By the same author
Sane Occultism
The Cosmic Doctrine
Psychic Self Defence
Aspects of Occultism
Through the Gates of Death
Esoteric Orders and Their Work
Mystical Meditations on the Collects
The Training and Work of an Initiate
Practical Occultism in Daily Life
Esoteric Philosophy of Love and Marriage
Spiritualism in the Light of Occult Science
Avalon of the Heart

Occult Fiction
Moon Magic
The Demon Lover
The Winged Bull
The Goat-Foot God
The Sea Priestess
Secrets of Dr Taverner


First American paperback edition
Published in 1980 by
Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Box 612
York Beach, Maine 03910-0612
Originally published in 1927
This printing, 1994

ISBN 0-87728-499-7
BJ

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials Z39.48-1984.


CHAPTER. ONE

THE BACK OF ONE OF THE MASSIVE, OLD-fashioned houses in a Bloomsbury Square
was a single-storied structure originally intended
by the architect for a billiard room. It was
connected with the main building by a short
passage, and its windowless walls supported a
domed roof of glass. The present users of the
room, however, were apparently engaged in some
matter which did not require a good top light,
for a ceiling had been built across the span of
the dome, and save for the steady purring of an
electric fan behind the louvre boards of the
lantern, no sign of life was apparent from the
outside, the windowless walls and double roofing
rendering the building light and sound-proof.
This suited admirably the purposes of its present
users, whose work required absolute immunity
from any sudden sound or change of light, and
who had no wish to draw the attention of the
neighbours to their proceedings.
Although the night was a sultry one, the group
of men seated round the table seemed to suffer
no inconvenience. The faces varied greatly in
type ; the chairman of the meeting had the air
of a prosperous business man ; on his right was
an unmistakable lawyer ; on his left, a benign old
gentleman with a long white beard ; next to him,
a mechanic of the better class; opposite was a
journalist. At the foot of the table, however,
there sat a man who could not so readily be
assigned to a place; he might have been a
diplomat, he might have been a detective, or he
might have been one of those pseudo-aristocratic
adventurers who hang upon the fringe of smart

6 THE DEMON LOVER

society. With the exception of the mechanic he
was the youngest man present, and the minute
book in front of him marked him as the secretary
of the meeting.
Though the members were of such divergent
types, they had certain characteristics which
marked them as men whom some common
discipline had welded together. Each possessed
the power of sitting absolutely motionless unless
he had occasion to move, a far from common
accomplishment; each radiated a peculiar sense
of poise and power ; and each, with the exception
of the secretary, had a pair of absolutely
expressionless eyes; and even his did not respond
to emotion as eyes generally do, by alteration of
the muscles round the sockets, but marked his
feelings by an expansion and contraction of the
pupil itself, which produced an extraordinary
effect upon the observer. The eyes, of a very
dark hazel with greenish lights in them, together
with the sallowness of the skin, gave an unpleasing
impression which, in some way, the perfect
regularity of the features intensified. It was the
face of a man who might be exceedingly
interesting, exceedingly charming, and exceedingly
unscrupulous.
The meeting, proceeding quietly with the
transaction of business, was redeemed from
ordinariness by the fact that the seventh member
lay asleep on a couch, no one taking the slightest
notice of him except the secretary, who cast
quick, sidelong glances in his direction in the
intervals of note-taking, and seemed prepared to
spring up and catch him should he show any
signs of rolling on to the floor.

THE DEMON LOVER 7

The discussion of business was carried on
quietly, almost in undertones; accounts for large
sums of money being brought forward and
passed without comment, when a peculiar sound
broke the stillness of the room ; from the figure
on the couch came a long-drawn-out sibilant hiss.
No notice of this strange manifestation was taken
by any person present except the secretary, who
put a cross on the top of the pad on which he
was taking notes. A short while passed, during
which the committee still worked in hushed
voices, and then a second prolonged hiss came
from the sleeper, and the secretary made a second
cross on his writing pad. A third and fourth hiss
followed in quick succession, and successive
crosses were added to the row at the top of the
secretary's tablet. On the completion of the
fourth he looked up as if anticipating a command.
For the first time the other members of the
committee glanced at the sleeping figure.
" If he is sufficiently deep in trance," said the
chairman, " we will put aside the accounts and
proceed with the Housmann problem."
" He is on the fourth hypnoidal level," said the
secretary.
" That will do," was the answer, and with
cautious movements the committee disposed
itself so that the hitherto ignored seventh member
became the focus of attention.
The secretary stretched out a thin brown
hand and tilted the shade of the lamp so that the
sleeper's face was thrown into still deeper shadow,
then he left his chair and went and sat on the
couch beside the recumbent man, who never
stirred ; leaning forward, he tapped a certain

8 THE DEMON LOVER

spot on the unconscious head with a peculiar
rhythm. Immediately, without stirring a muscle
of his face, the sleeper emitted the most extraordinary
sound that ever issued from a human
throat--it could only be compared to the weird
noises that arise from a faulty gramophone--and
then the secretary proceeded in as calm and
matter of fact manner as if he were using an
ordinary telephone, to ask for a number, using the
unconscious man as a means of communication.
" Fifty North, fourteen East," he repeated
several times, as if seeking to call up some invisible
exchange. After a few repetitions the sleeping
man replied in the German language, asking his
interrogator who was calling.
" Thirty, nought," replied the secretary. " Is
that the Prague Lodge ? "
" It is," replied the sleeper, speaking in English,
with a slight foreign accent.
" We want particulars of Brother Hermann
Housmann, a German American, last heard of at
Prague, who is suspected of attempting to
negotiate with the Vatican for the sale of information
concerning the Brotherhood's policy in
regard to the French loan."
" He left here early in May for Switzerland.
Try the Geneva Lodge," replied the sleeper.
Again the secretary repeated his tapping, and
again the peculiar note, half-way between the
hoot of an owl and a telephone bell, was heard.
" Forty-six North, six East," said the secretary,
and the sleeping man replied in French this
time, asking again who called.
" Thirty, nought," replied the secretary again,
and again enquired of the sleeper for news of

THE DEMON LOVER 9

Hermann Housmann, and was informed that
he had left Geneva at the end of May and proceeded
to Naples and thence to New York.
Yet once more the secretary repeated his
tapping, and elicited the same peculiar sound
from the sleeper.
" Forty, North, seventy-four West," he
repeated several times, and finally a voice with
a strong American accent replied. News of
Hermann Housmann was again demanded, and
this time obtained.
" He came here early in June by the White
Star liner Cedric, and got in touch with the
Tammany bosses. We sent him a summons to
attend Lodge, and he got in a panic and started
West. Then it was decided to send him an order
of execution by means of the Dark Ray of
Destruction."
The men round the table stirred uneasily and
looked at one another.
" With what results ? " asked the interrogator.
" He stopped off at Buffalo, took the cars to
Niagara, and went over the suspension bridge."
" Over into Canada ? "
" No, over into the river," replied the sleeper,
his expressionless countenance strangely contradicted
by the challenging note in his voice.
The men in the dimly-lit room looked at each
other. The mechanic covered his mouth with his
hand to hide a nervous smile ; the journalist
shrugged his shoulders; the lawyer fidgeted with
pens and paper, and the pupils of the secretary's
eyes opened and shut like those of a cat. It
was the patriarch on the chairman's left who
broke the silence.

io THE DEMON LOVER

(< I don't like it," he said. (< I don't like it at
all. I cannot approve of these methods. For
God's sake let us leave the issue to higher intelligences
then ours, and not take the law into our
own hands."
" There is a spirit growing up in the
Fraternity," said the chairman, in a deep,
booming voice, " which can lead to nothing but
disaster," and he glared at the secretary as if
he were responsible for the American's death.
The pupils of the secretary's peculiar eyes completely
disappeared, and the irises filled with
green gleams like the fire in a black opal, but it
was the journalist who took up the defence.
" This is no time for half measures," he said
" Be sure your policy is right, and then go ahead
and make a clean job of it. Look at the difference
in our position since the new spirit came into
the Fraternity, from being a group of antiquarians,
we have become a factor to be reckoned with in
international politics."
One after another they spoke with considerable
feeling, but the secretary kept silence; he, although
he was never directly addressed, seemed to be
regarded by the others as responsible for the new
spirit. Finally, each having said his say, silence
fell upon the men round the table. The secretary
raised his peculiar eyes to the chairman.
" Shall I bring him round ? " he enquired.
The chairman nodded glumly. The brown hand of the secretary passed swiftly across the
face of the sleeper with a peculiar snatching
movement several times repeated, who thereupon
stirred slightly and snuggled down into the
cushions. It was apparent, however, that the

THE DEMON LOVER n

death-like passivity had given place to natural
sleep. In a minute or two he stirred again,
roused, sat up, and blinked dazedly at the lamp.
The secretary poured a cup of steaming coffee
from a vacuum flask and handed it to him, for
close though the night was, the man was shivering
with cold. The hot drink speedily restored him
to his normal consciousness, and he enquired
whether any news had been obtained of Hermann
Housmann, and the words that had issued from
his lips were repeated to him. At the news of
the suicide he gave a long whistle and stared
hard at the secretary.
Presently the meeting broke up, the members
departing in twos and threes; at the door each
of these sober-minded men of the world did a
peculiar thing, they turned and genuflected as if
leaving a church, for in the shadows in the far
end of the room the dim outline of an altar
could be discerned on which a red light was
burning.
Among the last to leave was the old man with
the long white beard. Pausing before the secretary,
he held out his corded old hand. After an
almost imperceptible hesitation, the thin brown
fingers were placed in it.
" Lucas," said the old man, " no one appreciates
more than I do what your work has meant to the
Fraternity, but I hope to God you will never
want anything you ought not to have."

CHAPTER TWO

LEFT ALONE, THE SECRETARY SWITCHED OFF THE
electric fan and silence shut down upon the
room like a thing palpable. He paused for a
moment with his hand on the switch, as if
uncertain what to do next, then he crossed over
to the table and stood looking down at the
scattered papers, but made no movement to
gather them up; he was evidently deep in
thought, going over in his mind the events of
the evening and trying to interpret their significance.
It had been quite evident that he was
not in good odour; even his supporters had
been apologists and his opponents had been
among the weightiest members of the Fraternity,
and the evening's proceedings had served to
bring to the surface a dissatisfaction that had
been smouldering for some time. Lucas's doings
were not liked, so much had been made quite
clear to him ; and if his doings were not liked,
then he must be prepared to mend his ways or
there would be serious trouble, for, as most
people are aware, it is one thing to get into an
occult fraternity, but quite another to get out of
it.
He knew his chiefs, men of the highest ideals,
but also of the sternest justice, and he knew that
rebellion need expect no mercy. First would
come an order to attend Lodge and offer an
explanation ; should that prove unsatisfactory,
he would be commanded to return to the archives
all insignia, symbols and manuscripts, and he
would be solemnly warned, in a formula thousands
of years old, that for the future he would exercise
occult powers at his peril; and then he would be

12


THE DEMON LOVER 13

bidden to go forth and associate no more with
his brethren.
Should he, however, persist in his evil ways,
should he, especially, pervert to his own ends the
powers he had acquired, then something that was
not of this plane of existence dealt with him.
No man raised a finger against him, the law was
not invoked, his name was not mentioned for
evil, but, all the same, something happened to
him, and after that which was to fall had fallen,
he was incapable of either good or evil for the
short span of existence which usually remained
to him.
Lucas knew all this quite well, and, hands deep
in trouser pockets, he slowly paced the room,
calculating his chances of escape should he decide
on the course of defiance.
Six years ago, with a promising journalistic
career before him, he had suddenly abandoned
Fleet Street, and to the surprise and disgust of
his colleagues, become secretary to a society for
the study of comparative folk-lore. Why he did
it, they could not make out, and Lucas did not
enlighten them ; but, if the truth were known,
he was controlling the mundane pied-a-terre
that even the most esoteric of occult fraternities
must have, and to this fraternity he dedicated
his existence. As had been truly said that
evening, he had raised the Fraternity to a very
different position to that which it had occupied
when first he took its affairs in hand. He had
found it engaged in study for study's sake, and
he had shown it the practical application of its
knowledge. Hitherto it had contented itself in
dealing with the individual, his development or

14 THE DEMON LOVER

regeneration. Lucas showed it that its methods
were equally applicable to international affairs,
and he had interfered with such notable success
in certain coups d'etat that the great majority
of his Fraternity looked upon him as the coming
leader. It was only a minority that viewed his
doings askance, but, as he had seen that evening,
the seniors of the Fraternity were in that minority
to a man, and it was they alone who could bind
or loose. It was useless to have the support of
numbers if those who held the keys of power
closed the door upon him, and it had been borne
in upon Lucas recently that these doors were
closed, had, in fact, been closed for some time.
He had realized that no amount of hard work,
no amount of devotion, would take a man up
the Fraternity if that man's heart were not right.
Lip service would not avail, either ; the trained
clairvoyants who had charge of these matters
judged a man neither by what he said nor what
he did, but by the colours of his aura, and that
tell-tale emanation revealed the truth. No
amount of ostentatious church-going on Sundays
and wearing of crosses on watch-chains could
conceal the dull red glow that Saturday night's
diversions left behind, or counterfeit the bright
clear electric blue that had to show before a man
was judged fit for the higher degrees.
Lucas knew that although his aura showed
the occult green, that green was not right, and
he could not get it right except by changing his
whole nature, by casting out the inordinate
ambition and love of power that consumed him
and bringing in compassion for his fellow men,
and neither of these things could Lucas see his

THE DEMON LOVER 15

way to achieve ; he despised his fellow man too
much to feel anything beyond a contemptuous
pity for him ; and as for foregoing the fruits of
power, what else was there to live and strive
for ? He was quite willing to show kindness to
all and sundry, or any other manifestation in
fact that might be demanded of him as a
qualification, but laboriously to acquire power
and then to refrain from using it for one's own
benefit even when driven into a corner, this
was beyond his comprehension. He was prepared
to pay any price required for his apprenticeship,
he had worked as Jacob worked for Rachel, but
for two years his progress had been held up, and
men with half his capacities had preceded him
into the higher degrees. His theoretical studies
completed, he realized that the chiefs had no
intention of entrusting him with the practical
applications thereof. The secret science of the
hidden forces of man and nature he knew, but
not the Names of Power by which these forces
were controlled, and without them all his
studies were useless--he had the lock, but not
the key.
And so he paced up and down, pondering his
problem. The chiefs had openly declared their
dissatisfaction; a complete revision of the
Fraternity's policy might follow, and with it a
drastic clipping of his own wings; he might even
be removed from the post of secretary. For
this contingency he had endeavoured to provide.
Next door lived an aged general, gasping his life
out in repeated attacks of bronchitis, any one of
which might prove fatal; Lucas had judiciously
cultivated his acquaintance, and the first use he

16 THE DEMON LOVER

had made of his Delta Degree initiation was to
use the powers it conferred to cause the old man
to make a will in his favour, so Lucas hoped
before long to find himself among the landed
gentry and the possessor of private means, in
which situation he thought it might be easier
for him to come up to the moral standard of
the Fraternity and obtain the coveted higher
degrees. His only danger was that the will
might be contested and the transaction thus
brought to the ears of his chiefs, and what they
would have to say on the subject would not be
pleasant hearing, for he knew full well the white
occultist's horror of black magic, and his drastic
methods of dealing with it, and he supposed
they would consider his transactions very black
indeed, though he had no intention whatever
of doing harm with the money, which would,
he thought, be used to much better advantage
if it were in his hands than distributed among
the general's nephews and nieces of the third
and fourth generation.
All the same, Lucas had a very wholesome fear
of the dark force which almost invariably got the
man, sooner or later, who deviated from the
right hand path. Some, indeed, but not many,
had had immunity ; but they were men who had
climbed so high before they turned to the
left that they were senior to those who had to
deal with them and often, in fact, returned the
occult onslaughts in kind ; but these favoured
individuals were rare ; few men maintained themselves
long when the fraternity moved against
them.
So Lucas calculated his prospects, and they

THE DEMON LOVER 17

did not look to him very promising unless he
could get hold of those Words of Power that
should enable him to fight at least on a level
footing. That evening had shown him clearly
that the Fraternity would not give them to him ;
how, in the name of Heaven, earth, and the
waters under the earth could those carefully
guarded secrets be obtained ? Lucas's stride
lengthened and quickened as his perplexity
increased. Gazing before him with unseeing
eyes, he swung like a pendulum up and down the
room.
Suddenly his progress was arrested. His blind
march had gradually edged him across the floor
till he ran into the low couch upon which the
man who had served as the receiver of the occult
telephone had lain. He stood staring down at
it as if the sleeper still lay there, and through
those entranced lips might come the solution of
his problem. And come it did. With a sudden
start Lucas realized that anyone who could go
into a sufficiently deep trance could ' listen in '
at the occult ceremonies and learn the Words
of Power--provided he cared to take the risk I
Lucas had nerves of steel as an occultist needs to
have, but even he did not care about that risk.
Still he stood looking down at that couch,
seeking further inspiration from a source that
had already proved so fruitful. Supposing he
could ' get at' Spencer, and get him to join him
in this raid upon the secrets of the Fraternity ?
But he dismissed the idea ; the brethren were
all picked men, hard to corrupt by either threats
or promises ; besides, Spencer wouldn't like the
risk any more than he did, but the idea in itself was

18 THE DEMON LOVER

good. Supposing he could find a trance medium
who did not know enough to be scared, he could
have his own occult telephone and ' listen in '
with impunity. The powers might ' strafe ' the
medium, but they would find it exceedingly
difficult to locate the man who was operating
the medium.
Lucas thoughtfully gathered up the papers,
put the lights out, and went to bed.

CHAPTER THREE

WHEN A SCHOOL BREAKS UP FOR THE SUMMER
holidays it is usual for the pupils to go
their various ways to the country or seaside.
All are not so happily placed, however, and the
pupil who stepped out of the dark entry of the
business training college into the blazing sunshine
was engaged upon the urgent quest of fresh work
now that her secretarial course was finished.
Only the most rigorous self-denial had enabled
her to get through her training ; the third term
had been one of semi-starvation, and this, added
to the strain of the final examinations, had
reduced her to an abnormal state in which she
floated rather than walked, and saw grey ghosts
about her instead of men and women.
In her hand she grasped an envelope bearing
an address in a neighbouring square, and
containing an account of her attainments and
credentials, and in her heart was a gnawing
anxiety as to what she should do if she failed to
obtain the prospective post. Three other girls
joined her on the sunlit pavement, also bearing
envelopes, and demanded of her her destination,
which proved to be the same as her own, and her
heart sank still further when she realized that
there was going to be competition for the coveted
work, and into her mind there flashed a vision
of her own face as she had seen it in the dressing-
room glass while pinning on her hat--wliite and
exhausted, with deep lines under the eyes and
dark circles round them, and it seemed to her
that, were she herself engaging a secretary,
Veronica Mainwaring would not be her choice.
The others chattered gaily on their way to

'9


20 THE DEMON LOVER

the square, they did not care much whether
they got the post or not, they were only looking
at it in case it were so well worth taking as to
counterbalance the loss of a summer holiday,
and they made it quite plain to Veronica that it
had to be very good to be accepted by them at
that time of year. She, for her part, had
determined to accept anyone who would have
her, rather than be disengaged in the blank
emptiness of a London summer.
They were admitted through large double
doors by an impassive butler, and ushered into
a room which was obviously a waiting-room
rather than one that was lived in. Veronica, in
her abnormal, almost dream state, felt as if the
spirit of the place was audible to her inner
consciousness; the butler did not seem to her
to be an ordinary butler, but rather a lay brother
of some sort of fraternity ; she wondered whether
the immaculate shirt-front concealed a great
cross that hung from his neck by a chain, or was
it the symbol of some strange pagan worship he
wore ? She felt certain that the carefully
pomaded strands of hair disposed at regular
intervals across the top of his bald head rested
upon a store of knowledge such as is not usually
confined under a butler's skull. The atmosphere
of the room, while full of strange, almost electrical
vibrations, was brooded over by a great peace,
wonderfully soothing to the girl's overwrought
nerves. A longing to remain in the stillness
overwhelmed her, but she feared greatly less
the coveted post were not for her, for half
the secretarial agencies of London appeared to
have sent candidates of all shapes, sizes and

THE DEMON LOVER 21

descriptions, from a bemuslined flapper in a
picture hat, to a ferocious female of fifty in a
reefer jacket, and the more Veronica watched
them, the less she thought of her prospects.
Suddenly the door opened and a man stood
on the threshold surveying the assembly. Of
medium height and lightly built, he moved with
a springy alertness that put Veronica in mind of
a stag, as if he could be off and away at full
speed in the flash of a second. Deliberately and
entirely impersonally, he inspected the waiting
women one by one. Finally Veronica's turn
came for a scrutiny. The man's eyes met hers
with a normal, observant, not unsympathetic
glance, and then, all of a sudden, changed to an
expression of ferocious intensity, and yet he did
not appear to see her at all, but, on the contrary,
to be looking straight through her. A second
later he resumed his normal expression, and for
the first time since entering the room, he spoke.
<( If you will come to my office," he said,
(< I should like to have a talk with you."
Veronica followed him out of the room into
the one immediately behind it. It was a large,
pleasant room, furnished not as an office, but as a
sitting room, and surrounded by book-cases.
A faint, sweet smell, as if incense were habitually
burnt there, hung in the air,. The door of a
strong room, and a desk in the window, were the
sole indications that it was used for business
purposes.
The man seated himself at the desk and
motioned her to a chair opposite.
" My name is Lucas," he said, <( What is
yours ? "

22 THE DEMON LOVER

She told him, and with shaking fingers handed
him her training certificate, which he accepted,
but neglected to remove from its envelope.
" How old are you ? " was the next question.
" Twenty-three," said Veronica.
" What did you do previous to your training ? "
She told him how she had cared for 'her
widowed mother till the latter's death terminated
the little pension upon which they had both
subsisted, and then how the minute savings had
just served to launch her upon the world.
" Have you good health ? " he enquired.
" In the ordinary way, that is, when you are not
overworked ? Have you had any serious illnesses ? "

She was able to give satisfactory answers to
both these questions.
" I think you will do," said the man. " What
salary do you want ? "
Veronica had had so little hope of obtaining
the post that she had not thought about the
salary, and almost at random, stated the sum
that one of her companions had remarked would
be necessary to secure her own services, and then
her heart stood still lest she had demanded too
much and would be rejected, but the man in
the revolving chair did not seem disconcerted,
he nodded his head.
" We will see how it works," he said. " Now
when can you start ? "
Veronica said that she was disengaged and
could start forthwith.
" That will suit me very well," he said.
" There is no occasion for delay ; if we are going
to begin, we may as well begin at once. You

THE DEMON LOVER 23

will have a couple of rooms upstairs placed at your
disposal; I live in the house myself, but that need
not trouble you, you will never see me except
during business hours. Various other men come
and go. I don't know whether you will consider
the butler's wife an adequate chaperone, but
she is the best we can offer you. Get a taxi and
bring your things round right away."
Veronica accepted. The offer was beyond her
hopes. She asked no questions, she did not even
permit her mind to question, she literally flung
herself into this haven of refuge and thanked
whatever gods might be. Lucas himself let her
out of the front door and watched her for a
moment as she walked down the road, a little
smile curling his lips. He was evidently well
pleased with his bargain.
Veronica returned to the hostel that had been
her home during the long months she had
worked at the training school. There was little
enough in her cubicle to pack, and, having put
her meagre belongings together, she went to the
office to pay her bill.
" Where shall we send your letters ? " asked
the superintendent.
Veronica gave the address.
" So you have got a resident post. What
work are you going to do ? "
Not until the question was put to her did
Veronica realize that she had never inquired the
nature of the work on which she was about to be
engaged, any more than Lucas had inquired as
to her capacities or references. Reluctantly she
admitted her ignorance.
" But, Miss Mainwaring, you do not mean to

24 THE DEMON LOVER

say that you have accepted a post, and a resident
post too, without inquiring who you were
working for ? Perhaps you don't even know
whether it is a man or a woman ? "
" It is a man," said Veronica, " and his name
is Lucas," and she realized that that was absolutely
all she knew. She did not even know what
would be her hours or duties, what demands he
would make on her, or what qualifications she
would require, and she suddenly remembered
that he was paying her as a resident secretary
the salary she had demanded believing she would
have to support herself. Surely exceptional
requirements must condition the payment of
such a salary.
" I do not feel at all happy about you," said
the superintendent. " But at any rate you are
near here, so you must come round and let us
know how you get on."
Veronica wished her good-bye and transported
her few belongings in a taxi round to the house
in the square. The impassive butler again
admitted her, and again Veronica experienced
the sensation that she was in a church. The
strange, indescribable feeling of remoteness and
stillness enveloped her. A pleasant-faced woman
appeared from the nether regions and conducted
her to two rooms upon an upper floor. They
looked straight into the heart of a great plane
tree that stood in the garden of the next house,
for the whole of the back premises of the house
she was in were occupied by a large, one-storey
annexe.
The rooms led one out of the other, pleasant,
old-fashioned rooms with deep window-seats to

THE DEMON LOVER 25

the bow windows, such as Bloomsbury abounds
in, for the rich City merchants who inhabited
that district during its hey-day knew what
comfort meant. Big sash windows let in the
light, and heavy wooden shutters, folding back
into the walls, were equally capable of shutting
out both light and air. A capacious grate bore
witness to the good old days of plenty, and,
glimpsed through the open door of the adjoining
room, a high feather bed with a curtained
canopy declared that the tradition was not
forgotten, and that the present owners of the
house also knew what comfort, if not what
hygiene, meant.
Her reverie was interrupted by the butler's
voice. " We will send up your dinner at seven,
Miss. All your meals will be served up here."
(< Will Mr. Lucas want me this evening ? "
she asked.
" I don't know, Miss, he is out at present" ;
and she was left to her own devices with
instructions to ring for anything she required.
Her unpacking disposed of, she sat on the
broad, repp-covered window seat watching the
birds in the tree. She had a curious feeling that
she was a prisoner, free in appearance, as the
lions on the Mappin terraces are free, yet ringed
round upon every side by invisible barriers.
She wished the superintendent had kept silence
and refrained from instilling that uneasy doubt.
Why could not people leave one to one's own
devices ? True, she did not know the nature
of her work or the occupation of Lucas, but why
should things be wrong ?
The butler's wife came up with a tray, and

