ad in them failure, and yet a
kind of satisfaction, too, as if they had found more in me than they
expected.

'What life have you led?' the soft voice was saying.

I was able to answer quite naturally, rather to my surprise. 'I have
been a mining engineer up and down the world.'

'You have faced danger many times?'

'I have faced danger.'

'You have fought with men in battles?'

'I have fought in battles.'

Her bosom rose and fell in a kind of sigh. A smile--a very beautiful
thing--flitted over her face. She gave me her hand. 'The horses are at
the door now,' she said, 'and your servant is with them. One of my
people will guide you to the city.'

She turned away and passed out of the circle of light into the darkness
beyond ...

Peter and I jogged home in the rain with one of Sandy's skin-clad
Companions loping at our side. We did not speak a word, for my
thoughts were running like hounds on the track of the past hours. I
had seen the mysterious Hilda von Einem, I had spoken to her, I had
held her hand. She had insulted me with the subtlest of insults and
yet I was not angry. Suddenly the game I was playing became invested
with a tremendous solemnity. My old antagonists, Stumm and Rasta and
the whole German Empire, seemed to shrink into the background, leaving
only the slim woman with her inscrutable smile and devouring eyes.
'Mad and bad,' Blenkiron had called her, 'but principally bad.' I did
not think they were the proper terms, for they belonged to the narrow
world of our common experience. This was something beyond and above
it, as a cyclone or an earthquake is outside the decent routine of
nature. Mad and bad she might be, but she was also great.

Before we arrived our guide had plucked my knee and spoken some words
which he had obviously got by heart. 'The Master says,' ran the
message, 'expect him at midnight.'

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

An Embarrassed Toilet

I was soaked to the bone, and while Peter set off to look for dinner I
went to my room to change. I had a rubdown and then got into pyjamas
for some dumb-bell exercises with two chairs, for that long wet ride
had stiffened my arm and shoulder muscles. They were a vulgar suit of
primitive blue, which Blenkiron had looted from my London wardrobe. As
Cornelis Brandt I had sported a flannel nightgown.

My bedroom opened off the sitting-room, and while I was busy with my
gymnastics I heard the door open. I thought at first it was B