“And it was the truth. When I told you that, I did live there.”
That was so. She had spoken the truth, and my accusation was so unjust that I was compelled to mutter an apology.
“But many things have occurred since we last met,” I went on. “One event especially has happened which has oppressed and utterly bewildered me.”
“What was that?”
“My friend, Roddy Morgan, is dead.”
“I am aware of that,” she responded, her face in an instant deathly pale. Although she possessed powers which no other human being possessed, she nevertheless was now and then unable to control herself sufficiently to preserve a perfect calm. In this alone did she betray that she was, like myself, of the flesh. Yet when I reflected how things withered at her touch, and how objects dissolved as beneath a magician’s wand, I had often been inclined to believe that she was the incarnation of the Evil One in the form of a beautiful woman.
It was this feeling which again crept upon me as I sat there in her presence, noting her extreme loveliness. I did not love her now. No; I held her rather in fear and hatred. Yet she was still the most strikingly beautiful woman in all the world.
“Then you know how my friend died?” I said, in a rather meaning voice.
“It was in the newspapers,” she responded. “I saw by them that you gave evidence.”
I nodded in the affirmative, then said—