“Then what she said could not be correct,” Muriel observed thoughtfully.
“I really don’t know what to believe,” I answered, bewildered. “Her words were so strange and her influence so subtle and extraordinary that sometimes I feel inclined to think that she was some supernatural and eminently beautiful being who, having wrought in the world the evil which was allotted as her work, has vanished, leaving no more trace than a ray of light in space.”
“Others who have known her have held similar opinions,” my pretty companion said. “Yet she was apparently of flesh and blood like all of us. At any rate, she ate and drank and slept and spoke like every other human being, and certainly her loves and her hatreds were just as intense as those of any one of us.”
“But her touch was deadly,” I said. “As a magician is able to change things, so at her will certain objects dissolved in air, leaving only a handful of ashes behind. In her soft, white hand was a power for the working of evil which was irresistible, an influence which was nothing short of demoniacal.”
Muriel held her breath, her eyes cast upon the ground. There was a mysteriousness in her manner, such as I had never before noticed.
“You are right—quite right,” she answered. “She was a woman of mystery.”
“Cannot you, now that I have made explanation and told you the reason of my apparent neglect, tell me what you know of her?” I asked earnestly.
“I have no further knowledge,” she assured me. “I know nothing of her personally.”
But her words did not convince me when I remembered how, on explaining my suspicions regarding Aline’s complicity in the crime, she had betrayed an abject fear.
“No,” I said dubiously. “You are concealing something from me, Muriel.”