26 THE DEMON LOVER

Veronica determined to make good the deficiencies
in her knowledge by judicious questioning.
" Have you been here long, Mrs. Ashlott ? "
" Lor---- Yes, Miss. I come here when I
married. Ashlott's been here, man and boy,
these forty years."
" Has Mr. Lucas been here long ? "
" No, Miss. Only five or six years. He is
quite a new-comer."
" Does anyone else live in the house beside
Mr. Lucas ? "
" No, Miss. Only you and me and Ashlott
regular-like, but the gentlemen are always coming
and going, and we often puts them up for the
night. I always keeps the beds made up."
" What is Mr. Lucas ? " asked Veronica
boldly.
" Secretary, Miss."
" Oh I " said Veronica. " And the gentlemen?
What are they ? "
" Ah," said Mrs. Ashlott. " Now you're
asking. Them as knows most tells least." With
which cryptic utterance she departed.
It was after ten o'clock, and Veronica was
thinking of bed when there came a knock at the
door, and in response to her summons, Lucas
entered.
" Don't get up," he said as she rose nervously,
the superintendent's suspicions flashing through
her mind. " I won't keep you long. I only wanted
to explain to you one or two things about your
job. The work comes in rushes, and unexpectedly,
at all hours of the twenty-four, in fact, so I don't
want you to go out for the next few days, but to
be in the house so that I can get you if I want

THE DEMON LOVER 27

you suddenly. After that, if I decide to keep
you on, I will make arrangements for you to
have regular time off duty. The work is not
exacting, a good part of the time you will have
nothing whatever to do, but I want you to be
at hand in case I need you."
Veronica's heart had sunk while he was speaking.
So her post was not yet a security ? The
uncertainty, and the renewed anxiety it
engendered, made her acquiesce very humbly to
Lucas's request that she should not leave the
house for the next few days. He remained for
a few minutes, chatting with her pleasantly and
kindly, evidently wishing to put her at her ease and
make her feel settled and contented. Moreover,
his words had done their work; Veronica, secure
of her post, might have been tempted to question
and criticize the conditions of it, but Veronica,
insecure, clung desperately, dreading to find
herself out of work and with a black mark against
her name on the school register. At all costs
she must keep this, her first post, long enough
to have a respectable reference. With a single
phrase he had ensured her obedience. For one
week she would accept the most eccentric
commands without question, she would humour
him to the top of his bent, refuse nothing, protest
against nothing. And a week was all that Lucas
required for the installing of his occult telephone.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING VERONICA AWAITED HER
employer's pleasure at nine; likewise at
ten, but he did not come ; finally at eleven he
appeared, smelling pleasantly of soap and very
spick and span and cheerful, and the morning's
work commenced. Veronica found that hers was
to be the appalling task of copying voluminous
documents, every one of which was in cypher ;
letter by letter, the weird gibberish had to be
copied and then counter-checked. When the
copying was finished, however, there seemed to
be nothing else for her to do ; Lucas himself
worked indefatigably, but apparently did not
see fit to entrust her with any further tasks.
She sat at her desk, hands folded, watching his
bent back. Time went on, and time went on,
and still he worked, and still she waited. At
one o'clock he called a halt for lunch, bidding
her return at two. But when she returned at
that hour and inquired what she was to do next,
he appeared somewhat nonplussed, as if he had
not been expecting such an inquiry, and looked
vaguely round at the furniture, as if it might be
in need of her services. No response being
forthcoming, his gaze returned to Veronica, and
she fancied that he was trying not to smile.
" I have nothing for you to do at the moment,"
he said. " You can have a look at these if you
like," and he pointed to a pile of morning papers
ly ng on a chair.
Veronica read what the Tories had to say
about the Liberals, and the Liberals about the
Tories, and the Socialists concerning both, till
five o'clock, when Lucas, who had worked
28

THE DEMON LOVER 29

unintermittently, rose, stretched himself, and
announced that he had to go out.
" Will you want me again this evening ? "
asked Veronica.
He shook his head. <( I shall not come back
till late."
" Then would you mind if I just ran round to
the hostel ? It is only in the next square. The
superintendent asked me to go in and see her."
Veronica raised her eyes to his as she spoke,
and saw to her amazement that the pupils had
entirely disappeared ; two greenish-brown discs
looked back at her without a trace of expression,
inhuman, malignant, horrible. Anything more
sinister it would be impossible to imagine than
this human countenance from which all trace
of humanity had suddenly been erased. She
stood rooted to the floor, gazing at this horror
till Lucas's voice broke the spell.
" I would prefer you did not go out for the
present, as I have already told you," he said.
" Someone might ring up on the phone," he
added, by way of explanation. The pupils of
his eyes were slowly returning to their normal
proportions. He looked at her sharply, perceiving
her consternation. " What is the matter ? "
he asked.
" Nothing," said Veronica. She could not
very well explain to him that it was the horror
of his face that had overcome her. He continued
to stare at her, not with the offensive stare of a
man's curiosity, but with an entirely impersonal
inspection. Apparently the result was unsatisfactory,
for he took a step towards her.
Instinctively Veronica stepped back. Lucas

30 THE DEMON LOVER

took another step, and Veronica again retreated ;
she was against the desk now, and could go no
further, and Lucas came right up to her and
looked into her eyes; she was powerless to
withdraw them and gazed back at him helpless,
fascinated. He was not a tall man, and his face
was almost on a level with hers, but a sense of
power issued from him that held her spellbound.
She looked and looked, and did not wish to turn
away ; vitality radiated from those eyes, intense,
magnetic, compelling. Veronica went on looking.
She might have stood thus till she turned to
stone if the man himself had not released her.
Something shut down in his eyes, the power was
cut off, and she was looking into an ordinary
human countenance, olive-skinned, clear-cut, far
from unprepossessing. Her horror of him was
gone, in its place remained a curious fascination ;
what was he going to do next ? She wanted to
see. Her eyes followed every movement he
made about the room. She knew that he was
aware of this scrutiny, that he expected it, did
not resent it. She was sorry now that he was
going out; everything would seem very flat
and lifeless when he was gone. He looked up,
caught her eyes, and smiled. She did not
attempt to turn away.
" Go upstairs to your rooms," he said. " Mrs.
Ashlott will bring you your supper. You will
do alright."
Obediently she went towards the door, he
opened it to let her out, closing it behind her
with the click of a concealed lock. She went
upstairs. As she turned at the half landing she
saw that he was still looking after her, his eyes

THE DEMON LOVER 31

sparkling with some secret satisfaction. Dully
she wondered what it might be, but her mind
for the moment seemed at a standstill and
refused its service. She went up to her room
and flinging herself upon the bed, fell into a
deep sleep from which she was only awakened
by the appearance of Mrs. Ashlott with her
supper tray two hours later.
She did not feel hungry, but made some
pretence of eating her supper for the sake of
Mrs. Ashlott. Then, the meal dispatched, she
sat on the window seat, watching the setting
sun. All her uneasiness was gone; she was
placid, contented, non-thinking. She gazed at
the great red globe, shorn of its power by the
thick London atmosphere, with a face as
expressionless as its own. Slowly it sank. Its
rim touched the horizon. Gradually it disappeared.
With its going a change occurred.
The room felt suddenly cold, close August night
though it was. Veronica sat up, and pulled
herself together with a little shiver. What was
it ? What was the matter ? Then with a
rush the horror of Lucas's eyes returned to her.
She sprang to her feet. What house was this
that she was in ? The Ashlotts, Lucas, the
mysterious ' gentlemen' ? Who and what were
they all ? And she--was she trapped ? Did
Lucas not intend to let her out ? and if so, what
did he mean to do with her ? What was his
motive ? Was it all real or was it a nightmare ?
One thing was quite clear, she would not stop
another second in this awful place, she must get
out of it at all costs. Nothing mattered compared
to that.

32 THE DEMON LOVER

She put on her hat, and caught up her purse.
Her things did not matter, she could send for those later. Down the passage she sped on
tip-toe, her feet making no sound on the thick
dark carpet. But in an alcove was a settee, and
on the settee a man sat reading. It was Lucas.
" I thought you would," he said, without
looking up.
Veronica was desperate. For a moment she
stood poised, checked in mid-career, then she
sprang forward again. Lucas did not hear her,
the heavy carpet gave back no sound, and she
was a dozen feet down the passage before he
noticed her manoeuvre. She literally hurled
herself down the stairs, hardly touching the
steps with her feet, swung herself round the
bend by the banisters and was off down the next
flight. There was a thud behind her as Lucas
jumped the whole flight and landed in the
passage. Then she felt herself caught from
behind, and her elbows pinned to her sides.
She screamed shrilly, and a hand was clapped
over her mouth. Desperately she struggled till
the arm that encircled her shifted its grip and
clutched her into breathless immobility. Then
they remained motionless.
It was the first time that Veronica had had
closer contact with a man than the conventional
handshake, and her first sensation was utter
astonishment, his strength was so much greater
than she had expected. He was so surprisingly
hard too, as a sinewy forearm pinned her ruthlessly
against his chest; and he smelt of strong pipe
tobacco and shaving soap, strange, unfamiliar
unfeminine smells. Veronica was so taken up

THE DEMON LOVER 33

with her observations that she forgot to be
frightened till she felt Lucas shift his grip from
her breast to her waist, and with the breath half
crushed out of her, carry her downstairs and
drop her unceremoniously among the cushions
of the office sofa.
He stood back and inspected her, smoothing
his ruffled hair, breathless, laughing. Veronica
straightened her skirts and gathered together
the shreds of her dignity.
" I wish to leave," she said.
" Do you ? " said Lucas, tucking the ends of
his tie back into his waistcoat. I am afraid I
can't spare you."
" Why not ? "
" You happen to be useful to me."
" But you can get another secretary."
" I don't want a secretary."
" Then--then why did you engage me ? "
" You would not understand if I told you,
my dear child, so there is no use wasting time in
explanations."
He pulled down his waistcoat, shot forward
his cuffs, and adjusted his coat collar; then,
these preliminaries concluded, he gave Veronica
his undivided attention. For several seconds
they returned each other's gaze, then Lucas
reached forward a thin brown forefinger and
touched the soft round girlish throat.
" There is something round your neck," he said.
Up went Veronica's hand involuntarily.
" Look," he said, " it is a steel collar."
The image his words evoked flashed into her
mind, and as it did so, she felt cold hard metal
under her hand.

34 THE DEMON LOVER

(< There is a steel chain attached to it," the
man's soft level voice continued. " A slender
steel chain. Run your hand down it."
He took her hand in his and drew it towards
him, and she felt the links run through her fingers.
"And I hold the end of it," he added
significantly. " If you try to call out, or to tell
what I do not wish told, that collar will contract
till it strangles you. Feel, it is contracting
now."
Veronica felt something rigid grip her about
the throat. The pressure steadily increased.
She gasped and fought for air as the trachea
closed. Then Lucas touched her forehead.
(< It has relaxed now," he said, " but remember,
this will happen again if ever you try to give me
away."
Veronica drew in a great lungful of air and
rose to her feet. She was too perplexed to feel
frightened. Lucas was smiling at her pleasantly.
" Go to bed now," he said. " Sleep well,
pleasant dreams. Ten o'clock to-morrow
morning."

CHAPTER FIVE

VERONICA WENT TO HER ROOM, BUT SLEEP WAS
another matter. The events of the day had
been so strange that her bewilderment was
almost greater than her fear. If an event is far
enough removed from the normal, one doubts
the evidence of one's senses, the reliability of
one's memory ; retrospectively, it takes on the
appearance of phantasy rather than reality. To
Veronica it seemed that she must have imagined
the scuffle with Lucas--the extraordinary affair
of the collar and chain. What motive could he
possibly have in retaining a not very brilliant
shorthand-typist against her will ? He had not
attempted to make love to her, his touch had been
by no manner of means a caress, in fact he had
handled her as if she had been a recalcitrant
puppy. And that extraordinary phantom collar
and chain which appeared from nowhere at his
touch and vanished again at the word of
command ? They were the most tangible part
of the whole affair ; Veronica had a very distinct
remembrance of that strangulating pressure on
her throat; would that really occur if she tried
to break away from Lucas ? Would she feel
that awful tightening- -that inability to breathe--
if she attempted to appeal to others for help, to
tell that which he did not wish to be told ? If
so, then she were trapped indeed. And that
curious chain, what would happen if she tried to
run away ? Would it clank through the streets
at her heels ? And if so surely someone would
notice it.
Utterly bewildered, she sat on her bed staring
through the wide open window into the warm

3S


36 THE DEMON LOVER

summer night. It was too late to try the
experiment now, but she determined to arise at
daybreak and slip out before the household were
awake. Comforted by this thought Veronica
began to undress, and the events of the evening
retreated still further into the land of shadows
as the little everyday details of disrobing brought
her back to the workaday world where people
do not chase each other down the stairs or
ghostly chains materialize out of thin air. Then,
as she was about to put the light out, the sense
of reality returned with a rush--supposing what
he had said were true--supposing she were
bound by an invisible chain which would tighten
and strangle her if she disobeyed Lucas--why,
then, she was in his hands, body and soul. She
could not run away, she could not cry out, and
yet her bonds would be invisible, imperceptible
to anyone but herself, and no one would believe
her if she told them; and even if she tried to tell
them, Lucas's power would descend upon her,
choking, strangling her, and she would be fighting for the air that she was powerless to draw into
her lungs. She sat up in bed and with difficulty
restrained herself from shrieking aloud at the
horror of her invisible prison. She thought of
the lions on the Mappin Terraces, and
remembered her first impression of the house.
She was indeed in a cage, a cage whose bars
could not only prevent her egress but could cut
her on from God's good air at the will of her
master, and these bars were invisible. She
could not claim the help or sympathy of her
fellow beings. There, strangely enough, lay the
worst horror, in her isolation from the under-


THE DEMON LOVER 37

standing of her fellows; she was as much alone
in this world of men and women as if Lucas had
transferred her to another planet. She had a
notion that Ashlott might understand, but she
was quite sure he would not help ; but the
policeman at the corner, the superintendent of
the hostel, if she appealed to them for help
would think she was insane, and yet that collar
and chain were quite real enough to strangle
her. The problem was beyond her solution.
Despairingly she settled down upon the pillows
to wait for dawn.
Downstairs in the office Lucas was writing up
his diary. A green-shaded lamp cast a circle of
bright light on the desk and the rest of the room
was in darkness. The events of the day had
apparently been much to his liking, for a little
smile curled his lips as he wrote.
" Things came to a head this afternoon,"
the neat small writing, clear as print, advanced
along the lines of the book in front of him.
" Had to put the cards on the table sooner than
I expected, but found V.M. very suggestible
and got her well in hand, and do not anticipate
any difficulty in putting her into a trance. Think
she ought to do very well provided her body will
hold together, but her physique is frail and she
has been badly over-strained. Have told Mrs.
Ashlott to feed her up well. Mrs. A. thinks I
have a kind heart. V.M. tried to bolt. Chased
her down stairs and carried her into the office
where I suggested to her that I had put a collar
and chain on her. She took the suggestion very
well. Told her that the collar would strangle
her if she tried to talk, and she nearly choked ;

38 THE DEMON LOVER

very curious, same mechanism as asthma. Shall
have to be careful not to choke her altogether."
Lucas locked the book and put it away in his
private safe. Yes, he had every reason to be
satisfied with the day's work. He had backed
his clairvoyance to enable him to pick out a
potential psychic from the miscellaneous collection
of women the secretarial agencies had sent him
in response to his demand for a shorthand-typist,
and it looked as if he had picked a winner.
Veronica Mainwaring was certainly very sensitive,
the only question was, would she be strong
enough ? Trance work was a frightful strain,
it .always told heavily on the men who acted as
occult telephone when the lodges were communicating,
and they took the work in relays;
he couldn't keep a fleet of secretaries to relieve
one another, Veronica would have to do the lot.
She would probably last his time, however ; all
he wanted was the Words of Power; given
those, he would be independent. Yes, equipped
with the Words of Power and General Sawberry's
estate, life could have little more to offer Lucas.
Well, he had got hold of a very promising trance
medium and the General was ill again, so the caretaker
had told Ashlott; things certainly seemed
propitious; at any rate, he would have a look at
his horoscope and see what foreboded.
Like all who deal with the hidden side of
things, Lucas knew from experience the
influence of the macrocosm which is our universe,
upon the microcosm which is man, and he
would not, if it could be avoided, embark upon
an enterprise of such importance as the present
if the stars were unpropitious.

THE DEMON LOVER 39

<( True, a man can master his stars," he would
say» " but why should I swim against the current
when, if I but wait a little while, the tide will be
with me ? " So he noted the set of the heavenly
tides and so ordered his course that they might
aid and not oppose.
What he found to-night was quite satisfactory.
Neptune, the occult planet, was well aspected
in his House of Fortune, reinforced by Mars,
the fighter; the only doubtful aspect was
Venus, much afflicted, and in the House of Death.
Lucas considered the chart carefully. " Ah,
well," he said finally, " one cannot have everything,
and anyway, Venus is not a lady who has
ever troubled me much." With which he too
went to bed.
Veronica did not think that the Ashlotts
would be stirring much before seven, but the
hostel would be awake well before that time,
for business girls have to rise early and be fed
before they go to their work. She set her alarm
for five o'clock, that would give her time to pack
her scanty belongings into the two suit cases
that constituted her luggage, and enable her to
slip round to the hostel before anybody in this
house was stirring. The superintendent had
been uneasy at the time she had accepted the
post, and would surely lend assistance, even if
Veronica judiciously suppressed the incident of
the collar and chain, which was likely to invalidate
her whole story, prime horror though it was.
The fact that Lucas had chased her downstairs
and forcibly prevented her from leaving the
house was quite sufficient.
She fell into an uneasy doze, between sleeping

40 THE DEMON LOVER

and waking, but whenever unconsciousness stole
over her she was snatched back by fear, and
wide awake, every nerve tingling, every muscle
taut, her whole soul stood upon the defensive.
It seemed but a little while before grey stole
into the sky, and as soon as it was light enough
to see, she arose and packed. It was before six
o'clock that she stole on tiptoe down the passage ;
there was no Lucas on the settee this time, as
she had almost expected to see him, and her
progress was unbarred.
She crept on and on with her heart in her
mouth; she knew the Ashlotts slept in the
basement, but she was not sure where Lucas's
room was. A pair of brown brogues outside a
door on the lower landing informed her, and she
went past hardly daring to breathe.
The hall was filled with the stale odours of a
shut-up house, but the great front door presented
no difficulties, its bolts were never shot, a spring
lock alone securing the house from intrusion, for
Mrs. Ashlott's ' gentlemen' came and went at
all hours of the twenty-four. It opened silently,
but Veronica did not dare to risk the click of
the lock should she shut it behind her. For a
moment she paused on the broad step, was that
strange chain going to tighten and strangle her ?
Nothing happened, however, and in another
moment she was speeding down the street--free I
In five minutes she was round at the hostel;
where the superintendent, clad in a wrapper but
wide awake, viewed her with surprise mingled
with disapproval.
" What brings you here at this time in the
morning ? " she demanded.

THE DEMON LOVER 41

Veronica was almost too breathless to reply,
and the superintendent, seeing that trouble was
afoot, drew her into the office out of the gaze
of an inquisitive charwoman. There, she turned
gimlet eyes upon the girl and awaited her
explanation. The world is very ready with
advice and warning to save the young and
innocent from getting into difficulties, but once
trouble has supervened it is a different matter,
and the world begins to think how best it can
avoid being involved.
" There has been," began Veronica awkwardly,
" a little unpleasantness where I have been
working. Mr. Lucas, the man I am working
for ... I think he forgot himself . . . we had
a scuffle ... I don't want to go back again.
Can I stop here ? Is my cubicle still empty ? "
" Your cubicle is not let yet," said the superintendent
somewhat ungraciously. " Yes, I
suppose you can stop here if you want to, so
long as there is no further trouble, but we don't
want any unpleasantness here. I will send the
porter round for your box. I thought at the
time you were very ill-advised to take that post."
She paused, eyeing Veronica inquisitively;
all women have a nose for a romance, even of the
sordid, kissed-typist kind that Veronica had
implied in her half-confession. " What is Mr.
Lucas like ? " she inquired finally.
" He is a very strange man," began Veronica
slowly, " the strangest I have ever met." Memory
called up a vision of Lucas before her eyes.
Smooth olive skin, sharp-cut nose, thin lipped,
firm of chin, with the uncanny greeny-brown
eyes. What would he do when he found she

42 THE DEMON LOVER

had got away ? She paused, oblivious of the
superintendent, arrested by the image that rose
so vividly before her eyes. But horror of horrors
--it was ceasing to be a memory-picture, it was
becoming alive, actual, capable of action! A
thin brown hand was being stretched out towards
her as it had been the night before, a voice
(surely the superintendent must hear it ?) was
saying : " There is a steel collar about your neck,
you will not be able to breathe if you say any more.
There is a steel chain attached to the collar, the
end of it is in my hand, you will have to come
back." Jerk. Veronica took two stumbling steps
towards the door. Another jerk at the chain,
and she took two more.
" Where are you going ? " demanded the
superintendent, staring at her suspiciously.
" I--I have changed my mind," said Veronica,
" I shall have to go back after all."
The superintendent snorted. " You need not
come here again if you do," she said, and shut
the door in the girl's face.
Veronica, on the doorstep, realized that her
sole refuge was now closed to her, she was more
in Lucas's hands than ever. She had lost her
purse in the scuffle on the stairs, and it only
contained a few shillings had she had it; there
was nothing for her to do, apart from the pressure
of the steel chain, but to go back to the house
in the square. So back she went.
Mrs. Ashlott was cleaning the steps when she
arrived, so she was spared the ordeal of ringing
the bell.
" Been for an early morning walk ? " asked
the good woman, a smile on her pleasant face.

THE DEMON LOVER 43

" I like to see young ladies who can get up early,
so few can nowadays, not like when I was a girl.
I will soon have your breakfast up, Miss, I expect
you are hungry."
Veronica was too near tears to answer her ;
she slipped past the bucket and crept upstairs.
Lucas's shoes still stood upon the mat, likewise
his shaving water. He was not one to earn
Mrs. Ashlott's encomiums for early rising.
Back in her room, Veronica flung herself on
her bed and fell into a dead sleep, from which
she was roused by the sounds of Mrs. Ashlott
laying the table in the next room.
Veronica ate her breakfast and reviewed the
situation. She was absolutely penniless; she
had estranged the superintendent of the hostel
by her inexplicable behaviour ; Lucas had her
more completely in his hands than ever, had that
been possible.
That good man, singing lustily to the accompaniment
of running bath-water, was feeling
very well content with life ; and indeed he had
no reason to be otherwise.
Veronica, awaiting his pleasure at ten o'clock,
was informed that she looked as if she had spent
a night on the tiles, and had better go for a walk
in Regent's Park and get freshened up.
" On a lead, of course," he added with a
mischievous smile. " But if you are good, as I
think you will be, you shall have a nice blue
bow on your collar, and how would you like a
bell ? Wouldn't you like a bell on your collar,
Miss Mainwaring ? "
Veronica beat a hasty retreat. One of the
horrors of Lucas's personality was the pleasant

44 THE DEMON LOVER

way in which he did unspeakable things; that,
and his eyes--his eyes when the pupils contracted
to pinpoints. Veronica had not had very much
experience of life. For her, villains were villains
and looked the part, and Lucas, though he was
dark, which is one of the principal qualifications
for villainship, did not look a villain. Neither
did he behave like one, except at the melodramatic
moment when he chased her downstairs, then
indeed, he had acted according to the best
Surrey-side tradition, but his subsequent
nonchalance had almost annulled the impression.
No, Lucas was not in the least malignant, but
he just didn't care. Therein lies the key to
much of the world's worst cruelty.


