onized apprehension, she
threw the Thing from her with a motion of both hands and feet; and,
as she did so, she felt a horrible cold air breathing from a bloodless
body, chill her hand.

In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers
she lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp
standing upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly
bright now. With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors
and windows were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she
was more than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For
a moment she stood staring straight before her at the place where it
seemed to be. She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense
anger and hatred took possession of her. She had always laughed at such
things even when thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now
there was a sense of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in
which so many believed.

Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in
mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia
and Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in
awe, for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in
her earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood
facing the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had
recited to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of
the Between World. This exorcism was, as he had told her, more powerful
than that which the Christian exorcists used, and the symbol of exorcism
was not unlike the sign of the Cross, to which was added genuflection of
Assyrian origin.

At any other time Fleda would have laughed at the idea of using the
exorcism; but all the ancient superstition of the Romany people latent
in her now broke forth and held her captive. Standing with candle raised
above her head, her eyes piercing the space before her, she recalled
every word of the exorcism which had caught the drippings from the
fountains of Chaldean, Phoenician, and Egyptian mystery.

Solemnly and slowly the exorcism came from her lips, and at the end her
right hand made the cabalistic sign; then she stood like one transfixed
with her arm extended towards the Thing she could not see.

Presently there passed from her a sense of oppression. The air seemed
to grow lighter, restored self-possession came; there was a gent