intense. Yet it had not happened....

Once he had shuddered a little; and the very shudder of fear had had
in it a touch of delicious, trembling expectation. Yet it had not
happened.

Laurie relaxed his muscles therefore, let his breath exhale in a long
sigh, and once more remembered the book he had read and Mrs.
Stapleton's feverish, self-conscious thought.

Half an hour later his mother, listening in her bed, heard his
footsteps pass her room.




_Chapter III_


I

Lady Laura Bethell, spinster, had just returned to her house in
Queen's Gate, with her dearest friend, Mrs. Stapleton, for a few days
of psychical orgy. It was in her house, as much as in any in London,
that the modern prophets were to be met with--severe-looking women in
shapeless dresses, little men and big, with long hair and cloaks; and
it was in her drawing-room that tea and Queen cakes were dispensed to
inquirers, and papers read and discussed when the revels were over.

Lady Laura herself was not yet completely emancipated from what her