CHAPTER SIX

VERONICA RETURNED FROM HER WALK TO FIND
a message from Lucas awaiting her ; she was
to go and lie down and have a good sleep, as he
would be needing her that evening and wanted
her to be fresh. The second half of the message
was quite sufficient to render the first half impossible.
She went to her room, but not to sleep ;
instead, she tossed backwards and forwards on
her bed wondering what demands were about
to be made upon her.
Veronica was young in years, and young for
her years. From the time she left school till
the break-up of her home, she and her mother had
lived in a little cottage in a Surrey village. The
garden, the church, an occasional tea party with
women who led lives as limited as their own, had
not tended to broaden her outlook ; and until
her mother's death had let cataclysm in upon
their placid stagnation, the years had left Veronica
as they had found her.
Hers was naturally a sweet nature ; gentle,
because she had never had need of anything but
gentleness ; affectionate, because her mother and
she, having no one but each other, had been
compelled to make a little world for themselves.
She had been trained in the Christian virtues,
and had practised them as women in secluded
backwaters can practise them, but she had had
no training for life as it is lived beyond the confines
of their quiet village. She had come into
the world sweet and unspoiled as any daydreaming
male could have wished, and the world
had taken cruel advantage of her. She had not
been able to hold her own in the give-and-take

45


46 THE DEMON LOVER

of the commercial college ; girls who had learnt
the pressure of life and the struggle for existence
from council school and rough home life readily
ousted her from coveted seat in class and convenient
locker in cloakroom ; and in the hostel
she suffered inconvenience at the hands of her
neighbours without the strident protest that is
necessary to ensure a hearing.
Now, in Lucas's hands she was equally helpless.
She did not know what to do or where to turn ;
she did not even know whether this was life as it
was usually lived out in the workaday world, and
that protest on her part would be laughed to
scorn as ultra-refinement, as had so often
happened before. She had gone for help to the
superintendent of the hostel, and, to her surprise,
found that she herself seemed in some mysterious
way to be held responsible for Lucas's behaviour,
as if her own character had undergone deterioration
from the treatment which she had not been
strong enough to resist, and from which she
desired nothing so much as to escape. The
superintendent had, by some alchemy of the
mind, been made the recipient of the obedience
and confidence that the mother had previously
received ; and, though ready enough to accept
the obedience which had made Veronica an
amenable exception among her undisciplined
room-mates, she was not prepared to repay the
confidence of another woman's child. Why
should she ? She, too, had to live, and one has
troubles enough of one's own without taking on
other people's.
After her rebuff by the superintendent,
Veronica's resources were exhausted. It did not

THE DEMON LOVER 47

occur to her to appeal to her class mates, for she
had never made friends among them, and had
gained herself a reputation for (standoffishness,'
yet, had she done so, they would have rallied
round her like little fighting-cats for defence
against their common enemy, the employer, and
especially the male employer who had tried to
take advantage of a girl's helplessness; the
rough and ready homes would have stood open
to her, and male relations to the third and fourth
generation would have been invoked for her
assistance, only too pleased for a chance of attack
from so good a vantage point. But Veronica did not know this. She had never been taught
to weigh the words distorted by an accent,
and Brummagem jewellery could still hide from
her perception the qualities of pluck and
generosity. Most defenceless of all creatures, a
lady torn from her environment, she faced the
world alone. Helplessly conscious of her
pennilessness, not knowing where to turn for
help or to whom to go for advice, with no
one to enquire what became of her or whither
she went--Lucas could not have had a better
tool for his purpose. Plucky, but purposeless,
quick-brained, but inexperienced, the end was a
foregone conclusion; Veronica, theoretically the
ideal young English girl, would go under.
I
So she fretted upstairs in her blue and white
bedroom--the room that had looked so pleasant
after the hostel cubicle, and that now seemed like
a den where animals were kept before they are
slaughtered. She had not seen much of life, and
still less of men, but her quick intuitions enabled
her to read Lucas pretty accurately. His care

48 THE DEMON LOVER

for her was the care of the butcher for the beast
he is fattening ; his kindliness meant nothing,
Lucas had no feelings; she would have thrown
herself on the mercy of the nearest policeman,
but a strange inhibition had been planted in her
own inner nature. Lucas horrified her, but at
the same time fascinated her. She knew nothing
of the psychology of suggestion, or the subtle
reactions that sex makes under hypnosis ; these
things are not put in the text-books; all she
knew was that Lucas's power over her had an
element of fascination about it that she could not
explain even to herself.
As the time drew near for her to face Lucas,
she changed her tumbled jumper and skirt for a
little grey frock, a frock that had not seen the
light of day since the last tea party under the
tree in that Surrey garden. Wavy brown hair
was brushed and bound with a ribbon, and
though her eyes were heavy because she had
cried, she was a very different girl to the thin
and haggard creature who had first come to the
house.
At nine o'clock Lucas sent Ashlott up to fetch
her, and with her heart beating uncomfortably in
her throat, she followed him down the thickly-
carpeted stairs to the room, half office, half
study, where Lucas spent his days. There she
found him, smoking an after-dinner pipe, which
he waved cheerfully at her on her entry. He was
very wide awake and well pleased with life;
Veronica had already observed that he always
seemed to wake up towards evening, but to-night
he seemed extra wide awake. Silently she took
the seat he assigned to her in an enormous

THE DEMON LOVER 49

arm-chair which completely engulfed her small
person, and looked up at Lucas as he stobd before
her, nursing his pipe and studying her quizzically.
" Have you been a good child and had your
sleep ? " he demanded.
Veronica, in a very small voice, replied that
she had.
(< That's right. I have told Ashlott that we
are not to be disturbed, but we may as well lock
the door. No, you needn't look at me like
that, I am not going to murder you, but if anyone
wakes you up suddenly when you are in a trance
it gives you a nasty shock."
He walked across the room and turned the
key, then knocked the ashes out of his pipe and
put it away. Veronica, motionless, as if bound
to her chair, watched every movement he made
with that eerie fascination he always had for
her. His quick, silent step, his alert yet graceful
carriage, were unlike those of any man she had
ever seen before. Lucas was so very much
alive that he made every other being seem
devitalized, flat, and stale. The green eyes with
their strange gleams, the slender student's hands
with their long brown fingers, the crow-black
hair that he rubbed up on end when he was
puzzled, the neat, thin-lipped mouth that always
seemed to be enjoying some quiet joke at her
expense in which the eyes never joined--all these
gave the girl an intense and vivid sense of the
man's personality. Lucas, if it had not been for
his eyes, would have given the impression of
being a pleasant enough fellow, but there was
something wrong with the eyes; it was not the
brooding, in-looking gaze that characterizes the

50 THE DEMON LOVER

eyes of men trained in occult meditation, it was
a kind of detachment, as if he did not belong to
the order of beings that makes up our pleasant
human world ; from another planet, or another
evolution Lucas had come, and he had no ties
with us or our kind; our little affairs were
nothing to him. Whence he had come, thither he
would return, bearing with him such loot as he
could gather from our race, and he had no
intention of making Persephone's mistake and eating the pomegranate seeds, such as had
bound her to her dark lover. Therefore, it was
that Veronica, watching him, knew that she was
dealing with something that was not quite
human, and that appeals for human mercy would
have no meaning for him.
Lucas fidgeted about the room, apparently
waiting for the sunset, Veronica's eyes following
him. Then as the last light died, he came over
to Veronica. He dropped on one knee in front
of her, bringing his keen dark face on a level
with hers.
" Look straight into my eyes, Miss Main-
waring," he said.
Veronica, horrified but fascinated, looked as
bidden, and saw that the pupils were pulsating
with a strange inner light, as if Lucas's skull
contained, not brains, but a blazing fire that
shone out through the lens of the eyeballs. Once
she had met those eyes, she was powerless to
withdraw her own. The blaze grew brighter
and brighter, the man's face disappeared,
and she was gazing straight into the furnace of
which his form was but the screen. She seemed
to be passing through the flames into that which

THE DEMON LOVER 51

lav beyond. Then, suddenly, the ground went
from under her feet, and she plunged downwards
into illimitable blue-blackness; out between the
planets she seemed to fall into stellar space.
Then the curve of her course turned upwards as
a diver returns to the surface, the blue grew
lighter, it was the pale sapphire that precedes
the sunrise. Back she came through rosy dawn
clouds, and woke up in her chair.
Lucas stood before her in his shirt sleeves.
The twilight was still coming in through the
window, but the green student's lamp was
lighted.
" Well ? " he said, " safely back again. Not
so very bad, was it ? "
Except for the awful swoop into space,
Veronica could not honestly say that it had been
bad, and admitted as much.
Lucas heaved a sigh of relief, which ended in a
yawn;, stretched himself, and walked about the room as if to relieve cramped limbs. A little
cold wind blew in through the window and
stirred a great pile of manuscript in Lucas's
handwriting that lay upon the desk. Veronica
wondered where he had got it from, it had not
been there when she had closed her eyes a few
moments before. The cold air from without
made Lucas shiver, and he picked up his coat
that lay on the floor and slid himself into it.
The action made Veronica realize that she, too,
was cold, perishingly cold, as if with the chill of
outer space, and a convulsive shudder ran through
her. Lucas smiled as if he had been watching
for this to happen, and took up a small vacuum
flask that stood upon the desk. A curl of steam

52 THE DEMON LOVER

ascended into the air as he unscrewed the cover.
" Cold ? " he said. " You always are after a
trance. Have some hot coffee," and he poured
the contents of the flask into a cup that stood
ready to hand.
" If I had known that we were going to have
such a long seance," he said, " I would have had
a supply for myself as well. As it is, I will have
to be content with beer. I don't like to take
spirits after an outing of this kind. You drink
that off while I go and hunt up some beer."
Left alone, Veronica sipped her coffee,
wondering what the meaning of Lucas's behaviour
might be. She noticed that the light in the room
was getting brighter, though the student's lamp
on the desk was looking palid and unwholesome.
The brightening light was coming from the
window. A twitter and rustle from the ivy
announced that the sparrows were rousing;
Veronica, bewildered, wondered what could have
disturbed them at that hour of the night. Lucas
returned with his beer and switched off the lamp
on the desk, and Veronica saw that the room was
full of a cold grey light, twilight indeed, but the
growing, not the waning, twilight, and she
suddenly realized that in some peculiar way,
seven hours had vanished out of her life. She
had never lost consciousness; for some few
seconds she had swooped into space and then
returned, from a half to two minutes might have
elapsed in the process, but seven hours had
vanished out of her life, leaving no break to mark
their going. She had passed from the twilight
of night to the twilight of dawn, and what had
been done to her in that interval she would

THE DEMON LOVER 53

never know; the seven hours were gone beyond
recall, and could never be accounted for. There
was Lucas, looking very tired but quite ordinary
and matter of fact; there was that great pile of
manuscript, evidently written during those seven
hours, but of whose nature she was ignorant,
and there was the little cold dawn-wind coming
in at the window after the hot London night.
A fresh horror had been added to Veronica's
cup of life, the horror of that lost seven hours
and what might have occurred during that time.
She looked fixedly at Lucas, as if she would
drag the truth from him by the very intensity
of her gaze.
" What happened while I--was asleep ? "
" You went out."
(< Out. What do you mean ? "
(< Out of your body. Your soul went out of
your body. I pushed you out."
"But why. What for?"
<( Because I wanted to use your body as the
receiving-instrument of a wireless telephone.
When you are in your body, the impulses of
your mind control the vocal cords, and you
speak; but if you are out of your body, the
impulses of other people's minds can be made to
control your vocal cords, and they speak. Do
you know any German ? No ? Well, you have
been talking it fluently all night and told me a lot
of things I wanted to know. That is why you
are useful to me, little girl, and that is why I
want to keep you. You can go about and have
as good a time as you like, provided you do not
impair your sensitiveness, but you must not go
away." He came close up to her and gazed

54 THE DEMON LOVER

deeply and fixedly into her eyes. " You can go
just the length of your chain, but not further.
Understand ? "
Veronica received his explanation without
grasping its import. It was so much beyond the
sphere of her concepts that it conveyed very
little to her. She realized that Lucas made some
curious use of her, that he set a good deal of value
on her as an instrument, and that she would be
kept, as a domestic animal is kept, under the
best conditions, but for the uses of its master.
Horror and fear overcame her ; the whole transaction
was not human ; Lucas was not regarding
her as a human being, but as a tool or instrument;
the purposes for which he was using her were
not human purposes, motived by lust or greed,
but some ultra-human or infra-human aim,
altogether outside the scope of our earth-life.
What he was trying to do, she did not know, but
she was certain he was damaging her soul; in
spite of his pleasantness and agreeableness he was
hurting her in some way that was not physical,
but that was doing her infinitely more harm
than anything done to her body ever could have
done. She vvas afraid with a cold and deadly
fear, a fear not of the body, bur of the soul; a
fear, not of our earth, with its human wickedness,
but of outer space and the things that are not
human. Lucas himself was not quite human.
Sitting there on the office table, swinging his
legs and drinking beer out of a tea-cup, he
looked more than human, he looked positively
ordinary," but she knew that he was not. She
stared at him intently, trying to solve the riddle;
what was it about him that was not human ? It

THE DEMON LOVER 55

was his hands, his eyes, and, funnily enough, his
feet. Veronica could not make out why she
included his feet in her inventory, but she did.
Looking up, he met her gaze and smiled at
her over the tea-cup.
" Go to bed, Miss Mainwaring," he said.
I am not sleepy," she replied.
Of course, I forgot. You have had seven
hours double-distilled sleep. I am, though, if
you are not, so I will bid you good-night, or
good-morning, whichever you prefer."

CHAPTER SEVEN

VERONICA FOUND THAT, FROM THE MUNDANE
point of view, her life was an easy one. There
was no drudgery over typewriting or bookkeeping ;
all day she could do as she pleased,
read, sew, knit jumpers, walk in the park, go to
a cinema, anything, in fact, so long as she did
not over-tire herself, for that made Lucas very
cross indeed.
Three or four nights a week Ashlott would
bring a message to say that she was wanted in the
office, and then Lucas, gazing deeply into her
eyes, would push her soul out into space and use
her body for his own purposes. At dawn she
would return to the vacated tenement,
frightened, dazed, and utterly cold. Never again,
however, did she experience the complete loss of
memory that had occurred on the occasion of her
first trance. Shreds of consciousness carried over ;
sometimes she would be aware of faces that moped
and mowed at her as she swept on the downward
curve of her arc, and, like a frightened bird, she
would round the nadir and speed upwards to the
dawn clouds. Upon one terrible, never-to-be-
forgotten night, they had chased her through
inter-planetary space, and she had woken up,
long before her appointed time, shrieking with
terror, to find Lucas, half angry, half alarmed,
holding her down in her chair. She had told
him of the fiend faces and clawing hands that had
pursued her, but he merely shrugged his
shoulders and offered no comment or explanation,
though she noticed that it was some time before
he summoned her again.
She had been three weeks in that strange house, so

THE DEMON LOVER 57

and a sultry August had changed into a burning
September, when Lucas came to her with a key
in his hand.
" A pity I never thought of it before, but here
is the key of the Square gardens, you can go and
sit there in the evenings while I am away. I am
getting off for the week-end," he added.
A little later she saw him in motor-cycling kit,
and guessed that his holiday would be spent on
the open road. Wistfully she thought of clear
wind-swept spaces and fresh air. Bloomsbury,
never a very cheerful part of London, is the most
intolerable, cat-haunted vacancy in the summer.
Veronica went over to the Square gardens and
played ball with a languid child whose nurse
desired to read a novelette, and when the child
went in to its tea she fetched a book and sat
under the trees. The gardens were a godsend ;
though parched and faded, there was some
green left, and at any rate she was not between
four walls.
Meanwhile, Lucas, having cleared the London
traffic, was speeding North at a good pace. He,
too, was rejoicing in freedom from bricks and
mortar. It was a long while since he had had his
motor-cycle out ; the amount of time he was
spending over Veronica Mainwaring and the
results he was obtaining from her made it necessary
for him to employ the week-ends in catching up
with his regular work. But it was worth it,
such a medium was not to be met with every day.
Clear as a bell, the messages came through, and he was getting them co-ordinated ; bit by bit
he was piecing together the rituals of the higher
degrees of the great Fraternity to which he

58 THE DEMON LOVER

belonged. Lucas chuckled as he thought of what
his private safe contained.
He was sliding down the northern face of the
hills that guard London, city staleness left behind
and the trees thick overhead. The wind of his
speed sang in his ears, and his blood sang, too,
for he was a man, and young, and even his wholehearted
absorption in his occult studies had not
deprived him of his manhood. Sometimes he
wondered if it were worth it, this ascetic strictness
of discipline, this sacrifice of the things that
made life worth living for most men. Ahead of
him and behind him were other motor-cycles,
some with a sidecar attached, some with a girl on
the carrier. Lucas had never taken a girl on his
carrier; one of the brethren, perhaps, who
happened to be in a hurry, but a girl, never.
Women did not come into his life. The Order to
which he belonged did not admit them, and the
few women he had known in his journalistic
days had slipped out of his life when he joined
the Order.
He stopped for tea at a wayside inn. In the
bay window of the parlour a young fellow and a
flapper were eating eggs and watercress and
chaffing each other. Lucas was no hermit.
Unless his skin lied, there was Latin blood in
him, and his temperament had the quick liveliness
of the South. He watched the man and his girl,
and felt out of it. For the first time since he had
escaped from the turgid 'teens, he considered a
woman attentively. It might be rather amusing to
take a girl out. Of course, he had his work to
do, nothing could be allowed to interfere with
that, but why should he cut himself off from all

THE DEMON LOVER 59

the pleasant things of life ? He was no better
than General Sawberry, who was dedicated to a bath chair and a respirator. Why should he
work like a galley-slave to win power and independence
when by the time he had obtained
them he would be too old and too inured to his
solitude to be able to enjoy them ? Lucas
finished his tea thoughtfully ; a new idea had
been presented to him, and he was assessing it.
What would be the effect upon his life if he
admitted to it that neglected factor ? Trained
to absolute self-control by the great Fraternity
whose pupil and servant he was, he had had little
difficulty in banishing from his life women and
all the tangled problems they presented. Completely
possessed, body and soul, by his absorbing
studies, he had hardly missed them, or realized
how much his life deviated from the normal
till he had sat, a solitary observer, watching the
great game of man and woman being played
under his eyes. Perhaps if he had maintained his
almost monastic isolation in the old Bloomsbury
house, having speech with no woman save Mrs.
Ashlott, who, good soul though she was, was
not one to tempt virtue from the narrow way, his
humanity might have continued its slumber;
but into his seclusion he had introduced a disturbing
element. Veronica Mainwaring when
he first saw her, haggard, shabby and weary, had
not been, any more than the butler's good woman,
an object 'of allurement ; indeed, he had classed
them both together as the ordinary females of
everyday life, a different species to the wonder-
woman of novel and stage, and had regarded her
impersonally, looking upon her simply as an

60 THE DEMON LOVER

instrument to serve his ends, like typewriter and
telephone ; using her when required and putting
her by when her purpose was served. But
Veronica, unluckily for her, had not remained as
she was when she entered the big house in the
Square ; Lucas, in order to ensure her efficiency,
had had her fed and cared for, and the result had
shown on other planes than the psychic one.
The dull skin had cleared, the heavy eyes had
brightened, and the frail figure had filled out
surprisingly quickly. And with the return of
vitality a change had come in her spiritual
quality ; the life in her, which hitherto had had
all it could do to hold its own, to maintain its
slight tenement in face of the forces that assailed
it, now began to overflow in subtle vibrations
that Lucas, quick to sense an atmosphere, had
become aware of.
Veronica, who regarded Lucas as a bird regards
a cat, had exercised upon him none of the feminine
arts that come so readily to the least sophisticated
of women, but the pressure of the race behind her
had flowed out, and Lucas, who had so carefully
guarded himself from all calls of the race, found
the tide about his feet before he was aware of its
existence for him. That thing had befallen him
against which he had carefully guarded himself
all his life; he had formed a tie, some external
object had become necessary to his inner being,
the subtle barriers were down, and through the
breach, narrow as yet, the race-tides were
beginning to pour in.
Veronica's presence intensified his self-
consciousness, caused the pressure of his vitality
to rise ; life appeared in more vivid colours when

THE DEMON LOVER 61

she was present; she was a stimulus to him, and
deprived of her, the characteristic reaction of the
dram-drinker set in, and life felt stale, flat and
unprofitable.
All this was not present to the man's consciousness,
however, as he wheeled the heavy
cycle into the roadway and stood debating.
All he realized was that he was missing something
which appeared to be amusing, and was
wondering whether it was worth the trouble of
obtaining. Had he suspected the true nature of
his impulse, there would have been little hesitation
in his mind; he would have set his back to London
and sent the little machine ripping down the long
straight road. He, knowing what he did, dared
not risk the bursting of the dykes so carefully
built to hold his power within himself; but
Nature is an old and subtle woman, jealous of her
own way, and she did not reveal to him the meaning
of the call that sounded in his ears. It is not
her will that any of her children should break from
their allegiance ; in humankind she works with
the group as her unit, and it is not well that any
one individual should liberate himself from the
restraints of social life while still free to reap the
advantages of the social organization.
Occult power can be obtained in two ways,
by placing oneself in the van of evolution, where
force has not yet been confined in form but lies
loose, as it were, free to enter whatever channel
is opened to it ; or by retreating to the rear of
the race, where unabsorbed force is again available.
Lucas had chosen the latter path ; he, with all
the endowments of modern humanity, had
deliberately reverted to an earlier phase of

62 THE DEMON LOVER

evolution, to a time when space was void and
forms were being built, before the time when
Jehovah had made it plain to man that he was
his brother's keeper and accountable for him.
Lucas, the non-social, the solitary, and therefore
the free, had been drawn into the current
of evolution ; his race had captured him, he
who had set out to master his race and was well
on the road to accomplishment was a Samson
shorn of his locks ; his source of strength had
been his complete freedom from all sense of
obligation to his kind, and therefore from scruple
or remorse, which naturally placed him at a great
advantage in dealing with men who were subject
to both ; like an electric filament, the occulist
of the left-hand path can only glow in a moral
vacuum, and Lucas's soul was no longer Hermetically
sealed.
It was the beginning of the end, had he known
it, when he wheeled his cycle out into the road
with the handle-bars to the South, for a prince of
evil must become a slave of good, a slave beaten
with many rods, before he can win back to the
cross-roads where he turned to the left. Nature
had caught Lucas ; would he escape from her
in time to resume his own dark path, or would
he, swept by her ever-swiftening current, be
returned to the pit whence he had issued by
unnatural means, to start again the slow and
painful ascent, aeons behind the evolution of his
race, and suffering acutely because he would
retain his consciousness of better things ?
That day, for the first time since he had left
his boyhood behind him, Lucas had had a thought
that did not centre about his own ego--he had

THE DEMON LOVER 63

handed the key of the gardens to Veronica, and
thereby Nature had noosed him, for when a man says to evil, " Be thou my good," he can own no
divided allegiance, for his god is the most jealous
of all the gods, and his own human nature will
betray him should one thought stray from its
dark loyalty. It is only the very strong who
can hope to swim against the current of the
universe.


CHAPTER EIGHT
•HE SUN HAD SET, AND THE GLOW OVER THE
T
London chimney pots was failing, but
Veronica still sat on in the shabby garden of the
Bloomsbury Square. She had not sat under a
tree since she had left the little Surrey village that
now seemed like some dim memory of another
existence. She was languid and apathetic ; the
air, stale and heavy, hung about her without
movement ; her mind was almost a blank, for
Lucas's operations had tended to slow her
mental processes, and, although a background of
fear still remained, she no longer planned escape.
She felt herself to be helpless, completely under
Lucas's control, and she had no thought of
defying her gaoler, but merely a dim hope that
his will might alleviate her lot, and that he
would not lay upon her burdens too great to
be borne.
She did not perceive a man who stood behind
the railings, watching her through the scanty privet
hedge that enclosed the gardens. Locked up
in her own thoughts, the London square had
faded, and she was back again on the Surrey hills.
Her old daydreams were rising before her mind
in little pictures; the Prince Charming, who had
never appeared, was evoked from his palace in
the clouds and set to his task of dragon-slaying
(the dragon being Lucas), and then she would
fly away, as with the wings of a dove, and be at
peace. No castle in the clouds did she construct
for herself, the Surrey hills were good enough
for her tired little soul; the rambler roses, the
pear trees, and the tall blue lupins of her little
garden, with the old servant, half nurse half
64

THE DEMON LOVER 65

housekeeper, to give her her tea, and the cat
purring on the rag mat before the kitchen hearth.
Meanwhile, the man watched her through the
railings.
She arose, gathered up her forgotten needlework,
and moved slowly over the deadened grass
towards the gate; the stale twilight had turned
to the hot airlessness of a city night, and the
arc-lamps at the corner of the square deprived
even the darkness of its relief. As she reached
the gate she became aware that she was looking
into a pair of eyes; to her, moving in a waking
dream, they seemed just eyes, independent of
any face in which they might be set, till a voice
broke upon her reverie.
" The gate is locked, you will have to unlock
it before you can get out." And she found
herself face to face with Lucas.
She returned to waking life with a shock.
For a while her dreams had enabled her to
escape from reality--to imagine that she still
lived in the Surrey cottage where the cat purred
and the kettle sang, and the pears ripened on the
wall, and that the strange life of the house in
the Bloomsbury Square was some fantasy she
had woven for her own amusement and from
which she could awake at will; but now, with
Lucas's strange eyes looking into hers, she plunged
into waking life as a swimmer plunges into deep
water, with a shock and a gasp, striking out
desperately to keep her head above the surface.
The search for the key gave her an excuse to
withdraw her eyes from Lucas's, a thing she
found difficult to do when once she had looked
into them, for she was always watching for the

66 THE DEMON LOVER

change to take place in the pupils, thankful for
every moment that they remained normal.
The rusty lock yielded reluctantly to her efforts
and she stood beside the man on the pavement.
They walked across the road without speaking.
Lucas seemed absorbed in thought, but the girl
had a notion that he was watching her covertly.
In unbroken silence he admitted her with his
latch key, and switched on the light in the
darkened hall. Without glancing at him she
made straight for the stairs, throwing him a little
nervous good-night over her shoulder, to which
he did not reply. As she turned to ascend the
second flight she saw that he was still watching
her, standing where she had left him, face and
clothes grey with the dust of the road. She
hastened her steps into the sheltering darkness of
the upper floors, thankful to escape from this
disturbing scrutiny. Why had he returned so
unexpectedly ? Why did he look at her in this
peculiar way, as if he had never seen her before ?
To neither question could she find an answer;
the uncertainty was not reassuring, and dawn
was grey before she fell into an uneasy
sleep.
She was finishing a belated breakfast on Sunday
morning when the door opened and Lucas
announced himself.
" I should recommend you," he said, " to
remove that muslin dress and put on something
ancient in the way of a skirt, also a hat that
won't blow off, and then, if you are a good girl,
I will take you for a little jaunt."
Veronica stared at him uncomprehendingly;
what new psychic experiment was this he

THE DEMON LOVER 67
contemplated ? He surveyed her with an amused
smile.
(< Don't you think we deserve a little holiday ? "
he said. <( Have you ever ridden on the pillion
of a motor-bike ? It's great fun, I can assure
you. I thought we would run down to Brighton
for lunch, listen to a concert or something, and
come back in the cool of the evening."
Veronica continued to stare at him without
reply, and the man's face darkened.
(< What do you imagine I intend to do with
you, cut your throat ? " he asked, sharply.
" Oh, no," replied Veronica, " I—just didn't
quite understand."
<( Well, you understand now, so go and get
your things on," he said, and turning on his heel,
left the room.
f.
He was oppressed by a sense that something
was not quite right. This was not the way in
which the little expedition should have started;
and when Veronica, leaden-footed, reluctant,
descended the stairs ten minutes later, his
oppression deepened. In unbroken silence she
perched herself upon the carrier according to his
instructions, but twice she had to be told to
grip the leather belt that encircled his waist.
" If you don't hold on, you'll fall off round the
first corner," he said angrily, starting the machine
off with a jerk that enforced his commands.
Veronica clutched him frantically and shut her
eyes as they shot into the traffic of the main
road ; she opened them a moment later to find
herself staring straight into those of a woman on
an island in the middle of the street. The face
was familiar, but for a moment Veronica could

68 THE DEMON LOVER

not place it. Something in the disapproving stare,
however, carried her thoughts back to the training
school, and she remembered that it was the
registrar of the women's department who was
surveying her so censoriously. She was an
intimate friend of the superintendent of the
hostel, and Veronica had little doubt that her
own adventures had been a subject of discussion
when the two cronies met. She shrugged her
shoulders. Whatever happened to her now, she
stood self-condemned ; according to the ethics
of the school, no girl should enter into even the
mildest of social relations with a male employer ;
if she did, then she had no one but herself to
thank if trouble followed, and need expect no
sympathy ; and here was Veronica, after already
having had trouble with Lucas, clutching him
round the waist and careering off for a day
in the country with him. The training school
employment bureau was closed to her, there was
no mistaking the look in the registrar's eye;
undoubtedly the stars in their courses were
fighting for Lucas.
Veronica relaxed her grasp on the leather strap
and sat inertly on the carrier, holding on by
nothing.
" For God's sake, hang on. You'll break your
neck if you don't," exclaimed Lucas, angrily.
(< I don't care if I do," replied Veronica, " in
fact, I think I'd like to."
He reached back and caught her limp hand in
his, and placed it on his belt again.
" We shall both break our necks if you don't
take care," he said, and sent the machine
forward once more.

