with close attention to every word, very much on the alert.

Pender hesitated and tried to smile. He brushed his hair from his
forehead with a nervous gesture.

"You must tell me all your impressions, even your fancies; they are
quite as important as your certainties."

"I had a vague idea that it was some one connected with my forgotten
dream, some one who had been at me in my sleep, some one of great
strength and great ability--of great force--quite an unusual
personality--and, I was certain, too--a woman."

"A good woman?" asked John Silence quietly.

Pender started a little at the question and his sallow face flushed; it
seemed to surprise him. But he shook his head quickly with an
indefinable look of horror.

"Evil," he answered briefly, "appallingly evil, and yet mingled with the
sheer wickedness of it was also a certain perverseness--the perversity
of the unbalanced mind."

He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade
of suspicion showed itself in his eyes.

"No," laughed the doctor, "you need not fear that I'm merely humouring
you, or think you mad. Far from it. Your story interests me exceedingly
and you furnish me unconsciously with a number of clues as you tell it.
You see, I possess some knowledge of my own as to these psychic byways."