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It was, in many respects, so entirely as she had always imagined it. Naudheim, coatless, collarless, with open waistcoat, twisted braces, and unkempt hair, was striding up and down the room, banging his hands against his side, dictating to the younger man who sat before the rude pine table.
"The new science," the Duchess answered, with a note of triumph in her tone. "You will learn all about it some day, and you cannot begin too soon. The young man whom Professor Naudheim spoke so highly of is dining here to-night. Curiously enough, I found that he was almost a neighbor of both of ours." There was an instant's silence.
"It is we who are mad, to listen a little, to think a little, to play a little with the thoughts he gives us." "I know of Naudheim only by reputation," Rochester said. "And so far as regards Saton, nothing will convince me that he is not an impostor." She sighed. "There may be something of the charlatan in his methods," she said, "but there is something else.
You will be able to laugh at Saton, to see through the fellow, and to realise what a tissue of shams he's built of. You will be able to feel a reasonable interest in anything Naudheim has to say. Just now you are unnerved, these men have frightened you. Believe me that your greatest and most effectual safety lies in flight." A sudden hope lit up her face. She turned towards him eagerly.
Then his eyes caught Pauline's, and something which he was about to say seemed to die away upon his lips. "Of course, you are unbelievers, all of you," the Duchess said, calmly, "but some day perhaps even to-night you may become converts. Did I tell you, Mary," she continued, turning away from Rochester, "that I met that extraordinary man Naudheim in London?
The dead things are there to help you climb. They are rungs in the ladder, boulders for your feet." He leaned a little forward. It seemed as though he recognised something familiar amongst the treetops, or down in the mist-clad valleys. "Naudheim!" he cried hoarsely. "I shall go to Naudheim!" About half-way up, where the sleighs stopped, Lady Mary gave in.
Grant for a moment that Naudheim, and that even this bounder Saton, are honest, what possible good can it do you or me to hang upon their lips, to become their disciples?" "Oh, I don't know!" she answered. "Yet it's hideously fascinating, Henry hideously! And the man himself Bertrand Saton. I can't tell what there is about him. I only know " She broke off in the middle of her sentence.
You may blind others, even yourself, young man," he went on, "but I know. You are a renegade. You would serve two mistresses. I am going." "You shall not," Saton declared. "This is absurd. Come," he added, trying to draw his arm through his visitor's, "we will go into another room if this one annoys you." Naudheim stepped back. He thrust Saton away contemptuously.
"Well," she said harshly, "you remembered that. You did not fail. Who dares to say that you have failed!" Saton threw himself into the easy-chair drawn apart from hers. His head fell forward into his hands. The woman rested her head upon her fingers, and watched him through the shadows. Naudheim had finished his address, and stood talking with his host.
He walked aimlessly up and down the room, swinging his gloves in his hand, and muttering to himself. Then Rachael came in. She walked with the help of two sticks. She seemed gaunter and thinner than ever, yet her eyes had lost little of their fire, although they seemed set deeper in the caverns of her face. "Naudheim has gone," she said. "What is wrong, Bertrand?"
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