THE DEMON LOVER 69

The silence was unbroken till they had topped
the first of the ridges that guard London to the
south, and were racing down the long slope to
the valley.
<( How do you like it ? " he called back over his
shoulder to the girl behind him, but she, the
wind of their speed singing in her ears, did not
hear him. He, however, thought her silence
was deliberate, and sent the machine flying
down the. slope, brakes off, exhaust roaring, as
if he meant to drive the pair of them to eternity.
At the bottom he stopped the machine, slipped
out of the saddle, and stood in the roadway
facing Veronica, his eyes blazing.
<l Is this the way you mean to behave ? " he
said.
Veronica stared back at him. This was a
different Lucas to the one she had encountered
before, and one that she was not in the least
afraid of. This one was human.
" I don't know what you mean," she said.
" I mean--are you going to sulk all day ? "
Veronica looked up at the branches that met
over their heads, and at the blue sky beyond them.
She had no hope, her last refuge was gone, and,
strangely enough, her fear was gone with it.
<( I don't care what you do," she said. <( You
can do anything you like, and if you killed me,
I shouldn't mind."
" Do you dislike me ? "
« Yes."
« Why ? "
" Because of what you do to me. I can't put
it into words, but you know quite well what I
mean."

70 THE DEMON LOVER

What do I do to you ? "
" I don't know. I don't know what you do to
me, but it is all wrong, you have no right to do
what you are doing. I know that much, anyway."
" Ah, so you are one of those people who hold
that it is unlawful to break a superficies ? "
** I don't know what you mean, but I know that
what you are doing is wrong.11'
" But you don't know why I am doing it."
She looked at him in surprise, the tone was one
she, had never heard him use before.
Listen, Veronica, I am after a big thing, so
big you couldn't understand it; it means everything
to me, and this is the only way in which I
can do it. Stand by me, see it through, and I
swear you shall never regret it. Be a pal,
Veronica."
This was indeed a reversal of their positions.
Lucas the aloof, Lucas the autocrat, pleading
for something that it was in her power to give
or withhold I Why did her mind work so slowly ?
She could not reply to him.
Then the man spoke again. (< Listen, and I will
tell you what I am after. I am after knowledge,
Veronica. Knowledge that I can alter the
world with. If I get that knowledge, I should
be able to make the nations put aside their
armaments, I could make the legislatures put
through social reforms, I could do all these
things, I have already done bits of them--and
the fools who hold this knowledge make no use
of it and they won't let me, who am entitled to
it--who could make use of it--have it. That
is why I am stealing it, Veronica, because I can
make use of it, and they can't."

THE DEMON LOVER 71

" I don't know what you are talking about,
Mr. Lucas," said Veronica, " and I don't know
what it is that you want, but I think they are
quite right not to let you have it. I wouldn't
trust you with anything."
Lucas gasped. His was at no time a personality
to be lightly set aside, and this attack, coming
from little Veronica who always crept about
like a mouse and seldom replied, even if directly
addressed, took his breath away.
<( What do you mean ? Why wouldn't you
trust me ? What have I done to you to make
you say that ? "
" I don't know what you are doing to me, but
you know; and I know it is harmful, and you
know it, too; but you think because I can't
say it in so many words exactly what it is you are
up to, that I don't suspect anything. I mayn't
know things, Mr. Lucas, but I can sense them.
I can almost smell them, and I know that you
are all wrong, right from the very beginning;
you don't only do wrong, you are wrong."
" What do you mean. How much do you
know ? "
" I don't know anything. I don't pretend to
know anything, but 1 feel things, and I feel that
you are not one of us."
" Many a true word spoken in ignorance.
And if I am not one of you, what may I
be?"
" I don't know what you may be. I only
know that you are different. If I said to any
other man (You are hurting me,' he would
stop, but if I said it to you, you would only say
'Don't make a noise.' You don't feel about

72 THE DEMON LOVER

things as we do. I think you are going a different
way."
Lucas looked out into the shadowy spaces of
the wood with unseeing eyes. There was a long
pause.
" Yes, that is just about it. I am going a
different way, and I'm damned lonely. I had
never realized it before. That is what has been
the matter all the time. There is not one solitary
human being who would understand what I am
driving at, whom I could talk things over with.
I am going absolutely alone. And even if one is
on the left-hand path, one likes companionship.
And by God, I'll have it! " He caught Veronica
by the arm. " You're coming, too, Veronica.
There are possibilities in you. Your nature is
so simple it is almost primitive. A very little
more, and you would turn feral. I'll push you
back to Pan. I'll put you on the Green Ray.
You with the pale nature-green, I with the
dark occult-green, we should have the complete
Green Ray between us. Veronica, will you
come ? It means power, it means life. Not the
cooped-up existence of civilization, but free,
big, as the pagans lived. Say you'll come,
Veronica I "
The man's face was alight, pupils distended
into pools of gleaming blackness, a flush under the
dark skin. Veronica looked back into those eyes,
and, as ever, their fascination drew her ; but now
there was no sense of horror, just a pouring forth
of power that quickened the life within her,
causing it to flow forth in response to him. As
he spoke, the green forest twilight seemed to be
rayed with gleams of gold; it was no longer a

THE DEMON LOVER 73

shadowed green, but a glowing green. A faint
airy piping, as of little pipes in the air, came to
her ears, half heard, half dreamed. Was it the
image aroused by the name of Pan that made her
think these things ? Something naked, non-
human, but alive as no human being ever is
alive, slipped from bush to bush behind her,
edging nearer and nearer; the little pipes
sounded clearer; a patter as of small, sharp
hoofs was upon the fallen leaves, and the light was shot through with green gleams like the fire
in an opal. Something was almost at her elbow,
and it was calling to her, calling, calling, and in
another minute she would have gone : following
it into the greenwood to come back nevermore,
for the fairies would have taken her. What was
that old story told by her nurse of the children
the fairies stole if their cradles were left
unguarded ? And that was why children had
to be christened, so that the fairies could not
steal them. But she had been christened, the
fairies could not steal her. What were these
little Pan-things plucking at her skirts ? They
were not her kind. She had nothing to do with
them. She had been christened. She had been
taught her prayers. She saw herself kneeling
on the rag mat in front of the kitchen fire saying
them to her old nurse. She remembered learning
her very first prayer, it began, <( Gentle Jesus,
meek and mild, Look upon a little child."
With a gasp, as of a swimmer returning to the
surface, Veronica found herself standing in the
middle of the road. There was hard road,
dusty road, under her feet, and above her head
Were trees, their first leaves falling with the

74 THE DEMON LOVER

drought. Before her stood a man, and his face
was a queer grey, and sweat stood out on his
forehead.
" Hold this," he said, and thrusting the heavy
cycle into her hands, he staggered across to the
bank at the side of the road, and dropped down
on it, hiding his face in his hands.
Veronica stood helplessly, holding the cumbersome
machine and marvelling what could have
happened to Lucas, he looked as if he had had a
bad shock of some sort. She herself felt singularly
steady, and her mind was clearer than it had
been for a long time. It seemed as if her faculties,
sinking into abeyance since Lucas had commenced
his work, had returned to her.
Presently he raised his head and looked at
her.
<( I didn't know you were under protection,"
he said. " It is the first time you have ever
shown any signs of it."
He rose, and somewhat unsteadily came across
and took the machine from her, fixing it upon
its stand.
" Come and sit down," he said, leading her
over to the grass at the road side. We will go
on presently."
For a long while they sat in silence, and then
Lucas said, without looking at her : (< Do you
know what it was you did to me ? "
Veronica shook her head.
<( No, you don't know anything, do you ? All
the same, I have got a pretty shrewd suspicion
that you know a good deal more than you know
you know."
Silence fell again between them.

THE DEMON LOVER 75

Then the man spoke once more, still never
looking at her.
(< I am going to tell you a story. There was a
man in Rome, ancient Rome, who, as a boy, had
lived at his uncle's villa outside the walls because
he was an orphan. He was affianced to his
cousin, a girl much younger than he; and,
although his life had a dark side to it, he always
returned to the villa outside the walls, for he
cared for that girl very much, more than she was
old enough to understand, for they married them
young in those days. He was a student of the
Mysteries, and one day he went away to Eleusis
to take his initiation, expecting that when he
came back they would be married. On his
return, he found that she had become a Christian,
and, taught by her new doctrines, considered
him a bad man, and would not marry him.
<( So the best thing in his life went out of it,
the thing that had been his sheet-anchor, and he
turned to the dark side of the Mysteries. He
said to Evil, be thou my good, and Evil took him
at his word."
Silence fell again. Veronica broke it this time.
" What became of her ? " she said.
" There were no nuns in those days, or she
would have become one, but she ministered to
the poor Christians and saved many souls. But
she didn't save his, she lost that. You owe me
a debt, Veronica."

CHAPTER N1NK

IT WAS SOME LITTLE WHILE BEFORE LUCAS WAS
sufficiently recovered to make a move, and
even then his nerve seemed to be shaken, for he
drove with much more caution than was his
wont. As it was, they arrived at Brighton later
than they had intended, and finished a belated
lunch only just in time for them to go on the
pier and find seats for the concert.
From where they sat they could see the
steamers on the horizon, all the busy shipping of
the English Channel, the most populous water-
highway in the world ; Lucas, hardly listening
to the music, watched the shadowy procession of
sea-power with unseeing eyes. The girl at his
side, as a physical entity, was forgotten, he conceived
of her only as a soul, voyaging through
time towards some goal of her own choosing, her
feet set upon a path from which he had failed to
deflect her. She was following the way of her
race ; a flock of sheep in a gully, was the simile
that always rose to his mind when he thought of
that well-worn path staked out by the creeds of
his countrymen ; foolish eyes fixed on the woolly
back just in front, and patient little hoofs
going patter, patter, patter over the rough
track that ended at the slaughter house. As for
him, he was a goat of Ishmael's flock, free upon
the mountains with his Dark Master. Yet,
when he sought to cut out his little chosen ewe-
lamb from the herd below, a great Crook had
struck him back.
What was this power that intervened ? He was
familiar enough with the punitive rays the Order
could employ upon occasion, but this was of a
76

THE DEMON LOVER 77

different type of force, it was unfamiliar to him.
It shook his nerve, making him feel uncertain of
his path, doubtful of his goal. He stole a glance
at the girl who sat beside him ; she had the soft
round face so common among English girls, but
there was upon it an expression that was not
common, the calm of absolute repose. The face
was still as is the face of one just aroused from
deep sleep ; the strained, haunted look that had
become habitual to her during the past weeks
was wiped out, and in its place was a great
peace; some power had passed and left its mark
upon her. He studied the face intently, trying
to divine its secret. Veronica, he knew, could
tell him nothing, however much he questioned
her, not because she would not, but because she
could not put her thoughts into words. She was
of the feeling type, not the reasoning type.
The man withdrew his eyes from her face and
re-pondered the problem. She was an ideal tool,
too good to be lost, but a* hitch had occurred in
the handling of her. Suddenly, at a time when
he believed her to be completely subject to his
will, there had come through her one of the
rushes of unseen force with which those who
traffic in occult things are familiar, and Lucas
had been knocked out as a boxer is knocked out
when hit on the solar plexus.
He knew quite well what that meant. Like
all students of the hidden side of things,
he was a believer in reincarnation, and he held
that each soul that aspires finds its way sooner
or later into one or other of the great occult
fraternities; then, life after life, it always
returns to the shadow of that fraternity, for "once

78 THE DEMON LOVER

an Initiate, always an Initiate," and just as he
could have availed himself of the power latent in
his Fraternity, so Veronica, in her moment of danger,
had found a force overshadowing her, and it
was a force with which he was unfamiliar. He cast
his mind backwards into the past, seeking some
clue that might enlighten him. Like all occultists
of a certain degree of initiation, he could
remember his past lives as other men remember
their childhood, dim and far away, but none the
less tangible; and though, like a child, he
might remember people whom he had met in
those far off days, he did not always recognize
them when they reappeared under their present
guise.
He cursed himself for not realizing that something
more than rational judgment must have
been at work when, out of a whole roomful of
women he chose one, and one only, for use in
his dangerous adventure; never deliberating,
never comparing, but unhesitatingly laying his
finger upon one and saying " Come."
He analysed his feelings of the past weeks.
Subtly but surely the girl had bound him to her.
That no conscious act of hers contributed to
the binding he readily conceded, but none the
less the bond had been forged. True, he had
made a collar and chain for her, but though the
collar might be about her neck, the staple of the
chain was in his own soul. He who was dedicated
to the Left-hand Path, who worked with the
forces of disruption and separateness, had become
drawn into the whirlpool of our common
humanity.
He had often lived over again in memory that

THE DEMON LOVER 79

Roman life of his: seen the white villa and
talked with the gentle girl who dwelt in it, and
passing from that life back along the chain of
memory, seen other lives where they, priest and
priestess, had borne their part in the mysteries
of many climes and ages, right back to the dim
dawn of knowledge in the sun-worship of ancient
Atlantis. Undoubtedly the bond had held age
after age, and such a bond as that is not a thing
to be ignored; the causes it had set going
would actuate events in the present life to an
extent undreamed of by the ordinary man; if
he could estimate those forces he would be
able to form a very fair idea of the conditions he
would have to cope with in working out this
problem, and he cursed himself again that his
knowledge had not enabled him to avoid involving
himself in such a Karmic tangle. Here he was,
half-way through a most critical and vital experiment,
and the forces of a forgotten Roman
summer had wakened to life again and threatened
to complicate the whole affair.
Lucas brought his mind forward, life by life,
from the remote past to the immediate present,
striving to see the course events had taken in
past lives so that he might be able to deduce
their tendency. He had not recognized in
Veronica the presence of the soul whose orbit
he had repeatedly touched in the past (and when
an occultist says " past " he means the past of an
evolution, not the past of an incarnation, which
he calls the present). That soul had had an
element of greatness in it, and there was nothing
big about Veronica, she was more of a child
than anything else. He found no clue to the

80 THE DEMON LOVER

problem till he came to the Roman incarnation,
whose images, rising vividly before his mind in
that moment of stress in the roadway, wiping
out the features of the present-day Veronica,
and superimposing themselves as successive
exposures are superimposed in a composite
photograph, had revealed to him that here was
another appearance of the reality that was so
intimately interwoven in his fate. Yet beside
him sat a mindless bit of pink-and-white whose
ears he could cheerfully have boxed, who bore
no trace of the greatness of the past, and yet who
had a hold upon him.
Lucas stirred impatiently in his chair. If she
had been the woman who had worked with him
in the past, what a different proposition it would
have been, but something had gone wrong in
that Roman incarnation to which he had not
go the clue, and he was baffled.
He touched Veronica's arm.
" If you have heard enough music, we will
have tea and start for home."
She acquiesced, passive and unresponsive as
ever, and they, or rather he, for she took no part
in the quest, sought out a tea-shop where food
might be obtained. She irritated him beyond
measure when she was in this mood. He felt
like a man who has ill-treated his dog in private,
and then, when he takes it out, finds that the
creature's habitual cringing tells the secret to
all men. To attempt to bully Veronica into
better behaviour would only make her lie down
completely ; to cheer her was impossible.
But Veronica's mind was not as passive as he
credited it with being. She was brooding deeply

THE DEMON LOVER 81

over the happenings in the roadway. The story
he had told her, trite enough in its way, had
made a deep impression, and the images it
evoked rose persistently before her mind. She
could see the white villa, the sub-tropical gardens,
the oxen at the well-wheel, and the slaves who
tilled the vine terraces, with the clear, vivid
detail that she could see the Surrey cottage. Of
course the girl refused her lover, what else could
she have done ? Their lives were going different
ways, they could not walk together. But she
had not forgotten him, Veronica was certain of
that; no, she had remembered the dark patrician
Roman as she worked among the outcasts of the
city, separated from him by less than a mile, as
men count space, but each facing a different
way so that they never saw each other.
Had she been right to escape temptation by
avoiding him ? The whole temperament of that
age was for those who sought righteousness to
leave a too sinful world and its contamination,
but might not the world, unleavened by their presence, incline to greater and greater extremes
of evil ? For the first time in her life, Veronica
was thinking rather than feeling, and the
unaccustomed experience gave her a sensation of
bewilderment. She turned to Lucas, feeling
that she needed the steadying of his matter-of-
fact demeanour, and found the man's eyes fixed
on her face. Spontaneously, unreflectively, she
asked the question fermenting in her mind.
t( What was his name ? "
And the answer came equally spontaneously,
as if but a moment before the subject had been
under discussion.

82 THE DEMON LOVER

" Justinian. He was called after the general
his father served."
" And hers ? "
<( Veronica, the same as yours. (Damn fool
that I was not to spot it)," he added, under his
breath.
" What became of them--afterwards ? "
" He studied with some of the greatest black
magicians of the age, and when his body was
worn out, and it wore out pretty quickly, he
took another, and went on studying. Later, he
had an incarnation at Avignon during the great
days of witchcraft, and was burnt in the market
place there, together with a number of others."
" Was that while she was a nun ? "
" How do you know she was a nun ? "
" You said so, didn't you ? "
" I never said anything about it. I lost her
trail after I parted from her in the garden."
" I'm sorry. I got the idea she became a
nun. But what happened to him ? "
" He was burnt for witchcraft, I told you that."
He was watching her closely.
" But after ? "
" How do you know there was any after ? The
man was dead."
Veronica looked puzzled. She had felt so sure
that the tale was not ended, for the moment she
had forgotten that death ends everything, and
Lucas, having learnt what he wanted to know,
skilfully directed her attention to other subjects.

CHAPTER TEN

FROM THAT DAY THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE
man and the girl changed profoundly. For
neither of them did the old forces waken as yet,
but they stirred in their sleep. The girl found
herself intuitively understanding the aims and
motives of the man who had appeared so incomprehensible
to her, and though her antagonism
was in no way lessened, she had, to a very great
extent, lost her fear of him, and the sympathy,
born of understanding, was, unperceived by
herself, dawning faintly in the background of
her mind.
For his part, the man watched events with
apprehension. Old causes, he knew, were
actuating from the past, but as to when and how
they might come into operation, of that he was
ignorant; and he was engaged in a piece of work
that would not permit of disturbance, either
he must push through his investigations and
finish with the trance-work before the Karma
began to operate, or heaven knows what complications
might not be introduced into the
affair. Moreover, he was still completely ignorant
as to the nature of the power that had intervened
in the roadway upon Veronica's behalf. Why
had it never made itself felt before when he sent
Veronica out upon her deadly work ? When
would it elect to interfere again ? Now that
she had picked up its trail, would it always
be present ? These were all questions he
was powerless to answer until they should
answer themselves, and then it might be too
late.
He determined, therefore, to push on with the
83

84 THE DEMON LOVER

trance-work, and four nights in succession sent
Veronica out upon her astral journeyings. He
had never risked working her so hard before, but
he dared not delay now that the Karma had
begun to stir. Out she had to go, and if she
failed to return one night, then so much the
better, he would be free from the old problems
for the rest of this incarnation, at any rate.
The continuous trance-work was not without
its effect upon the girl itself. The strange world
into which she passed when she crossed the
threshold of consciousness was becoming familiar
to her, and its memories were beginning to link
on to normal consciousness.
Never again, after the experience in the roadway,
did she go out in terror and dread, for she
knew that, just beyond the portal, a Presence
would meet her and remain at her side till she
returned. Of the nature of that Presence she
had little conception, but her attitude towards
It, inspired, no doubt, by a sense of Its personality,
was that of a child towards a formidable but
well-loved teacher.
Whereas her first expedition into the realm of
the unseen had remained an utter blank in
memory, her later expeditions had become
increasingly tangible. Memory, at first a thing
of shreds and patches, had begun to piece itself
together until the pattern of the experience
became visible. She was aware that she heard
great rituals being enacted, but rituals that
differed vastly from her previous concept of such
things, based as it was upon church services,
for there one person performed the ritual for the
benefit of the congregation, but in these the

THE DEMON LOVER 85

congregation performed the ritual for the benefit
of one person.
Though each expedition differed from another,
there was a certain system which seemed to prevail
in all of them. First, after voyaging through
blue-black space, she would perceive a glow of
light dawning in the distance, and her soul,
apparently set for that point of the compass as
the steering-machinery of a torpedo is set, would
draw steadily nearer to it. Then she would
perceive that the light proceeded from some sort
of an enclosure that was guarded by a
barrier, but a barrier such as she had never seen
upon earth, for this wall was not stationary, but
revolving, resembling nothing so much as a band-saw, 
and reflecting gleams of light from its
swiftly-moving surface. Nothing, she felt, could
have projected her soul through that whirling
circle, but a great, though oftentimes very
spasmodic force was exerted beneath her, and
with a levering motion she was lifted up and
over the barrier and dropped down upon the
inner side. There, as in a dream, she found
herself floating; voices, faint and far away,
sounded in her ears; pictures, small and as if
seen through badly-focussed opera glasses, crossed
her vision; and then a curious thing happened.
It seemed as if a tenuous silver thread connected
her soul with the body left behind under Lucas's
care, and down this thread the impressions
received by her soul were transmitted to the
mindless brain at the other end and acted out
under its direction. The words she heard
stimulated a reflective activity in the vocal
cords of the distant throat, and the actions of

86 THE DEMON LOVER

the prime mover in the ceremonial were repeated
by the vacated body. And all this while,
consciousness in abeyance, she lay back, as if in
deep blue water, and observed, a disinterested
spectator, that which her soul perceived and
transmitted to her brain. It seemed as if while
her body alone, bereft of sensation, or volition,
remained with Lucas, her senses alone, bereft of
emotion, entered the enclosure ; but herself, her
consciousness, all that was she, was diffused where
there was neither time nor space, impinging
upon both body and senses, but coalescing with
neither.
But a change had begun to come over the spirit
of her dream; experience had rendered the
hidden side of things less unfamiliar to her, and
since the event in the roadway and the coming
of the Presence, she had become increasingly
self-reliant when out of her body ; she was no
longer a leaf blown by the winds of space, but
was fast developing powers of flight of her own,
and a natural curiosity led her to concentrate
more and more upon the strange scenes that
were enacted before her, so that, as time went on,
more and more of her personality began to
follow her simulacrum in its scramble over the
barrier, till finally, upon the fifth night of
consecutive trance, the dream-scene suddenly
grew real and materialized before her eyes and
she found herself standing upon a broad flagged
pavement with cowled figures seated all round
her, and her eyes looking straight into those of
one who sat upon a raised dais behind an altar.
For a long moment they stared into each other's
eyes, mutually staggered by the encounter, and

THE DEMON LOVER 87

then, rising from his seat, the cowled figure
pointed a finger at her and a strangely vibrant 
Word rang out across the rhythms of the ritual.
Instantly there was a crash as of a thousand
earthquakes; lightning, tempest and thunder
seemed let loose, with herself as the focus of
their force. What appeared to be a black tidal
wave caught her up and swept her away as a
straw in floodtime. Gasping, drowning in the
darkness, she turned her mind rather than her
eyes in search of the Presence that had moved at
her elbow, and instantly, as she did so, she felt
herself gripped, lifted, and drawn out of the
maelstrom and landed upon the bank of the
flood, with a voice that boomed in her ears
saying:
" Return, my daughter, and We will close the
gates behind thee. Seek not to come forth again
unless We summon thee."
Down and down her soul sped in its dive from
the heights, and with a crash and a gasp she shot
into her body in full consciousness; behind her,
something that was halfway between a guillotine
and a portcullis came down with a crash, and she
felt rather than saw a great Hand mark it with
the Sign of the Cross.
She was flat on her back on the floor, Lucas
kneeling on her chest and gripping both her
wrists,
" My God," he said, " What strength you've
got! I thought I should never have been able
to hold you. What happened ? "
Veronica examined her bruised wrists and,
collecting her scattered wits, told him as well as
she could remember, all that had occurred. As

88 THE DEMON LOVER

she did so, she saw his face turn ashy
grey.
" Do you think the man you saw would be
likely to remember your face ? "
" He stared at me hard enough," said Veronica.
" Then you must clear out of here right away
and we must chance the Ashlotts gossiping."
He paused, and then continued as if speaking
to himself.
" Now what in the world am I to do with her ?
Can't let her go altogether, no, can't possibly do
that." Pause. " I know, the general's fishing
box. Put her there. Caretaker look after her.
Deaf as a post. Do as she's told and ask no
questions. She knows I act for him. Keep
quiet if I pay her. What time is it ? Quarter
past twelve. No trains to-night. Sunday
to-morrow, damn it; no trains then to that
God-forsaken spot. I'll have to take her down
by road. Hundred and twenty miles. Council
meeting to-morrow at ten; daren't miss it.
Two hundred and forty there and back. Can I
do it ? Got to." Then he seemed to wake up.
He went over to a cupboard in the corner and
raking about on its lower shelf, drew out a dust-
covered haversack.
" Here, Veronica, you can take as much as you
can stuff into this. Get your nightgown, hair
brush, and washing-tackle, enough to keep you
going for a day or two. I'll send your things on
after you. Now hustle."
" But Mr. Lucas, what do you mean ? What
are you going to do with me ? "
" Don't ask questions, hurry," and taking her
by the shoulders, he almost flung her out of the

THE DEMON LOVER 89

room. " Put on your warmest coat," he called
after her.
Infected by his haste, she was not many
minutes in carrying out his commands, but he
had already changed into his motor-cycling
overalls and was standing in the hall impatiently
awaiting her descent.
(< Is that the thickest thing you've got ? " he
exclaimed at sight of the thin little wrap that had
to serve her needs. " Here, take this," and
catching up an old trench coat that always hung
upon the hall stand, he thrust her into it,
buttoning and buckling it about her as one
dresses a child. It was dirty as only a man's
macintosh is allowed to get dirty, and reeked
of the strong pipe tobacco he always smoked,
and Veronica, cased from heel to eyes in its
stiff folds, felt as if, in some strange way, the
man's personality enwrapped her.
Silently, as was her wont, she followed Lucas
out of the door into the close London night,
the coat heavy upon her shoulders. They walked
quickly, Veronica half smothered by its weight,
till they came to the mews where he kept his
motor cycle. He unlocked a clumsy door and
got the machine out. The roar of its starting
woke the echoes and he cursed it savagely, then,
bidding Veronica mount behind him, he sent
the machine shooting out of the yard almost
before she had got her balance. Through the
wide emptiness of the night streets they flew,
and in an incredibly short time Veronica felt
fresh air in her face and saw the loom of Harrow
on its hill upon her left.
The wind blew fresh as they cleared the

