She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

FOURTH CHAPTER

PAULA ENCOUNTERS HER ADVERSARY WHO TURNS PROPHET AND TELLS OF A STARRY CHILD SOON TO BE BORN

Paula went upstairs to the editorial rooms with Reifferscheid the following morning for Charter's letter. This she carried into the city-office to be alone. Forenoon is the dead time of a morning newspaper. The place seemed still tired from the all-night struggle to spring a paper to the streets. She thrust up a window for fresh air and sat down in a reporter's chair to read.... The letter was big with boyish delight. "When a man spends a couple of years growing and trimming a pile of stuff into a sizable book," he had written, "and the first of the important reviews comes in with such a message of enthusiasm, it is the heart's 'well-done' long waited for." Beyond this, there was only a line or two about the book. It had been in the publisher's hands six months, and he was cold to it now. The States had interested him, however, because there was an inclination in the article to look at his work to come. In fact, some of the thoughts of the reviewer, he wrote, were sympathetic with the subject-matter simmering in his mind. Naturally, the coincidence had thrilled him. Charter, believing that Reifferscheid had done the work, wrote with utmost freedom. This attracted Paula, as it gave her a glimpse of a certain fineness between men who admire each other. The issue was not closed.... She wanted to answer the letter then and there at the reporter's desk, but Reifferscheid knew she had not gone. He might come in—and laugh at her precipitation.

After a night of perfect rest, Paula's mind was animated with thoughts of work—until she reached the Zoroaster. Something of Bellingham's tormenting energy was heavy in the atmosphere of her rooms. When passing the full-length mirror, she turned her face away in fear. Impatiently she caught up one of the new books (and Charter's letter for a marker), and hurried across to the Park. The fall days were still flawless.

It was not yet ten in the morning, and few people were abroad. She sat down upon one of the weathered knobs of Manhattan rock which had worn through the thin skin of soil, and allowed herself to think of the formidable affliction. To all intents, the magician had dispossessed her of the rooms, identified for years with her personality and no other. She could not put away the truth that the full forces of her mind were at bay before the psychic advances of the dreadful stranger. This was not long to be endured. Inasmuch that his power did not harmlessly glance from her, she felt that there must be great potentialities of evil within herself. This conviction made her frightened and desperate. She should have known that it was her inner development, her sensitiveness which had made her so potent an attraction for Bellingham. The substance of her whole terror was that there had been moments under his spell, when she had not been at all the mistress of her own will.

The suggestions which he projected had seemed to her the good and proper actions. She knew it as a law—that every time her own divine right to the rule of her faculties was thus usurped by an evil force, her resistance was weakened. Yet there was a shocking unfairness in the thought that she was not given a chance. In the throne-room of her mind, she was not queen. All the sacred fortifications of self seemed broken, even the soul's integrity debased, when Bellingham crushed his way in and forced her to obey. This is the great psychological crime. When one has broken into the sacred precincts, the door is left open for other malignant, earth-bound entities foully to enter and betray....

There was no one in whom she could confide, but Madame Nestor. Almost any professional man, a physician especially, would have called her revelations hysterical.... Her constant and growing fear was of the time when she should be called by Bellingham—and nothing would supervene to save her. Some time the spell might not be broken. She became ill with tension and shame as this unspeakable possibility seethed through her mind.... Better death than to continue in being passion-ridden by this defiler, in the presence of whom she became so loathsome in her own sight—that she dared not pray....

Somewhere far off children were talking. Their voices warmed and cleansed her mind. There was a stimulating thud of hoofs on the turf-roads. She tried to read now. Her eyes travelled dutifully along the lines of her book, without bringing forth even the phase of a thought from the page of print. A swift step drew her glance down the foot-path. Bellingham was approaching. His shoulders were thrown back, his long arms swinging so that every muscle was in play, striding forward at incredible speed. He filled his lungs with every cubic inch of morning air they could contain, and expelled the volume with gusto. She had once seen a rugged Englishman take his exercise as seriously as this, on the promenade of an Atlantic liner before the breakfast-gong. To all appearances, Bellingham did not have a thought apart from his constitutional.

Paula sat very still on the rock. Her slightest movement now would attract his attention. It occurred to her afterwards that she had been like a crippled squirrel huddled in the fork of a tree—the hunter and his dog below....

At the point where the path was nearest her, he halted. The thing happened exactly as she might have conceived it in a story. For a moment he seemed to be searching his mind for the meaning of his impulse to stop. An unforgettable figure, this, as he stood there with lifted head, concentrating upon the vagary which had brought him to a standstill.... Paula may have been mistaken in her terror, but she never relinquished the thought that her proximity was known to him—before his face turned unerringly to the rock and his bright gray eyes filled with her presence.