The elder woman leaned forward and kissed Paula's dress at the shoulder. There was something sweet and mild and devotional in the action, something suggestive of a wise old working-bee pausing an instant to caress its queen.
"You have been impelled to go to him, Paula?"
"Yes. It came over me quite irresistibly. I could not have been altogether myself.... I think I shall leave the city!"
Madame Nestor asked several questions, bringing out all she cared to know of Paula's experience that day. Her eyes became very bright as she said:
"I dare not advise you not to go away. Still, don't you see it—how wonderful was your victory to-day?"
"I can't always defeat him!" Paula cried. "His power comes over me and I move toward him—just as reptiles must follow a blind impulse started from without. Each time I follow, I must be weaker."
"But, Paula, each time something happens to restore you to yourself, thwarting his purpose, his projections are weakened."
"But if I should go far away?"
"He could only put it in your mind to return."
When Paula remembered the accidents which had preserved her, even when in the same city with the Destroyer, she could not doubt the salvation in putting a big stretch of the planet's curve between her and this dynamo.... Certain unfinished thinking could only be cleared through a friend like Madame Nestor.