90 THE DEMON LOVER

brick-ridden city, and when they got into the
hills it cut like a knife. Never, till her dying
day would Veronica forget that ride. Lucas
had got to do two hundred and forty miles in
a little over ten hours, and he wanted to get a
rest and a meal between the journeys, for it
would not do to come into the council meeting
dead beat and occasion questions, so he meant
to average thirty miles an hour, and in order to
do this, he drove the machine " all out " whenever
the road permitted, climbing well up into
the forties when the grades were in his favour.
Veronica clung like an infant monkey to its
parent hurtling through the tree tops, and
Lucas set his jaw and prayed that his luck would
hold, for he could not have pulled up within
the range of his headlight should any obstacle
bar the way.
On and on they went, the open exhaust
roaring at Veronica's ankles and the inequalities
of the road jarring the very soul out of her.
Presently the darkness began to thin, the loom
of objects showed up at greater and greater
distance, and Lucas switched off the headlight,
driving through a ghostly twilight that had
something strangely unwholesome about it.
The risen sun found them upon the top of a
hill with a mist-blanketed valley lying below
them. For the first time since they had started
upon their wild ride, Lucas broke silence.
" That's Beckering," he said, as they slid down
through thick woods towards the bottom.
They passed through a straggling village, not
yet astir, and crossed a broad but shallow river
by a hump-backed bridge ; then, turning off

THE DEMON LOVER 91

down a rutted side road, they followed the
windings of the river bank for close upon a mile.
Thick, neglected woods closed in upon them,
and the uncared-for bank broke down into the
water in bays and headlands that endangered the
road. Little traffic could have passed along it,
for it soon degenerated into a mere cart track,
and the tires refused to grip the slimy weeds of
its surface.
Suddenly it broadened out, however, and a
pair of brick pillars holding up rusty iron gates
appeared upon their left; gates, pillars, everything,
in fact, upon this sinister river bank, was
covered with the same green slime. The gates
were secured by an enormous padlock, but Lucas
solved the problem of entry by riding straight
in at a spot where the single strand of wire that
flanked the gates had been lowered to the ground
by the rotting of a post. It looked as if someone
had set out to build a mansion, and had either
run short of money or changed his mind.
They went up a broad drive completely
clothed in a green velvet of close-growing moss,
and Veronica was at last permitted to stretch
her cramped limbs while Lucas smote upon a
door whereon the ubiquitous green slime strove
to conceal the defects of peeling paint.
The bell-pull was too firmly rusted home to
permit of its ringing, and Lucas, after an assault
upon the knocker that echoed like a bombardment
through the silent house, leaving Veronica in the
company of the motor cycle, went pushing
through an overgrown shrubbery in search of
the back door, bent, as he said, upon disinterring
the caretaker. Disinter seemed the only word

92 THE DEMON LOVER

to apply to the process, no ordinary human
awakening would have sufficed.
At the end of close upon half an hour Veronica,
exhausted, frightened, and filled with a nameless
horror by her dank and mouldering surroundings,
heard sounds of movement approaching through
the silent house ; a great rattling of bolts followed,
and the opening door revealed Lucas's sharp-
cut and somewhat drawn features, with a hag-
like face peering over his shoulder.
The leathern racing helmet he wore, backed
by the marble pilasters of the porch, made Lucas
look exactly like an Egyptian priest, and the
huddled figure at his side seemed some strange
familiar he had invoked for his magical work.
A dingy crimson dressing-gown had been hastily
dragged on over an unbelievably dirty pink
flannelette nightgown, and around all a gorgeous
patchwork quilt was swathed, for the good dame
had been aroused from her slumbers by the simple
expedient of putting half a brick through her
bedroom window. What explanations Lucas had
shouted into her deaf ears will never be known,
but apparently the little wad of Treasury notes
clutched in her gnarled old hand was a satisfactory
reason for anything that might be required
of her.
She peered at Veronica through hanging elf-
locks of grey hair and, addressing her as " dearie,"
started a long rigmarole, apparently of apology
for the state of the house and garden, but so
toothless was she, that not one word could be
made out.
Lucas solved the problem of this address of
welcome by pushing her aside, and taking the

THE DEMON LOVER 93

now almost fainting girl by the arm, he led
her into the house.
" Come along," he said, " There is one decent
room in this mausoleum, anyway. We will have
a fire put in it and the place will soon look more
cheerful."
He led the shrinking girl down a long passage
to what had apparently been a billiard room,
though the table was gone. Rugs covered the
polished floor, low bookcases stood round the walls
from the tops of which enormous fish goggled at
the intruders in their varnished dignity. Guns
stood in a rack at one end, and a litter of fishing
tackle filled all four corners.
Lucas dropped Veronica into one of the great
leather armchairs and went to open the shutters,
letting in a flood of early morning sunshine, and
when the hag, who, for all her years, moved with
a mouselike quickness, returned with a bundle of
brushwood and kindled a fire upon the great
open hearth, the place looked far from unprepossessing.
An oval mahogany table inlaid
according to Victorian taste stood in the window,
and Lucas and the hag between them carried
it over to the fire. In a marvellously short space
of time bacon and eggs and tea appeared upon
it, and the two travellers who since their entry
into this dismal house had hardly addressed each
other, set to work upon their welcome meal.
Nothing but the commonplaces of the table
passed between them till Lucas lit his after-
breakfast pipe.
" Listen to me, Veronica," he said. " That
m, if you can keep your eyes open, and you had
better keep them open until I have told you

94 THE DEMON LOVER

what I have to say, because it is very important.
We are in a very tight hole, both of us, at the
present moment. The trouble may blow over.
On the other hand, it may not, and then we shall
have to look out for squalls. I shall know pretty
soon. All you have got to do is to stop here and
keep absolutely quiet. You can't talk to this old
dame, whatever her name is, because you can't
make her hear, and you mustn't try to talk to
anyone else. Don't communicate with your
friends, either, especially the Ashlotts, this is
most important, because your only chance of
safety is for no one to know of your existence.
Understand this, Veronica, we are in grave danger,
very grave danger, both of us."
Veronica had only to look at his strained face
to know that he spoke the truth, or at least what
he believed to be the truth, but she did not feel
alarmed. Horror she might feel of the house
and the whole situation, but she felt no anxiety
for her personal safety. Her companion, however,
seemed to take a different view of the matter.
Lucas, glancing at his watch every other
minute, allowed himself half an hour's rest, and
then he announced that he must set forth upon
his return journey. He heaved himself out of
his chair and stood looking at Veronica as if he
expected some move upon her part. She, however, 
stared vaguely back at him as usual, not
knowing what was expected of her by this
unaccountable being.
Aren't you coming to see me off ? " he said.
She rose obediently, and followed him, dog-
like as usual, across the tiled hall to the front
door. In the porch he paused, and looked

THE DEMON LOVER 95

steadfastly at the girl beside him. Then he
suddenly caught her and drew her to him.
Veronica," he said, " you've got no one to
look to but me, and I've got no one but you ;
we have got to stick together. Say you'll stand
by me, Veronica ? "
Veronica's soft little heart was easily touched.
She only saw the man's face, strained, tired and
anxious, close to hers; everything that had gone
before was forgotten, it was a different Lucas,
changed and softened, who stood before her now.
Almost involuntarily she smiled back at him.
It was the first time Lucas had ever seen her
smile, and so completely did it change her face
that he hardly knew her for the same girl; his
arms tightened about her, and before he knew
what he was doing, he had kissed her on her lips.
Who can say what magic passes from lip to
lip ? The man's face changed even more than
the girl's had done. Many thoughts chased
each other through his mind, if his changing eyes
were any clue to them. Then, reluctantly, he 
released her and turned away. Half in the
saddle of his cycle, and half out of it, he paused,
and looked at Veronica again; then suddenly
he leant towards her.

" I shall come back again," he said. " I shall
come back again, dear, whether or no. Wait
for me, Veronica."

CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOUNDS IN THE HALL OF THE BIG HOUSE IN
s
' the Bloomsbury square showed that the members
of the council were assembling for their
meeting. The butler, who was also a lay brother,
was admitting them, and one by one they passed
down the long tiled passage to the room built
out at the back, which was designed for a billiard
room but was now the lodge of an occult
fraternity.
In the office the secretary of that society was
gathering together the papers that concerned
the business about to be transacted. A close
observer might have noticed that the lines of
the man's dark face had deepened, adding some
ten years to his apparent age, and that his eyes
appeared to be deep sunk in his head and heavy-
lidded ; save for that, and some dust-covered
motoring clothes, rolled hastily into a bundle
and thrown into the corner there was nothing
to show that he had travelled over two hundred
miles during the night.
His papers made ready, he paused, and
unlocking a cupboard that stood upon the safe,
he poured himself out the best part of half a
tumblerful of whisky and swallowed down the
raw spirit without water. By the time he had
walked down the passage that led to the billiard
room the lines also had gone from his face.
The members of the council had already
assembled, and the secretary's entrance was the
signal for them to take their places about the table
and proceed to the transaction of business. The
minutes of the preceding meeting were read and
signed, and the matters on the agenda proceeded

0


THE DEMON LOVER 97

as usual; then came the time when the chairman
said : Any other business ? " and looked from
face to face of the men surrounding the table.
Each responded with a shake of the head, and
the man at the foot of the table was permitting
his lungs to expand in a sigh of relief when the
chairman broke the silence.
" There is a matter, brethren, which I should
like to lay before you, and upon which I should
value your advice.
" Last night a ritual was being worked in this
Lodge, the ritual of the Seventh Degree. I was
in the Chair. Suddenly I perceived a figure
materialize upon the floor of the lodge, several
of the other brethren perceived it also. By means
of a Word of Power I was able to banish it, and
we proceeded with the ritual, but it is a very
serious thing that any cowan should have been
able to pass through the seal set upon the room."
Grave faces received this announcement. Anyone
acquainted with occult work will know how
serious the matter was; for those to whom the
subject is unfamiliar it is enough to say that for
thousands of years the occult fraternities have
guarded their secrets, not only physically, but
mentally also by means of the mystic seals they
set upon their meeting places, and here was a
fraternity, one of the oldest and most powerful
in the western hemisphere, faced by the fact
that a stranger had succeeded in penetrating into
the working of one of their highest degrees.
The old man with the long white beard upon
the chairman's left spoke first.
Are you sure that it was a cowan ? I have
known it happen that a member of the Fraternity,

98 THE DEMON LOVER

taken over to the Other Side by sudden death,
had attended lodge from sheer habit, forgetting
that he was no longer in the body."
To an outsider, this might have sounded like
the maunderings of insanity, but to these men,
as accustomed to functioning out of the body
as in it, and to associate with dead and living
upon equal terms, there appeared nothing strange,
either in the statement that the dead had
returned, or that the distant had suddenly
materialized ; they were used to sitting in council
with men who had been dead for hundreds of
years or who were separated from them by the
breadth of a continent. The only thing that
puzzled them was, how the seal upon their
meeting place had been broken by one who was
not entitled to enter, and the chairman replied
in all seriousness, It could not have been a member
of the Fraternity, because it was a woman."
Lucas waited with suspended breath to learn
whether the intruder had been sufficiently clearly
materialized to be recognizable ; he dared not
ask any questions; the pupils of his eyes had
contracted to pinpoints and his face was set like
a mask.
The discussion turned this way and that for
some minutes, and the concensus of opinion
seemed to be that some outsider with considerable
occult knowledge had succeeded in breaking the
seal and effecting an entrance. Such a thing had
not happened since the sixteenth century, when
the Paris lodge had been similarly invaded, and
to this occurrence they turned for a precedent
that should guide them in their course of action.
The Fraternity had in its keeping the secret of

THE DEMON LOVER 99

the use of the Punitive Dark Rays of disintegration,
and these it was permitted to employ upon the
occasions, happily rare, when its secrets were in
danger of being revealed to the uninitiated. Not
that the brethren were blood-thirsty men, but
the secret knowledge entrusted to them was of
such power that its dissemination among those
unfit for such a supreme trust was a very serious
matter indeed, too serious to be trifled with ;
and when occult knowledge got into unworthy
hands, those who were responsible for its safe
custody were required to prevent effectually any
use or spread of such knowledge; if a man
chose to spy upon their secrets, then he must
take the consequences, for the knowledge was not
theirs to communicate at will, neither had they
the right to pardon a transgression. Some of the
brethren, having regard to the fact that the
transgressor was believed to be a woman, though
the chairman was not absolutely certain upon
this point, hesitated to cast their votes in favour
of action ; and though no one actually refused
to sanction the use of the Dark Ray upon this
occasion, two abstained from voting, so the
remaining five carried the decision.
Let it be realized, in judging the action of
these men, that they had a grave trust to fulfil
in safeguarding the knowledge placed in their
keeping, and that no one values human life more
cheaply than the occultist, for he holds the
belief in eternal life as a fact of his own personal
experience, not as a theory, based, at best, upon
the evidence of sacred writings. Some one had
learnt their secrets, and that person, must, at
all costs, be effectually silenced, only thus could

too THE DEMON LOVER

their trust be held to have been fulfilled.
Just such an occurrence as this Lucas had
foreseen when he determined to use an intermediary
to obtain the knowledge he desired.
He could have done what he employed Veronica
to do, but he made use of her for the purpose
of avoiding this precise risk. He himself
was perfectly safe; the brethren had no means
of associating the intruder with himself; she,
and she alone would be struck by the Dark
Ray, and he would pass scatheless; he had only
to send round once more to the secretarial
agencies of London in order to replace her with
a sensitive equally or almost as good, and yet he
sat staring at the chairman like a hypnotized
man, his soul frozen with horror. Absorbed in
their discussion, no one looked at the secretary,
or his face must surely have betrayed him.
Lucas, who had thought himself beyond good
or evil, immune from emotion, had been
humanized, and his humanity betrayed him. A
man upon the Left Hand Path finds his strength
in separateness; Lucas had formed a tie, he had
deviated from his perfect loyalty to evil, the
spark of good that was in him had been fanned
to a flame, and it was proving his undoing.
The brethren were discussing ways and means,
who were to be responsible for the task in hand,
and the time and place at which they should
meet for the united meditation that should let
loose the Dark Ray, and they did not realize
that anything untoward was afoot until the
scrape of a thrust-back chair drew their attention
to the foot of the table.
Lucas was upon his feet; his face was the

THE DEMON LOVER 101

peculiar grey-white a dark skin goes when it
becomes absolutely bloodless ; for a long minute
the men round the table stared at him, arrested
by the expression of his face. It seemed as if
he would never find his voice, and then, with
difficulty, the words came.
"There is something I wish to say to you,"
he said.
The chairman signed to him to go on. For a
long time past the secretary had been an object
of suspicion, and it did not come as any surprise
to the men present that Lucas was involved in
the affair under consideration. They waited for
him to pull himself together. Presently he spoke
again.
" This matter is not quite as you think it is."
Another long pause followed as Lucas sought
for the words that would not come. The men
round the table waited immobile in the half-
light of the shaded lamp, their gaze directed
towards him, no one offering to help him out.
With a renewed effort he continued.
" The person you saw in the lodge was not
directly concerned in the matter. She was
entirely passive. A trance medium in fact.
She is not responsible for anything that has
happened."
"Then," said the chairman, If she is not
responsible, who is ? "
" I am," said Lucas. I was operating her."
" In what way ? "
" Under hypnosis."
" Has she any recollection of what has
happened ? "
No, none; I swear she hasn't. She was

102 THE DEMON LOVER

nothing but a tool. She had no more to do with
it than a pen with what it signs. If you want 
to strafe anybody, you can strafe me. I am the
person responsible."
It was a strange scene in that darkened Blooms-
bury room. The circle of men round the table,
their faces dimly illumined by the reflected-light
from the shaded lamp ; behind them, a shadowy
altar with the Everlasting Fire glowing dimly
upon it; and before them, erect, tense, solitary,
the man who was about to die.
For there could be no doubt as to what the
verdict would be. A long time ago the Chiefs
had known that Lucas was unsuitable to be a
member of the Fraternity ; for some time past it
had been suspected almost to certainty that he
was intriguing against them, and now they had
caught him red-handed. He, a member of the
outer temple, had obtained possession of the
secrets of the inner temple up to the seventh
degree; they were not only angry at the theft,
but thoroughly alarmed that such a theft had
been possible, and their alarm made them
ruthless.
The chairman spoke. " There are two courses
open to us should a man obtain the secrets of a
degree he is not entitled to. Either we can
administer the oath of the degree to him, or--we
can silence him. Are you willing that the
oath should be administered to our brother
here present ? "
One by one, as he glanced at them, the men
shook their heads. Then," said the chairman,
" we have no option but to proceed with the
other course."

THE DEMON LOVER 103

He did not put the vote to the meeting, it
was doubtful if he could have got the men to
vote, for it was a sentence of death they were
passing, and though their minds were made up,
to give that deciding nod was not easy, and 
the motion would have passed without opposition if
the voice of the old man with the long white
beard had not broken the silence.
"Though we are not willing to admit this
man to the degrees he has desecrated, is there no
other course than--to invoke the Dark Ray ? "
What other course would you suggest ? "
replied the chairman. Can we not bind him with 
an oath, and bid him depart ? "
" What have the brethren to say upon the
matter ? " said the chairman, looking round at
the assembled men again.
There was a long silence, no one caring to take
the responsibility of voicing the thought that
was in the minds of all of them ; the man they
were trying stood tense as a bow-string, his
nostrils twitching like an animal's and his eyes,
now opaque as marble, now pools of blackness.
At length the journalist broke the silence.
"Daren't risk it. Can't trust him," he said,
and the rest breathed a sigh of relief that they
had been spared the voicing of the verdict.
"Is that your opinion ? " asked the chairman,
again referring to the assembled men, who,
each in his way, by a nod or a half-spoken word,
assented ; save only the patriarch, and his voice
once more broke upon the assembly.
" We have long known this man for what he
is" he said. A man dedicated to the services

104 THE DEMON LOVER

of evil, following the Left Hand Path, a black
occultist; and yesterday, had I been asked, I
should have voted as you have done. But can
we say that this man is wholly given over to evil,
to separateness ? Remember, you are condemning
him upon a voluntary confession;
unless he had spoken, we should never have
known, and he has elected to sacrifice himself
rather than that an innocent person should suffer.
Greater love hath no man than this, that he
should lay down his life for his friend.' "
"A man in love will do anything," said the
journalist, and Lucas started as if hot metal
had touched him. The words, or the sneer
with which they were spoken, seemed to galvanize
him into activity; for a moment he stood there,
as if poised for flight, and then his hand went
to his hip pocket, and the assembly found themselves 
looking down the barrel of a revolver.
"If you want me, you can come and fetch
me," he snarled. "Strafing is a game that two
can play at." And he backed slowly towards
the door, glaring at them along the shining
barrel of the revolver.
" You can put up your weapon, Mr. Lucas,"
said the chairman coldly. "We shall not use
physical force."

CHAPTER TWELVE

LUCAS SLAMMED THE DOOR BEHIND HIM AND
turned the key. The lodge-room was remote
from the house and the Ashlotts' abode in the
basement. Some delay must occur before the
brethren could effect egress. He dashed down
the long tiled passage to the office, snatched the
papers out of his private safe, and raced upstairs
to his bedroom. Here he caught up just such
personal belongings as might readily be thrust
into a haversack; then he rushed downstairs
again.
A thundering upon the door at the end of the
tiled passage showed that he was only just in
time, and catching up a handful of letters that
had fallen from the letter-box upon the hall mat,
he passed out of the old house in the Bloomsbury
square where his life had been lived and his life-
work had been done. A new order of existence
opened before him ; what it held for him was
unknown, and never had any man more completely
burnt his boats behind him.
Soon he was speeding down the road by
which he had taken Veronica between moonset
and sunrise of that eventful day, the road which
he had already traversed a second time between
sunrise and noon; the excitement of the
happenings buoyed him up and he felt no fatigue,
but as he drew clear of the London traffic into
the open country roads and had time for thought,
a realization of his position dawned upon him.
He was out of a job to begin with, and had very
little prospect of getting one, being without
references. He grinned to himself at a vision
of the brethren's faces if they were asked for a

10$


106 THE DEMON LOVER

reference and requested to state the reasons for
dismissal. He was not penniless; he had a
small sum in the bank, but, as he remarked to
himself, it would not last the two of them very
long ; Veronica had nothing but what she stood
up in, and he very little more. They could
probably squat' indefinitely in the general's
fishing box, and he might be able to make some
use of his pen, but it was a precarious living at
best.
Lucas was not an introspective man ; if he
had been, he might have noticed that his
resources would last just twice as long for one as
for two ; he dared not use Veronica again, and
there was no reason why he should not cut loose
from her ; one is not obliged to employ a secretary
one does not require; all the same it never
occurred to him to abandon her. For the first
time in his life the man's strange nature had
formed a tie ; he had not yet had time to reason
things out, but a flash of self-revelation had come
to him at the words of the journalist, " A man
in love will do anything." Was he in love with
Veronica ? He hardly even asked himself the
question; he only knew that with the instinct
of a homing pigeon, he was going back to her as
fast as his machine would take him. She was
the only creature with whom he was in touch
in the midst of an alien and hostile world;
bereft of Veronica he would be utterly alone,
and to Veronica he clung desperately.
The mileage he had travelled began to tell
upon him, and it was a very weary man who
looked down from the crest of the hills upon the
valley of Beckering, spread out in the afternoon

THE DEMON LOVER 107

sun. By the time he reached the rough cart
jack along the river bank it was all he could do
to hold the cycle steady, and when he dismounted
it the front door of the old house he had some
ado to stand. Knowing it to be useless to ring
the bell, he made his way round through the
shrubbery to the lawn upon which the one
inhabitable room in the place looked out, and
Veronica, sitting over her tea, looked up to see
a man come with uncertain steps across the
grass and knock upon the French window for
admission. She sprang up and opened to him,
and he crossed the threshold without a word
and dropped into a chair beside the table. She
asked no questions, she never did; he was a
remote, unaccountable being upon whom she
had no claims, but her woman's instinct made
her give him a cup of tea and watch with satisfaction
while he drank it. His face and clothes
were covered with a mask of dust, and he looked
more than ever like the statue of some fallen
Egyptian king in a forgotten tomb that the
sands of the desert have overcome.
There was a curiously changed 'feel' about
him; he no longer conveyed a sense of power
and aloofness; the mysterious force he always
seemed to emanate was gone, he was simply a
very tired man, and in some subtle way he had
drawn very much closer to her. He drank, but
would not eat; and when the third cup of tea
had passed his dust-grimed lips he rose stiffly to
his feet, and laid a hand upon Veronica's shoulder.
" I'm going to sleep, little woman; I'm
absolutely done in. Watch by me. Don't leave
me alone." And he flung himself, dust and all,

108 THE DEMON LOVER

upon a broad leather sofa that stood at the side
of the hearth.
He gave her no reason why she should watch
beside him while he slept, he would have found
it difficult to have formulated one to himself,
but he felt the greatest aversion from being
left alone ; whether it was that a lingering fear
of the Dark Ray and its attack shadowed his
mind, or whether, having for the first time
discovered the meaning of companionship,
he indulged himself in it as the newly-rich
indulge in luxury, he could not have said.
Veronica watched the golden afternoon light
fade to dusk, and then a shuffling in the passage
announced the advent of the old caretaker with 
supper. When she saw Lucas asleep on the
sofa, she mumbled something unintelligible and
went to fetch a second plate; she seemed quite
to have accepted their presence in the house for
which she was responsible.
Roused by her movements, Lucas woke up,
and arose to go and wash off the dust. As he
shed his motoring overalls, he felt something
bulky in the pocket, and drew out the bundle of
letters he had picked up as he left the house.
Two were for the Ashlotts, the rest for the Fraternity,
but one was addressed to him personally.
The Ashlotts' letters he tore up and flung in
the hearth, he dared not risk sending them on,
his safety lay largely in the ignorance of the
brethren as to his whereabouts, for it is very
difficult to focus an occult force unless one has
some idea as to at least the point of the compass
to which it is to be directed. The letters for
the Fraternity he glanced through out of pure

THE DEMON LOVER 109

curiosity; their writers would have to wait for
an answer; then he opened the letter addressed
to himself. It was brief and to the point, and
without any preamble, informed him that General
Sawberry had passed peacefully away at his
Woking home early the previous morning, and
that he himself was the principal legatee. Lucas
let out a long whistle that almost ended in a
war whoop. What astonishing luck, and just
when he needed it, too. If the rest of his luck
were as good as this, he would pull through all
right. He put the letter in his pocket and went
down to supper, patting Veronica on the
back in the most friendly fashion as he took his 
seat at the table. He chatted to her over the
meal, and she made her usual polite little 
monosyllabic replies, but he promised himself that he
would soon teach her to wake up and become a
live human being, and he looked forward to the
task as he might have looked forward to the
solution of some abstruse mathematical problem
or a defect in the motor-cycle's machinery;
Lucas was not quite human himself yet, though
he had made progress in that direction.
After supper, smoking a pipe, and covertly
watching Veronica as she read, he again congratulated
himself upon his good fortune. He
was master of this house, queer old ramshackle
place though it was ; and Veronica--a very little
would make Veronica quite charming, and it
would be a fascinating experiment to watch her
unfold. He asked nothing better than to be
left alone in the possession of his newly acquired
resources to develop the novel experience that
had come into his life.

