She Buildeth Her House

by Will Levington Comfort

Paula had returned from down-town about noon. Reifferscheid, who had a weakness for Herman Melville, and annually endeavored to spur the American people into a more adequate appreciation of the old sea-lion, had ordered her to rest her eyes for a few days in Moby Dick. With the fat, old fine-print novel under her arm, Paula let herself into her own apartment and instantly encountered the occultist's power. She sank to the floor and covered her face in the pillows of the couch. In the past twenty-four hours she had come to believe that the enemy had been put away forever, yet here in her own room she was stricken, and so swiftly.... Though she did not realize it at once, many of the thoughts which gradually surged into her mind were not her own. She came to see Bellingham as other women saw him—as a great and wise doctor. Her own conception battled against this, but vainly, vaguely. It was as if he held the balance of power in her consciousness. Without attempting to link them together, the processes of her mind quickly will be set into words.

Her first thought, before the tightening of Bellingham's control in her brain, was to rush into his presence and fiercely arraign him for the treachery he had committed. After blaming Madame Nestor and deforming her own faculties to clear him from evil, the devilishness of the present visitation overwhelmed. And how infinitely more black and formidable now was his magic—after the utterances in the Park! This was her last real stand.... A cry of hopelessness escaped her lips, for the numbness was already about her eyes, and creeping back like a pestilence along the open highways of her mind.

"Come to me. The way is open. I am alone. I am near.... Come to me, Paula Linster, of plentiful treasures.... Do you not see the open way—how near I am? Oh, come—now—come to me now!"

Again and again the little sentences fell upon her mind, until its surface stirred against reiteration, as one, thoroughly understanding, resents repeated explanations.... It was right now for her to go. She had been rebellious and headstrong to conjure such evils about the name of a famous physician. The world called him famous. Only she and Madame Nestor had stood apart, clutching fast to their ideas of his deviltry. He had taken the trouble to call her to him—to prove that he was good. The degradation which she had felt at the first moment of his summons—was all from her own perversity.... Clearly she saw the street below, Cathedral Way; a turn north, then across the Plaza to the brown ornate entrance of The Maidstone.... There was no formality about the going. Her hat and coat had not been removed.... She was in the hall; the elevator halted at her floor while the man pushed a letter and some papers under the door of the Selma Cross apartment.... In the street, she turned across the Plaza from Cathedral Way to The Maidstone. The real Paula Linster marshalled a hundred terrible protests, but her voice was muffled, her strength ineffectual as Josephine's beating with white hands against the Emperor's iron door. Real volition was locked in the pitiless will of the physician, to whom she hastened as one hoping to be saved.

She inquired huskily of the man at the hotel-desk.

"The Doctor is waiting on the parlor-floor—in F," was the answer.

Paula stepped from the elevator, and was directed to the last door on the left.... The sense of her need, of her illness, hurried her forward through the long hall. Sometimes she seemed burdened with the body of a woman, very tired and helpless, but quite obedient.... The figure "F" on a silver shield filled her eyes. The door was ajar. Her entrance was not unlike that of a lioness goaded with irons through a barred passage into an arena. She did not open the door wider, but slipped through sideways, gathering her dress closely about her.... Bellingham was there. His face was white, rigid from long concentration; yet he smiled and his arms were opened to her.... The point here was that he so marvelously understood. His attitude to her seemed that of a physician of the soul. She could not feel the fighting of the real woman.... Dazed and broken for the moment, she encountered the soothing magnetism of his hands.

"How long I have waited!" he quietly exclaimed. "Hours, and it was bitter waiting—but you are a wreath for my waiting—how grateful you are to my weariness!... Paula Linster, Paula Linster—what deserts of burning sunshine I have crossed to find you—what dark jungles I have searched for such fragrance!"

His arms were light upon her, his voice low and lulling. He dared not yet touch his lips to her hair—though they were dry and twisted with his awful thirst. Craft and patience altogether feline was in the art with which he wound and wove about her mind thoughts of his own, designed to ignite the spark of responsive desire.... And how softly he fanned—(an incautious blast would have left him in darkness altogether)—until it caught.... Well, indeed, he knew the cunning of the yet unbroken seals; and better still did he know the outraged forces hovering all about her, ready to defeat him for the slightest error—and leave him to burn in his own fires.

"This is peace," he whispered with indescribable repression. "How soft a resting-place—and yet how strong!... Out of the past I have come for you. Do you remember the rock in the desert on which you sat and waited long ago? Your eyes were weary when I came—weary from the blazing light of noon and the endless waning of that long day. On a great rock in the desert you sat—until I came, until I came. Then you laughed because I shut the feverish sun-glow from your strained eyes.... Remember, I came in the skin of a lion and shut the sunset from your aching eyes—my shoulders darkening the west—and we were alone—and the night came on...."