only. All the rest was an anterior murmuring, as of wind and rivers. The words were pressed down upon the surfaces of her brain, like leaf after leaf of gold-beaters' film—and hammered and hammered there.... He was in a great gray room, sitting at a desk, but staring at her, as if there were no walls or streets between—just a little bit of blackness.... She seemed to know just where to go. She felt the place for her was there in the great gray room—a wonderful need for her there.... But a door opened into the room where he sat—a door she had not seen, for she had not taken her eyes from his face. A woman came in, a pale woman, a shell of beauty. The huge tousled head at the desk turned from her to the woman who entered. Paula saw his profile alter hideously....