life; that he cared nothing whether he married me or not. If I cared as much as I seemed to he would marry me to please me. I told him that what I had always wanted was to be with him, that what I most wanted was to spend with him as much as possible of my time until death parted us. He said if that was what I wanted I could have it, but he was nothing more than a shadow of his old self and I was sure to be unhappy. And I am unhappy. He is generosity, gentleness, kindness and consideration itself, but he does not care. I hoped, of course, that his grief for Marian would soften, fade away and vanish, that he would cease to mourn for her, that his interest in life would reawaken, that I could win his love and that we would both be happy. But I am not. His utter indifference to me, to anything, to everything is preying on my feelings, I must do something. I shall lose my mind.”
“Is that all?” Vargas asked.
“It is enough,” she asserted, “and more than enough. Do you think it a small matter?”
“Not in the least,” he declared, “I comprehend your disappointment in respect to your hopes, your chagrin at your baffled efforts to win him back to be his old self, your pain at his inertness. But by your own showing you have no grievance against your husband.”
“That I have not,” she maintained. “Not a shadow of a grievance against him. My grievance is for him as much as for myself and against — against the way the world is made.”
Vargas looked at her for some little time.
“You do not say what you are thinking,” she interrupted.
“I am considering how to express it,” he said. “However I express it I am sure to offend you.”
“Not a bit,” she replied. “Say it at once.”
“You must realize that if I am to advise you truly I must speak plainly,” he hesitated.
“I do realize it,” she told him.
“You will then pardon what I have to say?” he ventured.
“I will pardon anything except beating about the bush,” she rapped out.
“Well,” he said slowly, “it seems to me that your coming to me, your state of mind, your trouble, as you have related it all turns upon a piece of femininity to which you should be altogether superior, to which I should have imagined you were altogether superior. You look, and I have always imagined you, free from any trace of the eternal feminine. Here it crops out. Men in general find that women in general have no feeling for the mutuality of a contract. Some women may be exceptions, but women habitually ignore the other side of a contract and see only their own side. Here you display the same defect. Mr. Llewellyn practically proposed a contract to you: on his side he to marry you, on your side, you to put up with his complete indifference to you, to everything, and be content with his actual companionship such as he is. He has fulfilled and is fulfilling his part of the contract, you seek escape from yours.”
“I think,” she snapped. “You are insufferably brutal.”
“The eternal feminine again,” he retorted.
“Worse and more of it. I told you I should offend you.”
“You do offend me. I have confidence in you, but I did not come here to be scolded or to be preached at. I do not want criticism, I want advice. Don't tell me my shortcomings, real or imaginary, think over my troubles and my needs and tell me what to do.”
“That is plain enough,” he asserted. “Do your obvious duty. Keep your part of your contract with your husband. Give no sign that you suffer from the absence of feeling of which he warned you. Make the most of your life with him. Hope for a change in him but do not try to force it, do not rebel if it does not come.”
“I know I ought to endure,” she wailed. “But I cannot, I must do something. I must act. I must.”
“You have asked for my advice,” he said, “and you have it.”
“And what good is it to me?” she objected, “I ask for help and you string out platitudinous precepts like a snuffy, detestable old-fashioned evangelical dominie. Is this all the help you can give me?”
“All,” said Vargas humbly. “If I knew of any other it should be at your service.”
“You could consult your slate for me, as I proposed,” she suggested.
“Great heavens above!” he cried, “I have told you that all that is imposture.”
“It might turn out genuine for once,” she persisted. “Don't people have real trances? Don't many people believe in the answers from slates and planchettes and ouija boards?”
“Perhaps they do,” Vargas admitted. “But I never had a real trance, never saw one, never knew of one. And to my knowledge no slate or other such device ever gave any answer or wrote anything unless I or some other shuffler made it write or answer.”
“But could you not try just once for my sake,” she implored.
“Why on earth,” he demanded, “are you, so sane and sensible in appearance, so set on this mummery?”
“Because of the other dream,” she faltered.
“The other dream!” he exclaimed. “You had another dream?”
“Yes,” she said, “I was going to tell you but you interrupted me. The dream about the advertisement did not convince me. I felt it might be coincidence after all. That was more than a month ago and I disregarded it. But night before last I dreamed I was told, 'The message on the slate will be true.' I fought against it all day yesterday, all last night. To-day I gave up and came. I want you to consult your slate for me.”
“Madame,” he said, “this is dreadful. Can nothing make you see the truth. There is not anything supernatural about this trade of mine. It is as simple as a Punch and Judy show. There the puppets do nothing save as the showman controls them; so of my slate and of my trances.”
“But it might surprise you,” she persisted. “It might come true once. Won't you try for me?”
“I know,” he mused, “that there is such a thing as auto-hypnotism. To humor you I might try to put myself into a genuine trance. But there would be nothing about it to help you, just a mere natural sleep, artificially induced. If I babbled in it the words would have no significance, and no writing would appear on the slate unless I put it there.”
“Just try,” she pleaded, “for my sake, to quiet me. If there is nothing, then I shall believe you.”
“There will be nothing on the slate,” he main tained. “But suppose I should mumble some fragments of words. You might take those accidental vocables for a revelation, they might become an obsession upon you, they might warp your judgment and do you great harm. I feel we should be running a foolish risk. Give up this idea of the trance and the slate, I beg of you.”
“And I beg of you to try it. You said you would do anything for me. That is what I want and nothing else.”
He shook his head, his expression crestfallen, baffled, puzzled, even alarmed.
“If you insist — ” he faltered.
“I do insist,” she said.
“You wish,” he inquired, “to proceed exactly as I usually do with my simulated trance and pretended spirit replies?”
“Precisely,” she affirmed.
He opened a drawer below one of the cabinets and took out a hinged double slate. It was made like a child's school-slate, but the rims instead of being wood, were of silver, the edges beaded and the flat of each rim chased in a pattern of pentacles, swastikas and pentagrams; a pentacle, a right-hand swastika, a pentagram, a left-hand swastika and so on all round. In the drawer was a box of fresh slate-pencils. This he held out to her and told her to choose one. At his bidding she broke off a short fragment and put it between the two Leaves of the slate, the four faces of which were entirely blank.
“Settle yourself in your chair,” he instructed her, “hold the slate in your lap. Hold it fast with both hands. First take off your other glove.”
As she did this he settled himself into the armchair opposite her, took a silver paper-knife from the table and held it upright, gazing at its point.
“You are not to move or speak until I tell you,” he directed her.
So they sat, she holding in her lap the slate shut fast upon the pencil within, her fingers enforcing its closure; he gazing intently at the point of the scimitar-shaped paper-knife. She became aware of the slow, pompous tick of a tall clock in the hallway; of faint noises, as of activity in a pantry, proceeding from somewhere in the rear of the house and barely audible through the closed window. She had expected to see him stiffen, his eyes roll up or some such manifestation appear. Nothing of the kind happened. For a long time, a very long time, she watched him staring fixedly at the sharp end of the paper-cutter. Then she saw it waver, saw his eyes close and his head,
