sk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.

The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked
noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of
her heart.

At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, lighted the gas
jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender
body the magic garments of light--_his_ gift to her.

But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained
the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led
her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered
her, outside?

* * * * *

Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers,
Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the
whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the
Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.

Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather
chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight
into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little
by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her,
laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless
dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the
candle's grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and
ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her
head drooped; she opened her eyes.

The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless orbs of
jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed
condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.

XII

THE LAST MAIL

The last mail had not yet arrived at Dragon Court.

Five people awaited it--Dulcie Soane, behind the desk in the entrance
hall, already wandering drowsily with Barres along the fairy
borderland of sleep; Thessalie Dunois in Barres' studio, her
rose-coloured evening cloak over her shoulders, her slippered foot
tapping the dance-scarred parquet; Barres opposite, deep in his
favourite armchair, chatting with her; Soane on the roof, half stupid
with drink, watching them through the ventilator; and, lurking in the
moonlit court, outside the office window, the dimly sinister figure of
the one-eyed man. He wore a white handkerchief over his face, with a
single hole cut in it. Through this hole his solitary optic was now
fixed u