THE DEMON LOVER 110

If only the Fraternity would let him alone. Perhaps 
if he disappeared completely from their
ken they would forget all about him in time, or
at any rate get over their rage. He did not
wish to think about that Dark Ray and its
effects, they were not a pleasant subject of
meditation. He remembered the German-
American who had preferred to plunge into
Niagara Gorge rather than face exposure to the
force of that ray. If it had not been for Veronica,
he himself would have followed some such
course ; but there was Veronica, with this new
experience just beginning, something that he
had never known before, and whose sweets he
was tasting for the first time-- there was Veronica
with the lamplight throwing into relief the soft
curves of chin and throat, and who held his
attention and interest in a queer, subtle fashion.
He longed to win some sort of response from her,
just such another smile as she had given him
upon his departure for London; and he sat
there, watching her in that dim-lit, tobacco-
clouded room, planning how he might bring
that smile to her lips again. The dog-like,
cowed Veronica was of no use to him, he wanted
a Veronica who would come of her own free will, 
and, above all, would smile.
He could not forget that smile ; it was the
first time any woman had shown him that side
of her nature ; the first time, indeed, that he
had ever sought to call it forth, for those smiles
are not bestowed upon cynical, cold-blooded
men, such as he had trained himself to be. But
fundamentally Lucas was neither cynical nor
cold-blooded, he was a hot-blooded man with

THE DEMON LOVER 111

quick emotions and strong enthusiasms, but he
had been trained in a tradition that did not
fully understand human nature, by men who
believed that the race can best be served by
those who have no tie or bond of affection,
forgetting that it is only by loving an individual
that we can learn to love the race. A man who
has loved greatly can transfer his love from the
unit to the mass, and it is just such men as these,
of frustrated affections, who have best served the
cause of humanity; but a man who has never
loved does not know how to love, because he has
never learnt in the only possible school, the
school of experience.
And now Lucas was getting his training. As
he had surmised, he and Veronica had followed
the Way of Initiation together for many lives
until he had quitted the Path, and then their
ways had divided ; but now, with her re-entry
upon the scene of his life, the old influence
was reasserting itself and he was being slowly
drawn back towards the Path. There had come
a point in his evolution--in the course his soul
was pursuing through eternity--where a side-track
turned off that led across country, as it were,
to the path of the Right-hand Way. It is known
to occultists that periodically there are these
cross-paths that lead from the Right-hand Path
to the Left, from the Way of Light to the
Way of Darkness, and vice versa ; those upon the
Path of Light, the Right Hand Path, as it is
called, are periodically tempted to turn off by
this perilous short-cut to power which ends
upon the Path of Darkness ; and those upon the
Left Hand Path are equally given a recurring

THE DEMON LOVER 112

opportunity to cross-cut, as it were, on to the
Path of Light. But at what cost to themselves!
for ' the road winds uphill all the way, yea, to
the very end.' Those who have dedicated
themselves to evil are subject to temptation
just as are those who have dedicated themselves to
good; and as the pleasures of the senses call
back the children of light, so the children of
darkness become affrighted by their solitude,
the fruit of the separateness which is the law of
their service; and if, in their loneliness, they
form a tie with one who is upon the Right Hand
Path, they must either draw that one over to
their own dark allegiance, or they themselves
will be drawn into the light. Lucas, that day
upon the roadway, had failed to draw Veronica
over to the way of darkness, her early training,
the strongest thing in the world, had proved too
strong even for him, despite the hold he had
gained over her, for it is very seldom that those
who, in early childhood have been grounded in
even the most perfunctory and elementary of
religious teaching that calls upon a certain Name
can never be drawn completely under the power
of the Dark Masters. The country curate who
dabs some lukewarm water upon the little form
in his arms sets a seal that takes a very great deal
of breaking, as all those who deal in the hidden
side of things are well aware. Lucas, with all
his intellect and training, had failed to subvert
the influence of a simple old country woman
who had taught a little child her first prayers.
Let theologians argue as they will concerning
the vicarious atonement, the fact remains that
there is a Name and a Sign that are efficacious


THE DEMON LOVER 113

when that dark undertow sets in that drags a
soul down to the horrors that are not human.
Lucas, at the crisis in the Lodge, had been
tempted, just as a saint is tempted, and he had
failed in his dark allegiance because he had formed
a tie, he had forgone the fruits of his painfully
acquired knowledge for the sake of little Veronica ;
he had known enough to safeguard himself
perfectly, but when the test came, his heart
failed him, he could not take advantage of his
own foresight, and he fell, just as the saint falls,
the victim of a forbidden love. True, it was a
selfish love, thinking only of its own gratification
and not at all of the well-being of its object;
true, his loyalty to Veronica had been prompted
by a dread of losing her rather than any concern
for her welfare, but still, it was love, a germinating
seed, if not the perfect flower.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

NEXT MORNING LUCAS, ACCOMPANIED BY
Veronica, set out to explore his little estate.
With the exception of the lawn in front of the
house, the rest of the grounds consisted of
shrubbery and woodland, both much overcrowded
and neglected. Straggling laurels grew up like
small trees, and oaks, herded together in ragged
negligence, lost all their native dignity and
contrived to produce a sinister twilight in the
underworld of their groves. Nature, left to her
own devices, is never morbid, but when man
takes possession of a place and then relinquishes
it, the impression of something evil or mournful
is invariably conveyed. Lucas had no intention
of reconstructing this domain, but it pleased him
to explore its resources. The Woking house
was, he knew, a much pleasanter and more
accessible abode, and thither he would remove
himself and his belongings (Veronica included
under the latter heading) as soon as the formalities
of his possession were completed.
Only the cart track lay between the grounds
and the river, and as the boundary was marked
by a single strand of slack and rusting wire, the
division was more a legal fiction than an actual
fact. Many trees had fallen and lay slowly
rotting, and upon one of these trunks the
wanderers seated themselves, gazing through a
green twilight on to the shadowed river, for here
the bed deepened and the banks narrowed, and
the current ran through a gorge of overhanging
trees. Occasionally a vole plopped into the
water; occasionally a kingfisher shot like a
streak of blue down the narrow path of sunlight


THE DEMON LOVER 115

in the river's centre, and Lucas discoursed to
Veronica upon life in general, and his own in
particular.
Veronica, though she was no talker (which in
Lucas's eyes was not a drawback) was an admirable
listener, for she had a quick and receptive mind,
able to grasp the significance of new ideas;
and with wise little nods of her head she
considered and stored away for future reference
the concepts of men and things that were being
presented to her. For the first time she heard
the doctrine of the immortality of the soul
brought to its logical conclusion as Lucas talked
glibly of past lives and their influence upon the
present, treating these subjects with an easy
familiarity which showed that they were part
of the habitual content of his consciousness; he
did not reason about life after death, because,
as he expressed it, he " Was accustomed to
dying, though he had never quite got used to
being born ; birth was always rather a shock."
To him, death was on a par with emigration, a
serious undertaking for a poor man, but merely
an interesting and exciting adventure for the
man rich in knowledge. Premature death, however,
he objected to strongly, not because he
feared to die, but because of the time it took to
train a new body for service; there was the
intolerable tedium of infancy, childhood and
youth to be gone through again before fair
value had been received from the coveted
maturity.
Veronica found herself brought face to face
with a new set of values in life ; the body, the
world, held cheap and made to serve an end of

1x6 THE DEMON LOVER

which no hint had hitherto reached her ; indeed,
Lucas did not even speak of " the body," but of
" a body," and the world was regarded as a world
of effects, with but little power to set up causes
on its own account. What happened there was
to Lucas an aftermath, the real struggle, the
real event, had taken place upon a subtler plane ;
Veronica found the concept presented to
her of great forces, governed by great laws, that
operated behind the multiplex happenings of
our haphazard existence; the aim of Lucas's
life she learnt, was to discover the nature of these
laws and so control their forces by balancing one
against the other that the power of his will,
infinitesimal though it was by comparison, should
be able to turn the scale.
Now Veronica, though she neither talked nor
reasoned, was not a fool, and her perception
pierced quickly and surely to the heart of any
matter that came under her consideration. She
soon perceived that, while Lucas talked much
of the occult powers and the means of their
attainment, he gave no hint as to the use he
meant to make of them when once attained, and
she set herself to work, in her quiet little way,
to find out what his ultimate aim might be,
and she speedily discovered that he had not got
one; he was playing with these powers as a
child might play with a Meccano outfit, making
little models that would hoist little weights, all
designed upon the best engineering principles,
but with never a thought of the greater purposes
of life to which these principles might be applied ;
the model bridge would never be translated into
reality unless Lucas himself happened to want

THE DEMON LOVER 117

to cross a river. He studied the Secret Science,
the Science of Kings, as it is called, for the 
delight of seeing the parts fit together and the
mystery explained ; and that great study, which
is as much a religion as a science, was no more
to him than a jigsaw puzzle. All this Veronica,
the simple, discovered while Lucas talked himself
out upon that summer day.
Lucas, absorbed in his narrative, never heeded
his listener's attitude, till, pausing to search for
a word, he found himself being surveyed with a
quaint detachment by the little person at the
other end of the log, and experienced an unpleasant
feeling that in some way or other he
had been making a fool of himself, just as a
student who had read a popular treatise on
astronomy might feel on finding he had been
trying to improve the mind of the Astronomer
Royal. Anxious to ascertain her attitude, he
shot a question at her, for the first time that
morning.
" Well ? What do you make of it all ? "
Veronica nodded her head sagely. " I think
I see what you mean ; there are things that
cause other things to happen, and you want to
know what they are so that you can get at them."
" That's about it," said Lucas. " The control
of causation, if you want to be precise."
" But what are you going to do with them
when you have got hold of them ? "
" You can do anything you like with them,
you could get anything you wanted."
" But one doesn't want such an awful lot,
unless of course, one wants to swank; but you
don't do that, Mr. Lucas."

118 THE DEMON LOVER

" No, I don't swank," said Lucas, laughing.
" That, at any rate, is not one of my numerous
shortcomings. But come now, wouldn't you
like to have great resources at your disposal ? "
" I'd like a certain amount," said cautious
Veronica, " But not too much ; it would take
such a lot of looking after. Besides, supposing
you were balancing the forces and one of them
slipped ? "
" That is just exactly what has happened,"
muttered Lucas to himself, and fell silent for
several minutes. Then he threw off his dark
mood and spoke again. " What would you do
with the resources of the world if you had
them ? "
" I should get some frocks and books and
pictures, and a dog ; oh yes, I should certainly
get a dog."
" But that would not exhaust the resources of
the world ; what would you do with the rest ? "
Veronica thought a moment. " I couldn't
eat all the bread in the world, but I could see
that the people who needed it got some, and
that the greedy people did not gobble too much,
which is what they do at present. Why did you
never think of doing that, Mr. Lucas ? "
" Oh, I don't know. What has it got to do
with me ? "
" But could you be happy, knowing that
someone else was starving ? "
" Good Lord, yes; that is their look-out.
People have got to stand on their own feet;
you would never get anywhere if you always
waited for the stragglers. You have got to
prune if you want to get choice fruit, you know ;

THE DEMON LOVER 119

you can't save the lives of all the poor little
apples and still have any fruit fit for dessert.
Civilization is built upon sacrifice, and if I have
any choice in the matter, and I think that I have,
I propose to be one of the civilized, not one of
the sacrificed."
This was logic hard to answer, and Veronica
did not attempt the task. She merely shook her
head and said : " All the same, I don't believe
you really like it, Mr. Lucas ; you are always
after something, and as soon as you get it you
want the next thing. It is like the Mad Hatter's
tea party,--jam yesterday, and jam to-morrow,
but never jam to-day. I like to enjoy myself
as I go along."
Lucas was enjoying himself vastly. Veronica
was beginning to wake up, and it thoroughly
amused him to reveal unexpected depths to her
and listen to her shrewd little comments. There
was more in her than he had expected ; her
mind was not empty so much from lack of
capacity as from lack of raw material. He
imagined that he was doing a very great deal 
to Veronica ; he little realized how much Veronica
was doing to him. He, as well as she, was being
presented with a new view point; he might
sweep aside her naive little assertions, but he
could not ignore the fact that, quaintly though
they might be expressed, they were singularly
relevant, and that she had an uncanny knack of
putting her finger on the weak spots in his
position. To travel hopefully may be better
than to arrive, but Lucas had been made to
realize that morning that he was merely on the
move, and had no definite goal; he was a spiritual

120 THE DEMON LOVER

nomad ; the very separateness of his existence
prevented him from availing himself of the
forces at his disposal. As Veronica had said, he
could not eat all the bread in the world, and
therefore, his own mouth being filled, he had no
further interest in the matter; whereas she,
having sympathies outside her own ego, could
overflow like a brimming pool, and vicariously
enjoy many satisfactions. Perhaps there was
something to be said for her point of view after
all; he himself had already experienced a keener
enjoyment than he had ever known before in
getting into sympathetic touch with this child ;
it was quite a different sensation to that of
power. The manipulation of another being had
its charms, of course, but they palled when the
novelty wore off ; but when, instead of manipulating,
and controlling, one could win another
person to respond to one, why, then one was, in
one's turn, stimulated, lifted on to a higher level,
whence one turned to inspire that person again,
and be again lifted. It opened up new vistas,
new possibilities of experience, this action and
reaction of two, as opposed to the solitary
working of the one. But to achieve this interaction,
one had to win the other to a willing co-operation, 
it was not enough to out-manoeuver,
to intimidate, one had to win over ; and he set
to work to discover the secret of this process just
as he had set himself to discover the forbidden
knowledge of the Fraternity.
His method was the Socratic method of
question and answer. With his conscious mind
he would formulate a question, which he put to
his subconscious mind, to which his occult

THE DEMON LOVER 121

training gave him access (for the occultist knows
a great deal more about the subconscious mind
than the psychologist does), and his subconscious
mind, in the light of its wider faculties, would
return him an answer. Absorbed in this occupation,
time slipped by unnoticed, and it was not
until the sun was setting that he returned to
Veronica with his plans fully formed. He knew
exactly how he meant to work upon her mind,
how to rouse her nature so that she should
expand from the child into the woman and make
that response to him for which he sought. He
was already well acquainted with her character--
or thought he was--and he knew just how he
meant to touch those secret springs that let
loose the forces which lie latent in the natures
of all of us, even the quietest.


CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE OLD CARETAKER HAD PREPARED SUPPER
and Veronica had seated herself at table
when he made his belated entry. The meal was
quite a festive occasion ; Lucas absorbed in his
new pursuit was in an especially cheerful mood,
and Veronica, who was fast losing her fear of
him, was quite prepared to respond, with the
result that Lucas, who was of the mercurial
temperament, forgot all about his carefully laid
plans and all he had ever known of psychology,
and followed the way of a man with a maid,
which, according to the wisest of mankind, can
only be likened to the way of a serpent upon a
rock or a ship upon the sea.
Some shred of shrewdness that remained
revealed to him that it was Veronica who was
pulling the strings of his nature, not he of hers ;
it was the deep fountains of his being that were
unsealed, while she, aloof as only those who are
of virgin soul can be aloof, looked on, half
frightened, half fascinated, at the forces she had
roused, but, being a woman, thoroughly enjoying
herself. She was too unawakened for full
realization ; she only knew that, whereas he had
hitherto treated her as some creature of a lower
order of creation that he kept for his own purposes,
she was now exalted far above him and he was
reaching up to her ; and she, in her girlish mind,
debated whether she would reach him a finger
or whether she would not, and finally decided
she would do so. He had always had a queer
kind of fascination for her, and the fascination,
in some curious way, was enhanced by the fact
that she was afraid of him, so that, before the

THE DEMON LOVER 123

meal had ended, Veronica was drawn once again
to smile upon Lucas.
And the smile completed his undoing. It
dawned slowly, like the smile of Monna Lisa,
glowed for a moment with a revelation of all that
could be in a woman, and then fled suddenly, as
if alarmed at its own temerity. Lucas had set
out to play a game, but he found himself caught in
a current of the greater deeps. So does Nature
cheat those who seek to defraud her. Men have
thrown away kingdoms for just such a smile,
and Lucas threw away his soul; his only chance
of safety in the present crisis lay in allegiance
to his Dark Master whose law is separateness;
only thus could he draw upon the force necessary
to withstand the attack that was arrayed against
him. Here was he, whose first care should have
been the black magic necessary for his own
protection, forgetful of both attack and defence,
unmindful of those transcendent things he had
sought and worshipped, become human, all too
human.
What cared he for the secret magic of the
Egyptians ? He was learning a greater magic
than ever the celibate priests knew; the old
ritual of man and woman was being enacted, and,
priest and priestess of Nature's own mysteries,
they were initiating each other, and he reckoned
the world well lost. To see the slow smile begin
to dawn in Veronica's eyes before it reached her
lips, and to know that it was for him it dawned
--there was nothing the Fraternity had to
confer that was equal to this. Though he should
be able to summon Principalities and Powers to
appear upon his threshold, what could they avail

124 THE DEMON LOVER

to feed the human side of him that had always
gone hungry ? Separateness might mean power,
but it was in union that happiness lay, and union
could only come through love, and now that
Lucas had tasted love, he desired nothing else.
The good in a bad man can prove his undoing as
surely as the bad in a good man.
The moon was up by the time the meal was
finished, for meals go slowly under such
circumstances. The clear cold radiance shone
white upon the lawn save where the shadows of
the shrubbery fell black as ink. The summer
night in that shut-in valley was almost as warm
as the day, and they went out through the
French windows on to the terrace. There, as
they strolled up and down, Lucas slipped his
hand through Veronica's arm ; it rested upon
the soft rounded forearm, left bare by the short
sleeve, the long, olive-brown student's fingers
in sharp contrast to the girl's white skin ; and
she, half child, half woman, was well content to
let it rest there.
So they strolled and turned, and strolled and
turned, talking of life as each had seen it, and
Veronica heard for the first time that most
illuminating of all things, a man talking of his
own life and the experiences that have made him
what he is, speaking to the woman he wishes to
make understand him, and learning to understand
himself in the process. She heard how
Lucas had been born outside wedlock, the son
of an opera singer and a man who stood high in
political circles; how he had been brought up
in the family of a small shopkeeper, and how the
family circle had failed to contain him; a

THE DEMON LOVER 125

square peg had been driven into a round hole,
but the peg was of the tougher fibre, and it was
the hole that had split under the pressure. Then
came the history of a rebellious, unmanageable
lad, who jumped in and out of jobs as the hot
southern temperament of his mother flared up
within him ; but presently the intellect of his
father began to assert itself, and he struggled in
night school and Polytechnic classes to supplement
the grammar school education that had
been prematurely terminated by his irruption
into freedom.
At length he found himself as assistant to an
old man who kept a second-hand shop ; it was
not an antique shop of the inspiring kind, nor
yet such an old book shop as scholars go to in
search of rare tomes, but was what is euphemistically
known as a marine store dealer's, though such
emporiums often have nothing whatever to do with
the sea ; their title merely informs the elect that
they are of the scrap-iron persuasion rather than
the rag and bone faith, though, as a matter of
fact, they will deal in anything that any stretch
of the imagination can conceive to have a marketable
value.
Into this abode of unhallowed dust came one
day a curious article of commerce. It was a
white, or rather Isabella-coloured dust-sheet
»ome three yards square, upon which, by means
of the liberal use of marking ink, a circle, four
feet in diameter had been drawn ; the interior
of the circle was, save for dirty marks, left blank,
but around its circumference was a most extraordinary
collection of strange hieroglyphs and
rude representations of creatures and things.

126 THE DEMON LOVER

The owner of the shop accepted the thing at its
face value ; a dust sheet was a dust sheet to him,
and could be used for covering up the stock until
such time as a purchaser should covet it, and
in such an event, Lucas had better not ask more
than seven and six for it, because of the marks,
but he wasn't to take less than half a crown
because of its extensive acreage.
The active-minded lad, however, was not so
easily satisfied ; every time he unfurled the thing
at night, he would puzzle over its hieroglyphs,
and every time he bundled it up in the morning
he would renew his quest. Then, one day when
business was slack, he was looking through some
of the books that lay about the shop (for the old
junk-dealer would attend sales of household
effects and buy any lot that went cheap enough,
regardless of its nature) and in one of these
bouks he found the clue to the mystery in a
rough wood-cut of which the dust sheet was
evidently a copy. Wild with excitement, he
devoured the letterpress, and learned that the
mysterious sheet was a floor-cloth used by a
magician when he wished to invoke certain
elemental presences ; the operator stood in the
centre of the magic circle, and protected by the
symbols that surrounded him, called upon the
beings of another order of creation to take their
stand each on his own sigil depicted upon the
corners of the cloth.
When closing-time came the young assistant
locked the door from the inside, not the outside,
and spreading the magic dust-sheet upon such
Hoor space as he could clear of impedimenta, took
his stand in the centre of the circle and read

THE DEMON LOVER 127

aloud to the shadows the magical formula which
the book declared to be suitable to the occasion.
Then he waited.
Absolutely nothing happened, and disgusted
with the whole proceeding, himself included,
he turned out the gas and went home, and so to
bed. As he was dozing off to sleep, however,
he was aroused to consciousness by the feeling
that there was something in the room ; he tried
to reach out his hand to strike a light, but found
himself powerless to move. He felt a breath in
his face, a weight on his chest. Something was at
his throat, and still he could not move. Then,
with a supreme effort of will he sat up, but
found the room empty, even as the shop had
been.
Being a lad of sound nerves, he soon settled
down and went to sleep again, and would have
thought no more of his nightmare had it not
been that in the morning, when he placed a
reluctant foot upon the shabby oilcloth that
paved his meagre attic, he perceived that the
floor was covered with slimy tracks as if an army
of slugs had passed across it. The foul trail led
from the window to the bed and back again,
and when he examined it, he found that the
window frame was covered with the filthy stuff ;
the creature that had left the trail had evidently
entered by the six-inch aperture left open at the
top of the window for ventilation.
For many nights after that the boy slept with
his window shut, but the miscellaneous collection
of books that had come, along with the floorcloth,
from the house of some student of the
occult arts, so inflamed his imagination that he

128 THE DEMON LOVER

could think of nothing else ; his whole soul was
gathered up into a one-pointed desire to learn
the secret of the mystery to which he had been
given a clue. What was it men sought by these
mysterious means ? How did they seek it, and
who were the seekers ?
As such desires of the single-hearted will, his
bore fruit. One evening, as he was spreading
the magic dust-sheet over the more precious
of the rubbish, he saw a face peering at him
through the window, and in a minute or two
the owner of the face appeared in the doorway,
and an individual of uncouth and hairy appearance
demanded the price of the dust-sheet. Lucas
named seven and six, as he had been bidden, and
without demur the stranger laid down three
half-crowns upon the counter. Then he peered
curiously at the lad.
" Do you know anything about these things ? "
he inquired.
Lucas, like most people in a hostile environment,
was exceedingly reserved, but something
about the stranger drew while it repulsed him,
and before he knew what he was doing, he had
embarked upon the story of his invocation and
the subsequent slug-tracks. The stranger fairly
danced with glee, and almost without his consent,
Lucas, the book, and the floor-cloth were hailed
round to the stranger's lodgings; there, huddled
together inside the protecting circle, Lucas and
the stranger read out the invocation in unison.
So far as Lucas could see, nothing whatever
happened, but the stranger, squinting horribly,
announced that the Powers invoked had duly
appeared in their appointed places, and thereupon

THE DEMON LOVER 129

embarked upon an elaborate, arm-waving incantation,
for it seems it was one thing to call them
up, and quite another to get rid of them.
However, after some minutes of droning and
maneuvering, the stranger pronounced the room
clear of the Presences, and they sat down to a
supper of sausages served by a landlady as greasy
as if she had been fried herself.
That was the first of many suppers. Lucas
never overcame his repulsion for the man, but
his studies fascinated him, and he would return
night after night to hear his host discourse of
Paracelsus, Roger Bacon, Robert Fludd, and the
knowledge that had died with them. There
was a miscellaneous collection of Theosophical
and American New Thought books in the
frowsy lodgings, and the keen-minded lad soon
had gathered the gist of them and drawn his
own conclusions. A very little experimenting
sufficed to show him that there was something
tangible lying behind all the verbiage, but he
also saw that the heart of the matter was
not set down in the books. If he wanted
knowledge he would have to find someone who
had that knowledge ; they might tell it, though
they would not be willing to put it on paper.
Again his whole nature gathered itself up into a
demand for knowledge, and again its wish was
granted. As he was raking in the bins of a
second-hand book shop one evening, he fell into
conversation with a man engaged in the same
occupation, for there is a freemasonry of secondhand
book shops, and many valuable friendships
are formed there, for the poor scholar comes in
search of the cheap book, and the rich scholar

130 THE DEMON LOVER

comes in search of the rare book, and their
common scholarship serves as an introduction
and lays the basis of a friendship.
His new acquaintance was a very different
type of man to the purchaser of the floor-cloth.
He was, in fact, none other than the old man
with the white beard who always sat upon the
chairman's left at the meetings of the council.
Taking the measure of the shabby lad, he had
decided that here was a mind of no ordinary
calibre, and had taken him under his wing;
books were at the boy's disposal, and the stimulus
of the conversation of a scholar had any stimulus
been needed, and for the first time in his life, Lucas
found himself in a congenial atmosphere. It
was not long before initiation into the outer
temple of the Fraternity followed, and Lucas
found that that which he had so long sought
was his, for good or evil.
Passed on from one introduction to another,
Lucas made his way into Fleet Street and rose
rapidly until his journalistic career was cut short
by his appointment to the secretaryship of the
Fraternity.
Then began the struggle between the idealism
of the brethren and the fierce ambition of the
man who was among them but not of them.
Lucas told the story in vivid detail, never sparing
himself, but using Veronica as a confessional for
the relief of that which so long had been pent up
within him without any means of expression.
Before the story drew to its close the moon had set, 
and darkness and dewfall drove them to
take refuge in the house. Upon the step of the
French window they paused, reluctant to leave

THE DEMON LOVER 131

the cool night for the close stuffiness of a lamp-lit
room.
Veronica lifted her hand. " Listen," she said,
Foxhounds."
" Nonsense, you silly child," said Lucas.
" They don't hunt at this time of year, or at
this time of night, either, for that matter."
" But listen," cried the girl, " They are quite
close ; listen to the way they are baying. They
have sighted their quarry."
To her ears the bell-like notes of hounds
hunting in view were coming nearer and nearer
through the woods; then she suddenly clutched
her companion's arm.
" Mr. Lucas," she cried, " They are not on
the ground, they are overhead, in the air ! "
She felt herself suddenly snatched through
the window and the shutters slammed behind
her. Lucas, ghastly-faced, stared at her for a
moment without speaking, and then dropped
into a chair by the table and buried his face in
his arms.
Veronica, poor child, stared at him, helpless
and distressed ; the belling of the hounds that
seemed to come from high overhead in the darkness
sounded incredibly sinister, and the sight
of the man bowed in distress over the table
filled her with fear and foreboding even while
it made her heart ache in sympathy for his
uncomprehended trouble.
She laid a timid hand on his shoulder. " Mr.
Lucas, what is it ? What is the matter ? "
For answer an arm reached out and encircled
her and drew her to him, and he hid his face in
the folds of her dress. For a long while they

132 THE DEMON LOVER

remained thus, the man rigid and motionless,
the girl with her hand resting on his shoulder,
every now and again stroking the rough tweed
of his coat to convey the comfort she knew not
how to express.
Finally, he raised his face, curiously changed,
and looked at her.
" Those were the astral hunting-dogs," he said.
" The Hounds of Heaven. They hunt traitors
with them."
" Who hunt traitors ? " said Veronica.
" The brethren. And it was I who taught
them to do it, too. And now they are hunting
me. The new spirit in the Fraternity. They
didn't like the new spirit in the Fraternity, but
they make use of it all right when it suits them."
" But, Mr. Lucas, they can't be hunting you
with dogs! "
" No, they don't hunt with the dogs, they only
use them to locate me ; it is the Ray they will
use to kill me."
" Kill you. They aren't going to kill you ? "
Veronica's fingers drove into his shoulder as she
clutched his coat in her distress. He looked up
at her.
" Would you mind if they did, little
Veronica ? "
Oh, but it isn't possible, Mr. Lucas, it is all
a bad dream."
" It is no dream, Veronica. They mean to
kill me, and they are quite right. I am better
dead, and if it were not for you, I should be
glad to go, but I do not want to go now I have
known you."
He rose to his feet and faced her, the pupils

THE DEMON LOVER 133

of his eyes narrowed to pinpoints, his expression
very evil, as she had not seen it for many days
past.
" But I am not going," he said. " Not very
far, at any rate."
He felt in his pocket and produced a pen-knife
and opened it, and, before she realized what he
was about, drove the blade into her arm.
" Don't be frightened," he said, as with a cry
of mingled pain and terror she strove to escape
from him. " I won't hurt you. I am only
doing this in order that I may be able to keep
in touch with you when I get over on the other
side. It is the blood-link that savages use when
they admit a stranger to the tribe, and it holds
even through death. It is stronger than
marriage." Then, holding her in a grip she
could not resist, he raised the bleeding arm to his
mouth and sucked the blood.
She gazed at him in horror mingled with
amazement. This was the old Lucas back
again, the Lucas she had almost forgotten. He
let go her arm, but retained his grip on her wrist
so that she could not run away.
" Don't be angry with me," he said. " I did
not hurt you much, did I ? " Then he put
both hands on her shoulders and looked straight
into her eyes. " Listen, Veronica, I may have
to go, but I shall not go far. I shall come back
again, keep a look-out for me."
She still looked at him speechlessly, the old
mute terror beginning to rise in her eyes. He
drew her to him, and laid his cheek against hers.
" Be nice to me, Veronica. I may have to go
soon."

