The Mark of the Beast | Page 3

eyes.
An almost chance remark of his, towards the end of the meal, anent the
mysticism, the spiritism of the East, and the growing cult of the same
order in the West, appeared to suddenly wake her from her dreaminess.
Her dark eyes were turned quickly up to his, a new and eager light
flashed in them.
"Do you know," she said, her tone low enough to be caught only by
him, "that it was only the expectation of meeting you, and hearing you

talk of the occult, of that wondrous mysticism of the East, that made
me accept the invitation to this house--that is, I should add, at this
particular time, for I had arranged to go to my glorious Hungarian hills
this week."
Colonel Youlter searched her face eagerly. Had she spoken the tongue
of flattery, or of the mere conventional? He saw she had not, and he
began to regard her with something more than the mere curiosity with
which he had anticipated meeting her.
In his callow days he had been romantic to a degree. Even now his
heart was younger than his years, for while he had never wed, because
of a love-tragedy thirty years before, he had preserved a rare, a very
tender chivalry towards women. He knew he would never love again,
as he had once loved, though, at times, he told himself that he might yet
love in a soberer fashion, and even wed.
"You are interested in the occult, Miss Montmarte?" he replied.
She smiled up into his face, as she said:
"'Interested,' Colonel Youlter? interested is no word for it, for I might
almost say that it is a passion with me, for very little else in life really
holds me long, compared with my love for it."
She glanced swiftly to right and left, and across the table to see if she
was being watched, or listened to. Everyone seemed absorbed with
either their plates or their companions.
Bending towards the man at her side, she said, "You know what an
evening is like at such times as this. We women will adjourn to the
Drawing Room, you men will presently join us, there will be a buzzing
of voices, talk--'cackle' one of America's representatives used to term it,
and it was a good name, only that the hen has done something to cackle
about, she has fulfilled the purpose for which she came into existence,
and women--the average Society women, at least--do not. Then there'll
be singing, of a sort, and--but you know, Colonel, all the usual
rigmarole. Now I want a long, long talk with you about the subject you

have just broached. We could not talk, as we would, in the crowd that
will be in the drawing-room presently, so I wonder if you would give
me an hour in the library, tomorrow morning after breakfast. I suggest
the library because I find it is the one room in the house into which no
one ever seems to go. Of course, Colonel Youlter, if you have
something else you must needs do in the forenoon, pray don't regard
my suggestion. Or, if you would prefer that we walked and talked, I
will gladly accommodate myself to your time and your conveniences."
He assured her that he had made no plans for the morrow, and that he
would be delighted to meet her in the library, for a good long 'confab'
over the subject that evidently possessed a mutual attraction for them.
Mentally, while he studied her, he decided that her chief charm, in his
eyes, was her absolute naturalness and unconventionality. "But to some
men," he mused "what a danger zone she would prove. Allied to her
great beauty, her wealth, and her gifts, there is a way with her that
would make her almost absolutely irresistible if she had set her heart on
anything!"
An hour later that opinion deepened within him as he listened to her
singing in the drawing-room. She had been known to bluntly, flatly
refuse an Emperor who had asked her to sing, and yet to take a little
Sicillian street singer's tambourine from her hand, and sing the coppers
and silver out of the pockets of the folk who had crowded the
market-place at the first liquid notes of her song. She rarely sang in the
houses of her hosts and hostesses. Tonight she had voluntarily gone to
the piano, accompanying herself.
She sang in Hungarian, a folk-song, and a love song of the people of
her own land. Yearning and wistful, full of that curious mystical
melancholy, that always appealed to her own soul, and which
characterizes some of the oldest of the Hungarian folk-songs.
Her second song finished, amid the profoundest hush, she rose as
suddenly from the piano as