"Deceived you! I am not aware that I have done so!"
"You told me that you lived with Mrs Popejoy in Hampstead," I said.
"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."