134 THE DEMON LOVER

The tone of the man's voice, the ominous
stillness of the silent house overcame Veronica,
and she burst into tears and clung to him sobbing.
For a while they stood thus, and then he gently
released himself. " That is midnight striking,
I must go. The Lodge sits at midnight. Kiss
me good-night, Veronica."
Of her own free will she flung her arms round
his neck and kissed him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

VERONICA'S SLEEP WAS TROUBLED BY DREAMS OF
foreboding ; a shadow seemed to hang over the
house like the shadow that hangs over the district
that surrounds a prison when it is known that a
man is to be hanged at dawn ; the tense vibration
of the soul, keyed up for its departure, sets the
keynote for all other consciousnesses within range
of its vibrations, for no soul either lives or dies
by itself ; society is solid, Nature has no breach
of continuity, and aura interpenetrates with aura
throughout the entire range of our race, and the
agitation of a soul spreads in ripples throughout
the sea of spirit till the impulse that gave rise to
it is exhausted ; the ripples of an idea that is
charged with emotion, be it good or bad, spread
through space and time. This is the clue to a
good many things.
So Veronica slept under a shadow. Through
her dreams wandered the figure of Lucas, sometimes
as the man she had known when she first
went to live in the house in the Bloomsbury
square, when he appeared to her as the experimenter
appears to the animal undergoing vivisection--destruction
incarnate--yet without malice ; a being of another order 
of creation, whose doings were actuated by motives so
different from her own that they were completely 
incalculable. At other times he appeared as the
man who had talked to her in the wood beside the river, 
opening up wide vistas of life that
passed far beyond her horizon, and yet tempting
her to go on and on as the white road tempts
the traveller. But chiefly did he seem to her to
be in some strange unfathomable need that he

136 THE DEMON LOVER

could not explain, appealing to her for a help
whose nature she could not divine. He would
appear suddenly in the mazes of her dreams,
holding out hands of entreaty, his eyes pools of
blackness as they always were when the softer
side of his nature was aroused ; she would strive
towards him, but he always eluded her, and she
would toil across vast spaces, like the steppes of
Russia, anxiously seeking for him ; knowing him
to be in trouble, knowing him to need her, and
yet unable to find him. Out of this troubled
sleep she would awake every hour, only to find
the shadow of impending tragedy awaiting her
upon the threshold of consciousness.
Just before dawn, however, a change occurred ;
the shadow that had been vague, though portentous,
suddenly gathered itself together into a
definite shape; it condensed, narrowed,
lengthened into the form of a great cross-handled
sword ; for a moment it drew back, as if to gain
room for a blow, then it was thrust rapidly outward
and downward with the force of some cosmic
Arm behind it; for a second it quivered, as if
in the heart of a living creature, and then it was
withdrawn, and Veronica, falling into a dead
sleep, knew no more.
She slept that heavy, dreamless sleep that
leaves the body drugged by its own poisons, and
would probably have slept till noon if she had
not been aroused by the old caretaker shaking her
violently by the arm. The horrified expression
of the old woman's face told her that something
had happened, though her toothless mumblings
were unintelligible ; but Veronica did not need
to be told, she knew. Wrapping a kimono about

THE DEMON LOVER 137

her, she followed the old woman to Lucas's
room.
He lay upon the bed, stretched straight out, flat
upon his back, feet together and arms crossed upon
his breast, left over right, like a sculptured figure
upon a tomb ; the sunlight fell upon his face,
and a drift of scarlet petals from the rambler
that' grew over the window had blown in and
lay upon the white bedspread. The bedclothes
were untossed, and the pillow bore the single
hollow where the dark head rested. The
room was utterly and completely still, and
Veronica knew that she was alone in it; as
quietly and deliberately as a man takes off his
clothes, Lucas had withdrawn from his body
during the night and passed into the realm of
shadows that to him was the plane of reality.
Whether he had awaited the thrust of the sword,
or whether he had unlatched the door and
stepped forth, she did not know, all she knew was
that this was not death as she had been taught to
conceive it. Lucas had gone, leaving his body
behind, as a hurried summons might have caused
him to go and leave his luggage behind. Lucas
was not there, the olive-skinned body which had
served them as a meeting place would be used no
more ; her friend had left, and she did not know
his address, and whether he would communicate
with her again was uncertain, but her friend had
not ceased to be. She had no sense of grief or
loss, but only of perplexity ; how would Lucas
manage to re-establish contact with her ? Would
he remember her, or would he forget ? There
was no sense of tumult in the room, whatever
battle Lucas had had to fight had been fought

138 THE DEMON LOVER

out before his departure ; he had been beaten,
she knew that, for it was not his wish to go, but
the war was not yet finished, he had only retreated
to his second line of trenches; with his departure
the sounds of battle had died away, and now only
the peace of emptiness brooded over the room.
For a long time she stood thus, looking down
at the form upon the bed ; quite unshocked,
only perplexed as to what the next move in the
game might be. A sound of heavy footsteps
upon the stairs roused her from her reverie, and
she turned to face a man of the labourer type,
whom the old woman had apparently summoned.
" Eh, mam," he said. " This is a terrible
business. Your pore 'usband---- "
Her ringless hand caught his eye, and he paused
uncertain, for the rustic mind is profoundly
conventional. His intrusion grated upon every
nerve in Veronica's body ; she wished to remain
in the strange high atmosphere to which she had
become habituated of late, a mental atmosphere
that had the same effect upon the mind as
the rare air of a mountain-top has upon the body.
She did not wish to speak, that would have
spoilt her atmosphere by putting her in touch
with the person she had to speak to ; without a
word she moved across the floor, pushed the man
gently out of the door and shut it in his face ;
then she seated herself in a chair beside the
window, and sometimes she gazed out into the
sunlit garden, and sometimes at the sunlit face
upon the bed.
Presently her solitude was again interrupted.
A man stood in the doorway surveying the room,
in his hand the little brown bag of his calling.

THE DEMON LOVER 139

He looked from the face on the pillow, stilled by
the peace of death, to the face of the woman by
the window, who seemed to share equally in the
peace. Then he stepped over to the bed and
commenced to make his examination without
speaking; it seemed as if he dared not intrude
upon that silence. But it was broken by Veronica.
The man's action galvanized her into activity,
and she was instantly upon the defensive.
" I do not wish him touched," she said, speaking 
for the first time that day.
The newcomer replied gently : " I am afraid
he must be touched. There are many things we
shall have to do, but you may be quite sure we
shall do the very best we can for him, and for
you, too. Tell me, are you any relation of his ? "
" I am his secretary," said Veronica.
" Oh," said the doctor. " Well, anyway, we
will do the best we can for you. But do you
know where his relations may be found ? "
" No," said Veronica. " I do not think he
has any."
" You have not been here many days, have
you ? Where were you before you came here ? "
Veronica told him.
" And what were you doing there ? "
For one instant, Veronica was about to tell him,
and then she knew that she could not; she had
touched the hidden side of things and he had not,
she could not speak to him about them, a great
gulf was fixed between them ; he was an outsider,
he dwelt among the surfaces of things, but she
was an initiate, she had passed behind the veil
and seen the causes at work y henceforth she
belonged to the hidden side of things, she was

140 THE DEMON LOVER

only a stranger and a sojourner in the world of
appearances, and could form no tie, make no
friend, receive no sympathy, save from those who
saw life as she now saw it. She must walk alone,
save for those of her own kind, and the doctor
was not of these; she could not tell him anything,
he would not understand.
So she fell back upon bald statements of facts.
She was in Lucas's employment. He had left
his own employment and come down here,
bringing her with him. She did not know why
he had left his employment; she did not know
who his employers were, some sort of a learned
society, she thought; at any rate, if the doctor
wrote to the Bloomsbury house they would
probably give an account of themselves; it was
no business of hers, she was well paid, and asked
no questions. No, she was no relation of Mr.
Lucas's, she had already told him so once. No, she
did not know what his Christian name was. No,
nor his age. He signed documents J. Lucas.
No, she did not know what the J stood for, it
might be James or it might be John, she had no
idea, it was no business of hers, she had never
troubled her head about it. She had always
addressed him as Mr. Lucas. No, she could
throw no light on the cause of his death, he had
been quite well the night before. He had never
complained of any illness, though he had spoken
recently of feeling tired. The doctor grasped at
this statement as the first tangible thing that had
been offered him, and Veronica, as he did not
ask, did not feel it incumbent upon her to inform
him as to the cause of Lucas's exhaustion ; those
who deal with the hidden side of things stand

THE DEMON LOVER 141

apart from their race, and they settle their
differences among themselves by their own
methods. Veronica did not look upon Lucas as
murdered ; she knew that he had been forced to
abandon his body, but she was quite confident of
his ability to look after himself, and pending
instructions from him, she would take no action.
Finally the doctor coaxed her out of the room
and handed her over to the caretaker, who,
poor old soul, fussed round her, striving to express 
her sympathy by inarticulate mumblings.
The long afternoon hours passed slowly, leaving
the girl in a half-dreamy state ; she could not
realize that the man who had filled her whole
horizon during the past months lay dead upstairs,
and that, whatever the future might hold for
her, that phase of her life had closed for ever.
To her consciousness, a sudden change in their
plans had occurred ; a check, it might be, but
not a finish ; the next move she could not conjecture,
but the game was most certainly not
ended, and she had a sense of expectancy, of
waiting for something to happen.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE INQUEST WAS REPORTED AT LENGTH IN the local 
papers, but it is needless to chronicle
it in these pages ; the reader is already aware of
the causes that led to the hurried departure of
Lucas, and there is no occasion to weary him with
the half truths that were told to those who
concerned themselves with the fate of the sheath
of dense matter that he had been forced to
abandon in his haste ; the doctor certified that
death was due to heart failure brought on by
over-exertion ; that was all he could say. The
most rigorous cross-examination of Veronica,
the most careful analysis of the viscera, had failed
to reveal any reason why the man should die, he
had simply ceased to live, and that was all there
was to it. All the same, there was left upon
the minds of all who contacted the case the same
curious impression, they all felt that there was
much that had not been revealed, and yet no
man could frame a question that should lay bare
that which they sought.
They all knew that the young girl who had been
the dead man's companion knew more than she
chose to tell; they also knew that the hard-faced
man who elected to come down from London
and who said he was the dead man's employer,
was not taking the court into his confidence ;
and when it transpired that he had in his possession
a recently-made will, in which everything was
left to the aforesaid young girl, the mystery
deepened, and yet no one could strike upon the
link that connected them with the tragedy.
It was a riddle to which they could find no
solution, so they gave it up, and a verdict was

THE DEMON LOVER 143

returned of death from natural causes, in conformity
with the medical evidence, yet all the
countryside knew that something that was not
natural had happened among them.
After the close of the inquest, however, an
interview took place at which they would
have given much to be present, though what
they would have made of that which transpired
would be difficult to say. The hard-faced man
came to see Veronica. She was sitting upon
the terrace as the sun went down, when she
heard footsteps upon the gravel, and looking
up, saw him beside her.
He seated himself upon the stone balustrade
that bounded the terrace, leant forward, resting
his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, and looked
straight into Veronica's eyes, his face close to
hers.
" Now, Miss Mainwaring, I want the truth.
What was the nature of your association with
Lucas ? "
" I was his secretary," replied Veronica.
The man's eyes changed as Lucas's had changed
on the day when he made his selection from among
the women whom the London employment
bureau had sent to him ; he looked straight
through Veronica, not at her, the eyes out of
focus and glazed.
" You are a psychic, and accustomed to leave
your body ; tell me, can you go out at will, or
has someone got to hypnotize you and push you
out ? "
" I don't understand what you mean," said
Veronica, looking as blank as she knew how, and
Veronica's round, childish face could look very

144 THE DEMON LOVER

blank indeed when she did not choose to understand,
as they had found out at the inquest.
" It doesn't matter whether you understand
or not. The images rise in your mind, and I can
read them. As a matter of fact, you know what
I mean perfectly well. Come, Miss Mainwaring,
won't you take me into your confidence ? I come
as a friend, not an enemy ; we are quite aware
that you were not responsible for the use that
was made of your faculties."
Veronica still elected to look blank, and the
man said sharply : " It is no use pretending that
you know nothing, because Lucas confessed the
whole business. Moreover, it was I who saw
you materialize that night in the Lodge, and as
soon as you entered the witness-box I recognized
you."
At this statement, Veronica produced a handkerchief
and took refuge in tears. The stern-
faced man tugged angrily at his moustache ; a
woman scores heavily on these occasions.
" It is apparently no use trying to reason with
you," he said, " But remember this, however much
or however little you know, you are not to talk
about it. You have seen what happened to one
traitor, take care it doesn't happen to another."
Veronica raised her face from her handkerchief
and looked straight at him ; during the last few
days a new spirit had begun to dawn in her, and
it was with that spirit she spoke.
" You take too much upon yourself," she said.
" You have no right to take the law into your
own hands. That was not an execution, it was
a murder, and you will have to answer for it.
If you had given him time, he would have

THE DEMON LOVER 145

straightened himself out, but you did not give
him time, and now he is dead."
" That is precisely my own opinion," said a
voice behind them, and they both turned in
surprise to find that an old man with a long
white beard had crossed the lawn unperceived
during their conversation.
I was responsible for that boy. It was I
who put into his hands the knife with which he
cut himself, and you should have left him to
me to deal with. I could always manage him, he
was fond of me in his way, and she and I---- "
indicating Veronica, with a wave of his corded old
hand, " Could have pulled him through between
us. Now you have set going causes that we
cannot easily calculate. But what is the attitude
of this young lady towards the matter ? "
" Mulish," said the hard-faced man, tugging
his moustache more furiously than ever. " I wash
my hands of the whole affair."
" It is a pity that you did not do so sooner,"
replied the newcomer coldly, and the hard-faced
man turned on his heel and strode off down the
path, still tugging his moustache.
" Now, my child," said the old man, turning to
Veronica. " Let us talk this matter over and see
what we can make of it. We know practically
everything, so you need not feel that you are
giving us information Mr. Lucas would not wish
us to have ; all that we do not know is the nature
of your own position in the affair. Did you know
what you were doing, or were you a passive tool
in his hands ? "
" I will tell you nothing," replied Veronica. " I
don't see why I should answer your questions ;

146 THE DEMON LOVER

you killed Mr. Lucas, and you can kill me too, if
you want to, but I will tell you nothing about
him."
The old man sighed. " I cannot urge you
further, in the face of the debt you owe him,"
he said.
Veronica looked up quickly, in astonishment.
" What debt ? what do you mean ? "
" Then he has not told you ? He did not take
you into his confidence ? "
" He told me practically nothing. I am in the
dark, save for what I have guessed."
" Then why are you so loyal to him if you are
not his partner ? You must be his victim, his
tool, used more unscrupulously than any man in
my experience has ever used a living creature."
Veronica looked out into the last of the sunset.
" You wouldn't understand if I told you," she
said at length. " I am not sure if I understand
myself, but there was some tie between us ; I
didn't know its nature, but I was conscious of it.
Besides, there is no one to stand by him if I do
not, and if no one stands by him, then he will be
lost altogether. He was a bad man, but he was
not a wholly bad man ; I think there was something
good in him, and I think he would have got
better if they had given him a chance."
The old man held out his hand. " Go on
believing in him," he said. " If there is anything
that can save him, it is your faith that will do it."
Veronica noticed that he too looked upon Lucas
as a living entity, and was about to frame a question,
but checked herself lest she should be betraying
information the significance of which she could
not gauge.

THE DEMON LOVER 147

He had retreated a few paces down the path
when he returned again. " He was a much
worse man than a child like you can realize," he
said. " You will want all the faith of which
you are capable if you are to regenerate him, and
I am going to tell you something in order to
reinforce your faith, though I am afraid that it
will pain you very much. Do you know that
Lucas died in your place ? "
Veronica stared at him wide-eyed.
" It was known to the Fraternity of which I
am a member that our secrets had been penetrated
by some person, and we decided to strike that
person, as we are able to do, even though he be unknown
to us; and Lucas, knowing this, stood up
and said, " That person is nothing but a tool, it is I
who am responsible, " so the brethren left you alone
and struck at him, and I think that they erred
grieviously in so doing, for they should have
known that a man who made that confession had
set his face towards the light, and they should
have given him time to tread his path.
" My dear, I am afraid you have seen the darker
side of the Secret Wisdom ; you have seen it used
for evil, and you have seen it used in judgment
without the saving grace of mercy; but
I would ask you to remember this, though
perhaps you know it already from your own inner
consciousness, for I think you are not wholly asleep
to such things, that the power which lies behind
the brethren is beneficent, though men may take
its name in vain and use it in error ; for it is only
men of the greatest calibre who can carry that
force and not be bent and twisted, or even burst
asunder by it; therefore do not judge a man harshly

148 THE DEMON LOVER

who fails in occult work. Do not be misled by
our errors, our lack of vision, or the fear that makes
men cruel; we serve a reality, my child, though
we may not always perceive it clearly."
Veronica rose and held out her hand to him.
" I am a stranger to you, and have no claim upon
you," she said, " but I feel that I can trust you ;
will you help me ? I have no one I can turn to,
and there are all sorts of business matters that I
do not understand, and I do not know where to
go for advice."
The old man took her hand. " I accept the
responsibility that is laid upon me, and I pray
that I may discharge it better than I did my
responsibility towards the elder child of my
spirit, whom we have lost."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE OLD MAN stayed with Veronica three
days and straightened out her affairs. Not
that they were in any great tangle, for Lucas had
evidently expected his death and made full
preparation for it. The death of General
Sawberry some five days before himself had
placed him, and consequently Veronica, in possession
of a considerable estate, of which the house
in the river valley formed an outlying portion.
Many affairs had to be settled before Veronica
could enter upon the possession of her fortune,
and the old man was very anxious for her to leave
the gloomy and unhealthy house that had been
the scene of the tragedy and make her home with
himself and his sister pending the settlement of
her affairs. But she refused. She had a feeling
that Lucas was not far from her in this place, but
that if she left it and went among the busy haunts of
men he would lose track of her, and sinister though
he had been in life, and ill-omened though the
house might be, yet she could not bring herself
to leave it. She longed for nothing so much as
to be finished with the coil of affairs that had
surrounded her since his death, and be free to
enter into the silence where alone he might be
able to approach her.
Therefore she bade the old man farewell,
promising to call upon him if need should arise,
and settled down to her solitude with the old
caretaker as her sole attendant. No one came
near her. The doctor, suspicious of the whole
affair, was only too thankful to be clear of it ;
and the vicar, believing Veronica to be a black
sheep, had no mind to prejudice himself in the

150 THE DEMON LOVER

eyes of his white and woolly flock by trying to
save her.
So the days went past. Veronica kept close
to the routine that they had followed during the
few short hours that she and Lucas had spent
there together. In the morning she walked
about the grounds and sat upon the log by the
river, and in the evening she walked upon the
terrace. Between whiles, she sat, sometimes in
the room that had been a billiard room and which
served them as a living-room, and sometimes in
the room in which Lucas had died. She believed
that in the places which were familiar to him
Lucas would wander, and that sooner or later
they would meet ; but as day followed day and
she got no hint of his presence, a chill fear crept
into her heart. Was he indeed dead ? Dead in
the sense in which most people use that word ?
She knew quite well that he had discarded his
physical body, that a man with an olive skin and
erect carriage would no longer walk towards her
with that light springing step that was so characteristic
of him ; but she firmly believed that Lucas
as a personality continued to exist--that the
organized system of thoughts and feelings that
made up his character was still held together by a
centralized consciousness, was still actuated by
desires and controlled by a purposive will, and
it was this organized consciousness that had been
her companion, not the five foot nine of flesh and
bone that now mouldered in the churchyard.
The summer had changed into autumn, and
coming down one day after a night of rain,
Veronica found a chill wind blowing. It was too
cold to walk in the garden unprotected, so she

THE DEMON LOVER 151

took from its peg the old trench coat in which
Lucas had wrapped her when he brought her down 
from London, and clad in this garment,
she went out into the woods.
Clothes are strange things, they seem to absorb
something of the personality of their wearers.
Veronica found herself enveloped in the mental
atmosphere that Lucas always emanated, as if
the man himself had stood before her, talking in
his characteristic fashion.
The vagueness of retrospect was gone and he had
become a living reality again, and it suddenly
seemed to her that he wished her presence by his
grave. She had never gone there, for it had never
teemed to her that it was her friend that lay
buried there, moreover she dreaded the curious
eyes of the village. But now, just as she was,
Eatless, and wrapped in the old trench coat, she
It out upon her errand.
' By a detour, she reached the church through
the woods and entered the burial ground 
unperceived. Two men were engaged in digging a
grave, a small grave for a child, and beyond them, 
three other little mounds. Veronica thought it
strange that so many children should have died
so small a village, for the four little recent
graves represented a heavy infant mortality for
that small population.
Veronica kept some bushes between herself and
the grave-diggers, but as she passed, a snatch of
conversation reached her ears.
" ----an' it was four days to the inquest, an'
then they adjourned for a week to hear what the
doctors in Lunnon had to say, and then Mester
Sampson had to coffin him, but Joe Wellan, wot

152 THE DEMON LOVER

helped, told me that he was as fresh as the day
he died, not a mark on him---- "
As Veronica passed round the church in search
of Lucas's grave, a hand touched her elbow, and
she turned to confront a pleasant-faced, fresh-
coloured young man who addressed her, hat in
hand.
" I--I beg your pardon, but--Miss Mainwaring, 
is it not ? " Veronica bowed.
" Then, if you will allow me--this is the way,"
and he led her through the shrubs to a remote
corner of the graveyard, for the instincts of the
village men had told them that Lucas was not
of their kind, and even in death they had removed
him as far as possible from the place where they
and their children should lie.
Veronica stood looking down at the mound of
rough, newly-turned earth ; there lay all that
was left of Lucas as the world knew him, and she
felt a cold tide of fear rising in her heart lest
the world should be right after all; there was no
evidence to the contrary, no shadowy hand from
beyond the grave had touched her, as she had
half expected, no intuition had stolen into her
consciousness, and now, confronted by this
mound of clay among the yew-trees, death, as
the world knew death, seemed incontrovertible ;
her faith slipped from her ; what strange phantom
of belief had Lucas pursued, dragging her in his
train ? He had died from heart failure following
on over-exertion, so the coroner's jury had
decided ; and before he died he had suffered
from delusions, and she, drawn under the sway
of his personality, had shared in them. But

THE DEMON LOVER 153

now he was dead, and here his body was buried,
and his soul, according to all orthodox tenets,
had gone to hell. This was the end.
II Veronica roused from her reverie. The wind
blew coldly through the dreary evergreens, she
drew the heavy coat she wore closer about her
body, and pulled her feet out of the sodden ground
into which they had sunk. A dozen yards away
the man who had shown her the grave was still
waiting, bare-headed, watching her, and as she
turned away from the grave he approached her
with the awkward sympathy of an Englishman,
rendered still more awkward by the ambiguity
of her position; but whatever her relations with
Lucas might have been (and the village was
quite certain upon this point), he was touched by
the sight of the lonely girl coming down to the
still lonelier grave.
" I--I'm afraid it is rather rotten for you up
at the Grange," he began diffidently, " especially
after the shock you have had. It's a beastly
place at the best of times. I am awfully sorry
about the whole business. You must have had 
a rotten bad time."
Veronica looked up at him steadily for a moment
without replying. He was a big-boned, fresh-
complexioned young fellow, just such a one as she 
had often played tennis with in the gardens 
on the Surrey hills; he belonged to the old days
before her world had fallen about her ears, days 
that she had thought to be gone for ever, and for
the sake of those days, Veronica smiled.
In repose, Veronica was a pretty doll; in
animation she was a pretty child, but her smile
was the smile of the Monna Lisa, and in that she

154 THE DEMON LOVER

was the eternal woman, world-old but unageing,
revealing the hint of life's essential forces lying
latent and unfired, only awaiting the touch that
should arouse them; and no man who saw that
smile could withhold his hand from the attempt
to bestow that touch and see the fire blaze up at
his command.
At length Veronica spoke. " It is very kind
of you," she said, " but I have not been lonely.
After all the trouble was over I was glad to be quiet."
" But it is a rotten place for a girl up at that
God-forsaken Grange. How long are you going
to stop there ? "
" I don't know," said Veronica. An hour ago
she would have answered that she was going to
stop there for the rest of her life, but now a
strange detachment had taken place. Lucas was
dead, it was all over ; there was no point in
remaining.
" Are you going back to the Grange now ? I
can show you a short cut through the woods if
you like, it will save you going through the
village," and he led Veronica down a path that
passed through a gap in the low stone wall that
surrounded the churchyard. " My name is
Alee Butler," he continued. " My pater is
doctor here."
" I remember him," said Veronica. " He
came when Mr. Lucas died."
" Er--yes," said Alee, awkwardly, and silence
fell between them, which Veronica did not
trouble to break.
It was suddenly broken by the man, however.
" I say, look at your hand I " he exclaimed.
" It's bleeding."

THE DEMON LOVER 155

Veronica raised her hand in astonishment. A
thin trickle of blood ran down the wrist and a
heavy drop fell from her finger-tip upon the
dead leaves at her feet, lying there, a scarlet
t splash in the watery sunlight that had at last
penetrated the clouds. A similar crimson stain
marked the grey stones that lay about the ruined
wall. Veronica thrust back the stiff sleeve of
the trench-coat and found that, drop by drop,
blood was welling from the veins of the fore-arm;
the wound that Lucas had given her in that
strange scene that had been enacted the night
of his death, had, for some unknown reason, 
re-opened, and was bleeding afresh.
Is " I say, that's quite a gash," said Butler. 
" How did you manage to do it ? " and producing
a large white handkerchief, he bound it up, not
unskilfully. He was in no hurry to complete his
task, however, and Veronica suspected that, with
a very little encouragement, he would have held
her hand, but she resolutely pulled down the
rough sleeve and thrust the injured arm into
the breast of her coat; for a moment they stood, 
however, the man looking down and the girl
looking up. They were sheltered from the wind
by a hollow, and though it threshed among the
tree-tops, the undergrowth was unstirred. But 
as they stood, a little wandering wind came
by and blew round them; little vortices of air 
drew the dead leaves up into miniature whirlwinds,
and this wandering draught was cold with
a strange coldness, like the wind from a cavern.
Veronica shivered and drew her coat closer, and
Butler, moved by he knew not what impulse,
glanced over his shoulder, and simultaneously they

156 THE DEMON LOVER

set off down the path at a quickened pace.
Butler accompanied Veronica as far as the
strand of slack wire that flanked the rusting
gates, and paused irresolute, waiting for an
invitation to enter. It was not given, however;
Veronica had many things to think over, and
wished to be alone, and reluctantly he raised his
hat and turned away.
The little cold wind still blew around Veronica
as she went through the shrubbery, she could
hear it rustle the boughs behind her as she
passed, and saw the unkempt lilacs stir above her
head and the leaves come down in a shower.
At the window opening upon the terrace she
paused, a little spiral of leaves danced in the
unswept corners of the steps, and as she opened
the unlatched pane, a stream of the fallen Virginia
Creeper, scarlet as blood, swept across the floor
and rose up in a giddy dance in the eddies before
the open fire-place.
Veronica dropped into a big leather-covered
arm-chair and stared at the smouldering fire.
The leaves, the draught withdrawn, lay in
brilliant patches upon the faded carpet. All
was quiet.
Veronica had come to the dividing of the ways,
and with a woman's intuition she knew it; she
might, by turning her mind towards Butler and
the things he stood for, bring back her soul to
the normal; or she might, by dwelling upon the
personality of Lucas and all the strange world
to which he held the key, pass even as he had
sought to pass, into the greater freedom of the
soul. All her early training, the strongest thing
in life, turned her towards the things that

THE DEMON LOVER 157

Butler symbolized, her beloved Surrey hills, the
gardens, and the fire-sides of every day ; but
Lucas had made her free of interstellar space and 
aeonial time, and had shown her the path
of the soul from the dark ocean of the Unmanifest
to the Cosmic Fire. She had seen, and she
could not forget ; no soul can. Like the swallow
that has been long in the air, Veronica was well
content to fold her wings under the eaves of
a human habitation, but all the same, she was a
bird of the air, not of the barnyard, and sooner
or later she would take wing again ; sooner or
later, she knew in her heart, a call would come
out of the Unseen, and she must hold herself in
readiness to respond to it.
So her moods alternated. A greeting from the
gardener, the shouts of playing children down the
lane, and she knew that Lucas was dead and
buried and the mad dream over; then the
daylight would fade, the wind of evening blow
round the house, dancing the leaves into spirals,
the dying fire would throw a lessening circle of
light about the hearth, and the corners fill with
shadows; then the unseen drew very close to her , 
Veronica, and the veil that shelters us mortals from
the too-great blaze of life would grow very thin,
and through the rifts she would catch brief,
shifting glimpses of the speeding currents of
space, the rolling, banking clouds of glory, rising
like fume from a furnace, and great Forms moving
among them ; and over all, like a flight of golden
bees, the little, upward-pointing flames that are
the innermost souls of men ; some, freed by sleep
during the brief span between birth and death,
and others in the greater freedom that lies between

158 THE DEMON LOVER

death and birth. Behind the shadow-show of
our world she caught a glimpse of the great
Presences that cast the shadows, and sooner or
later, out of the swirlings and speedings of
space would come one whom she knew, who
would summon her.
Then the old caretaker would bring in the
morning paper, arrived by a belated country
post, and Veronica would shake off her dreams
and return to realities.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SO VERONICA'S MOODS ALTERNATED AS THE SUN
and shade alternated on those shortening
autumn days, but still she lingered on in the
mouldering old house. Meanwhile, Butler
assiduously developed the friendship that had
begun by the newly-made grave. He would
drop in at odd times, the middle of the morning,
after tea, after supper, but he would never stop
to a meal even were one upon the table. To do
so would have occasioned comment in the home
circle, and he had no mind that they should know
of his visits to the Grange or its solitary occupant. 
Veronica, unskilled in the ways of the
world, wondered at his refusal, but could not 
interpret it. Butler was a champion of beauty in
distress, but only up to a point; beyond that
point, his world bound him.
But nevertheless, in spite of difficulties, he
came so often by the secluded wood path that led 
through the churchyard, that even the
mastiff which, chained to a barrel, guarded the
back premises, got to know his footstep and
ceased to give tongue. Time and again, sitting
in the warm lamp-lit room with Veronica, he
was on the point of asking her to be his wife,
and time and again he hesitated. She would
talk freely of her childhood, of the training 
college, but of her life with Lucas she would 
tell him no more than she had told the coroner. 
She had been Mr. Lucas's secretary in London
when he had managed the affairs of the Society
for the Study of Comparative Folklore ; she had
accompanied him to Beckering to continue her
duties when he left London ; he had been very

160 THE DEMON LOVER

good to her, and she would permit no aspersion
on his memory. Like all the rest of the district,
Butler knew that there was much that these
obvious statements did not explain, but Veronica
did not offer to enlighten him, and he lacked the
courage to put a direct question.
Unable to get work in the disorganization
following on the war, living at home, dependent
on his father even for pocket-money, and not
yet come to his full strength after having been
badly gassed, he was not in a position to embark
upon a course that would meet with opposition
from his parents, so Butler took no definite stand
with regard to Veronica. The days drifted by
pleasantly enough, he saw just as much of her as
if they had been officially engaged, and he was
spared all the unpleasantness that publicity
would have occasioned ; no other male showed
any signs of competing, so he was not driven to
clinch his bargain from any fear of losing it.
Veronica, on her part, still the prey of alternating
moods, adopted an equally drifting policy towards
Butler. Although he could well have qualified for
the post of Prince Charming and dragon-slayer
in the Surrey days, those days were gone for
ever, and in the brief stormy interregnum
Veronica had known a man in whom the fire of
life burnt so fiercely that all other men seemed
extinguished by his light as is a stove upon
which the sun shines. All men now seemed to
her either immature or senile, Lucas alone was
a man in his strength. Butler was a child, a
puppet; she liked his companionship and was
glad that he liked her, but he woke no fire within
her. Lucas, by the alchemy of his personality,

THE DEMON LOVER 161

had raised the flash-point of her emotions so
high that few men were in existence who could
ever fire her again.
So things would have continued to drift
indefinitely had not Butler come in one day
unannounced, to find Veronica nibbling the end
of her pen in the effort to cope with some legal-
looking documents. His offer of assistance was
accepted, and he speedily discovered that he
was disentangling the affairs of a considerable
estate. This put an entirely different complexion
on the matter. Butler did not wish to be mercenary, 
was not, in fact, of a mercenary nature, but 
merely weak, and with passions
insufficiently strong to cause him to drive through
all obstacles to the object of his desire. The
discovery that Veronica had private means, and 
considerable means too, would remove the financial 
barrier that prevented their marriage. Of course 
he would not live on his wife, he would
get a job and keep his end up, but they would
not be dependent on the good-will of his family,
a good-will which, he felt sure, would never be
extended to Veronica, even if she were able to
prove her innocence, after the notoriety which
she had achieved in the county, and Veronica
had never shown any inclination to clear her
character of the aspersions that had been cast
upon it. As a matter of fact, she was too innocent
of life to realize that she stood in any need of
whitewashing, her conscience was clear, and that
was all she thought about.
Butler drew his chair up to the table and
helped Veronica to fill in dividend warrants.
Though it was sufficiently dark to demand the

162 THE DEMON LOVER

lamp, his head was perhaps closer to hers than it
need have been, and in another moment the
fatal words would have passed his lips, when a
sudden patter of dead leaves struck the glass as
a gust of wind set all the windows rattling.
They both looked up in astonishment, for the
night had been quiet hitherto.
" A storm getting up," said Butler, and even
as he spoke a fresh gust smote the window with
renewed vigour ; the panes bulged, rocked, and
then the crazy fastening gave way, both panes of
the French window burst open, and a great rush
of wind laden with a stream of dancing leaves
drove into the room. Out went the lamp, but
the flames of the logs leaped up as the feathery
ashes of the hearth joined the leaves in the wild
whirlwind dance of the gale. Butler seized the
flanges of the window and forced them shut,
then he struck a match and relit the lamp ; the
renewed light showed scarlet leaves and grey ashes
settling slowly down all over the floor. Veronica
amid her strewn papers, was staring into space
with unseeing eyes. Something of the wild
night without seemed to have entered with the
rushing wind, and though the uproar had subsided,
a lingering spirit of darkness brooded over
the room ; the lamp gave less light, the fire less
heat, and the veil that hides the unseen hung in
tatters that the lightest breath might displace.
Veronica felt that, should the strange atmosphere
that brooded over the room grow the least
degree more tangible, something would become
visible to the physical eyes of both of them, een
the unimaginative Alee, just as a liquid in which
the solution reaches saturation point suddenly

THE DEMON LOVER 163

crystallizes. The Unseen that had drawn near
to her this time, however, was not the unseen of
inter-stellar space, but rather of the waters under
the earth ; it was dark, thick, oppressive, like the
air of a well; the lamp would not burn in such
an atmosphere, little blue flames showed among
the logs on the hearth; but Butler, happily
oblivious with a wholesome stolidity, gathered
up the fallen papers, lit a pipe, and took his seat
at the table again to finish the task in hand.
Luckily it was nearly completed, for Veronica
found it hard to keep her attention on the
documents that demanded her signature ; Butler,
too, was in a hurry, for supper time was
approaching, and he had no wish to draw attention
to his movements by being late for the family
meal, so the task was speedily despatched, and he 
rose to his feet to depart. Veronica, however,
was reluctant to let him go, but he resisted all
her efforts to persuade him to stay and share her
evening meal. She opened the French window
and stepped out on to the terrace. To their surprise 
they found that the wind had died away as suddenly 
as it had arisen, and no noticeable air was moving 
in the sheltered garden. Commenting on this, they 
stood looking up at the unclouded stars for a few 
moments, and Butler had just turned to Veronica 
for a last farewell when the piercing howl of a 
dog's agony cut through the stillness of the 
valley. The sound came from the outbuildings 
where the old watch-dog abode, and instinctively 
the country-bred Butler answered the cry of an 
animal's distress, dashing round the corner of 
the terrace at top speed with Veronica close behind him.

164 THE DEMON LOVER

They discovered the old mastiff, whose function
it was to guard the house, lying on his side on the
flagstones outside the barrel that served him for
a kennel; a little foam hung from his dark
muzzle and he was panting, otherwise he seemed
unharmed. He lifted his head as he became
aware of their presence, but dropped it back
on the stones again, appearing completely
exhausted.
Butler knelt and examined him. " Poor old
chap," he said. " He must have had some sort
of a fit." And gathering the heavy dog up in
his arms, he managed to bundle him back among
the straw of his kennel, the creature, too weak
to resist, accepting his ministrations sullenly.
" I wonder what can have been the matter
with him," said Veronica. " Last night he was
howling in the most unaccountable fashion. I
have never heard a dog howl quite like that
before ; a long drawn-out wail on one note.
The gardener told me it was the death-howl,
and said they were quite upset about it at the
cottages down the road ; he said that dogs howl
like that when they see the souls of the dead
passing out, but no one had died during the
night, unless some tramp or gipsy had died in
the fields. The men are going out to see if
they can find anything."
" Oh, bunkum, Veronica I You don't mean
to say you take that sort of tosh seriously ? "
exclaimed Butler. " Mother's pug got at the
ashbin once and ate the fluff that came out of
the sweeper, and he howled just like that when
he couldn't get his breath ; I raked the stuff out
of his throat with a feather. Your beast had

THE DEMON LOVER 165

probably got something stuck in his wind-pipe,
but whatever it is, he has coughed it up now, for
he is breathing all right again." And he led her
round the corner of the house on to the terrace
and saw her safely in at the window again before
he set out on his walk to the village.
His head was among the stars and his feet
scarcely touched the earth as he walked ; Veronica
was within his reach (it never entered his head
that she might not accept him if he proposed),
and he whistled Mendelssohn's Wedding March
as he went through the darkness of the wood
path. He stopped his musical efforts as he set
foot in the churchyard, he had been well brought
up, and it did not seem to him reverent to whistle
in such a place. The newly-risen moon made
lakes of light among the dark yews, and in one
such silver pool lay the rough mound of clay
that covered the man whose influence still
overshadowed the girl of his choice. He paused
beside that mound. What secret lay concealed
there ? He must tackle Veronica straight about
that matter before he popped the question ; it
didn't do to have secrets between man and wife,
he wanted to know the ins and outs of the matter.
Who was this chap, and what had he been up to ?
Jolly good job he had departed and left the
coast clear for himself, Alee. " So long, old 
chap," he said half aloud, nodding
to the man that lay below. " I am afraid I have
bagged your girl, but you had no further use for
her, had you ? You have departed to the place
where they neither marry nor are given in
marriage; good luck to you, I hope you are happy
with your harp and don't ever regret the binges you

166 THE DEMON LOVER

used to have. Wish me luck, old bean, even if I
have done you in the eye." And he went on again, 
whistling. Not even the graveyard could subdue
his spirits when he thought of the prospect that
lay before him. The night was calm, and this
time no little whirlwind blew about the grave
to chill body and heart and hasten his steps.
Veronica, left alone at the Grange, ate her
solitary supper and then sat over the fire, gazing
into the flames. There were no blinds to the
windows, and the heavy serge curtains would
have come away in the hand at any attempt to
draw them, so rotten were they with damp and age,
so the night looked in unhindered, and whatever creatures happened to be wandering in the night.
Veronica was not nervous, however ; the flights
out of her body, to which Lucas's processes had
accustomed her, had largely robbed the unseen
of its terrors; she knew what moved there, they
were not unfamiliar, and she also knew the protection
she could invoke at will, she felt as secure
as the little child who breathes the old prayer :

Four angels round my bed,
Two at the foot, and two at the head,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Guard the bed that I be on.

So she sat, gazing into the flames and reviewing
her life. Her childhood on the Surrey hills
where nothing ever happened ; the strain of her
life at the training school; her association with
Lucas, when altogether too much happened;
and now her strange tie to this dismantled,
sodden place, where he had died. Then her
mind turned to Butler; sensitized by the

THE DEMON LOVER 167

processes through which Lucas had put her, she
had readily picked up his thoughts as he sat
beside her at the table, and she knew quite well
that he would soon ask her to marry him, and
she debated her answer ; if it had not been for
Lucas, she would have liked him very much, he
would have just suited the unawakened doll-
child she used to be ; he was big ; handsome in
his blond way, and good natured ; fond of the
things she was fond of, dogs, a garden, a little 
two-seater or a push-bike; read the lighter
novels, liked popular music with a catchy refrain ;
he was always ready for a bit of fun, and in all
things was a thorough good pal: he had already
adopted little proprietary ways towards her
which she rather liked. But behind him loomed
the dark personality of Lucas, and though Butler
would have appealed to the girl she used to be 
before she went to the house in the Bloomsbury
square, a side of her nature had been awakened
to life that he could neither comprehend nor
satisfy. To her it seemed quite natural that the
dog should see the souls of the dead pass by as
they set out upon their journey, and should be
frightened; she herself would have been
frightened if she had not known what she did,
 but why should one fear one's friend, whether
in his body or out of it ? Death made no
difference to his disposition, if he was one's friend
in life he would be one's friend after death. She
herself had been just as much a ghost as any
dead man when she materialized on the floor of
the Lodge, but her nature had undergone no
change ; and the man who had seen her, Mr.
Fordyce, had not been frightened ; he had

168 THE DEMON LOVER

merely been angry and considered her guilty of
an impertinence, just as much as if she had
slipped in with her physical presence where she
was not wanted. Yet Alee, in the first place,
regarded all such things as fake or superstition,
vet, if he were to see any such manifestation for
himself, would have been frightened out of his
wits. What a freedom this knowledge gave
one, even the little bit of it that had come her
way ; life was made infinitely bigger, and death
was robbed of its terrors; in spite of all she had
suffered, she would not wish the past undone.
She had something that Butler had not got, and
could never have, unless he also trod the path
by which she had come, which was not likely;
one had to pay a price for this strange freedom
of the soul, but it was worth paying. As old
Dr. Latimer had said, she had only seen the
dark side of occultism; she had seen Lucas
trying to use black magic, and she had seen the
Fraternity smash him ; all the same, she knew
by her own inner consciousness the light that lay
behind. She had felt a Presence that was as
much higher than a man as a man is higher than
a dog ; she had known a Power that can light a
fire in the soul never to go out. She wondered
what her last incarnation had been ; she felt
sure that Lucas had had some part in it. She
wondered what her next life would be ? She
felt sure he would appear again, and she wanted
things to be on the right lines next time, not all
this strife and tragedy. To-night the things of
the inner world were very near to her and very
real, facts of her own experience, not tales out
of a book.

THE DEMON LOVER 169

Lucas she felt sure she would meet again in
another life, but would they meet again in this
life ? He had gone out prematurely, in the
prime of his strength, his work unfinished, and
all his desires focussed upon this earth ; it was a
very different death to that of an old man who
had worked out his allotted span, whose hold on
life had been steadily loosening, and whose
friends were awaiting him beyond the veil;
such a one might be held to be finding his freedom
when he shed his body, but Lucas was a
frustrated soul, and she knew he would return if
it were within his power. A sudden thought
struck her, was it Lucas that the dog had seen,
and at whom it had howled ? Had he really
come back and was he in the neighbourhood ?
And if so, how could she get in touch with him ?
She sat up erect in her chair as the thought took
hold of her. Forgotten was her terror of Lucas
in the Bloomsbury days, she only remembered
the man of the final forty-eight hours, she
only felt the strange bond that existed between
them, a bond that death had but served to
strengthen.
As she pondered, a sound upon the gravel
outside drew her attention to the window,
something was moving in the darkness; her
heart stood still, for such stealthy movements are
little liked in a lonely country house that contains
only two women. A shadow came up
to the uncurtained window and stood looking in,
and she saw that it was the old mastiff who had
got loose from his kennel and now stood gazing
into the lighted room, his eyes gleaming green
with the reflection of the lamp. These strange,

iyo THE DEMON LOVER

incandescent eyes put her in mind of Lucas
when he hypnotized her, his eyes seemed to shine
with an inner light in just the same way ; in fact,
Lucas seemed very close to her to-night.
She had no fear of the dog ; dogs were her
passion, and she was in two minds about inviting
him in to share the warmth of the hearth when
he settled the matter for himself by rearing up
on his hind legs and setting his fore-paws against
the window ; the crazy fastenings gave way for
a second time that evening, and in he came, a
great brindled beast, the black of his muzzle
touched with white, for he was an old dog.
Veronica crossed the room and closed the
window behind him, for the night was cold.
The dog walked over to the fire and stood upon
the hearth rug looking round the room ; he did
not wander about sniffing, after the custom of
dogs in a strange place, but, using his eyes
rather than his nose, he turned his head from
side to side, surveying his surroundings, and
especially Veronica.
She returned to her seat by the fire, and he
came and stood before her, gazing into her face
with his brown dog's eyes. She leant forward and
returned his gaze. " What was it you howled
at last night ? " she said. The dog blew out
his nostrils and woofed heavily, and a clumsy
paw scrabbled at her skirt. He came nearer and
laid his heavy black jowl on her knee and looked
up at her with the worried expression that the
facial wrinkles give to a mastiff. She bent down,
and, looking straight into his eyes, spoke : " If
you meet Mr. Lucas again, tell him I want to
see him."

THE DEMON LOVER 171

The dog gave a great woof, as if of relief, and
sat down on his haunches. His mouth opened,
his red tongue came out, and he grinned as only
a dog can grin. Veronica did not quite like
that grin ; there was something sinister in the
way this dumb animal was laughing at her.
" Lie down," she said, indicating the hearth rug,
and obediently he disposed himself as she had
directed. She herself took up some fancy-work,
and the dog lay at her feet, motionless but
watching every movement, till bedtime came
and she rose.
" Come along," she said to her companion,
I must fasten you up for the night." He
followed her to the window, and laying a hand
on his massive neck, she guided him back to the
yard, the great creature padding beside her
upon silent feet. There she discovered that he
had escaped from his chain by slipping his head
out of his collar, so she discreetly drew the
strap one hole tighter, for she did not like the
idea of this great dog being at liberty ; true, he
had shown himself a friendly enough creature,
but his silent appearance at the window had had
in it something of the sinister ; this looming up
out of the darkness had seemed to let the night
in upon her, as if a rush of the invisible denizens
of the underworld had entered with him. She
returned to the lamp-lit sitting-room through
the window that she had left open behind her ;
but even here she did not find refuge, it seemed
as if a darkness had entered during her absence
that the light of the lamp failed to dispel; the
nickering flames of the wood fire, now rising,
now falling as the logs stirred in their burning,

172 THE DEMON LOVER

cast fitful gleams into the darkness till it seemed
as if the eyes of the great goggling fish in the
glass cases were alight with life. Veronica lit
her candle and hastened upstairs away from
those ill-omened shadows.


CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN THE MORNING HER NERVOUSNESS SEEMED
ridiculous. True, she still shrank from the
idea of the mastiff being free to roam about the
house, but then he was a large and powerful
dog and would be a very ugly customer should
his present good-will be changed to resentment,
and a dog who has been a chained watch-dog all
his life is not apt to have the sweetest of tempers.
Something about him, however, attracted while
it repelled ; he was a dog that gave a curious
impression of personality, as some dogs do who
are deep in the confidence of their masters and
who seem to have acquired a human view-point
from their constant association with human beings.
After breakfast Veronica went to pay him a
visit and see if he suffered any after-effects from
his curious indisposition of the night before. He
did not come out to greet her, as she had half
expected he would after his previous friendliness,
and it was not until she knelt down at the entrance
to his barrel that a head was thrust out in response
to her summons. A pair of misty eyes blinked
dazedly at the sunlight, then the head was withdrawn
again and no appeals of hers could induce
it to reappear, though the eyes glowed with a
strange green animal fire out of the darkness; it
seemed to Veronica as if the saliva of the jaws
were faintly phosphorescent, and the whole " feel"
of dog, kennel, and surroundings was so repellent
that she drew hastily back and hurried away
from the yard and its sinister occupant.
By the time she had reached the lawn in front
of the terrace she was half minded to return ; it
was ridiculous to feel like this about the dog;

174 THE DEMON LOVER

the previous evening she had quite liked the
friendly old thing, and anyway, the animal was
obviously ailing. Seeing the gardener among the
shrubs, she went over and spoke to him concerning
the dog's condition, and he told her that the
animal had refused its food that morning, but
that he did not care for the task of examining it
single-handed ; there was a very good vet in
the village, however, and if Miss Mainwaring
liked, he would ask him to come round and have
a look at it, and Veronica agreed that this should
be done if the creature did not seem alright by
the following morning.
Wrapping herself in Lucas's coat, which had
become her regular wear now that the weather
had turned colder, Veronica went for a walk
down by the river-side, trying to blot out from
her memory the image of the glowing eyes and
faintly luminous muzzle that she had seen in
the darkness of the kennel. Her walk took her
past the row of labourers' cottages that stood
a little way down the lane ; several children were
playing outside who regarded her with an awed
curiosity, and of the glances she received through
the open doors from their elders, some were
pitying and some were hostile. Veronica passed
on; their opinions did not trouble her, she
belonged to another world, whose denizens,
hostile or friendly, were not of this plane of
existence, and only such human beings could be
her fellows as also had the freedom of that
world. The hard-faced man, though he had
been hostile, was nearer to her, in some subtle
way, than Alee Butler, well as she had got to
know the latter; and as for old Dr. Winthrop,

THE DEMON LOVER 175

he seemed to be almost a blood-relation ; she
made up her mind that she would take counsel
with him should Alee ask her to marry him, as
she felt convinced he was going to.
She could not make up her mind concerning
Alee. Her old self would have been well enough
content with his easy, pleasant surfaces, but her
present self had known Lucas, and the heights
and depths. She was torn between her two
selves, she felt that, according as she willed, she
might be either one or the other, but she could
not be both, there was no possibility of blending
them. Should she wish to become again the
Veronica of the Surrey hills, then her way of
return lay by the path that Butler was opening
before her. She was powerless to return alone;
so far had she penetrated into the hidden kingdom
that the riven veil had closed behind her; only a
close union with a dweller in the outer world
could draw her back. All this she knew by means
of an inner intuition that day by day was
becoming more acute ; almost like a voice, it
seemed at times, so that Veronica was sometimes
tempted to personalize it; her Friend of the
Shadows, she called it, and visualized it as a
bright, radiant Being that moved upon feet of
flame, of the same order of creation as the Presence
to which she had become accustomed during
those strange flights of the soul upon which Lucas
had sent her in the far-off days at the old house
in the Bloomsbury square. She remembered
the great Hand that had closed behind her the
gates of the invisible world, sealing them with the
Sign of the Cross ; she had been forbidden
to seek that world again, but now in a strange,

176 THE DEMON LOVER

subtle way it seemed to be approaching her ;
impalpably, imperceptibly, as objects loom into
sight as a dawn advances, her gradually quickening
senses were perceiving dim outlines in another
state of existence ; sometimes she would perceive
intangible presences, and sometimes the intangible
factor in living beings that seemed in an
impalpable way to image forth their inmost,
hidden thoughts and the secret essence of their
souls. Fair words or a pleasant face no longer
counted with Veronica, it was by this subtle
emanation she judged, as a dog is said to identify
its master, and she experienced comfort or discomfort
according to the quality of this subtle
aroma. It was the faintness of this spiritual
flavour that rendered Butler distasteful to her ;
in her own mind she likened him to a lemon
squash made by someone who had been mean
with the lemon ; the faint tang of a negative
presence spoiled the pure water of solitude,
and there was not enough of the flavour of
personality for companionship; his voice had
no feeling behind it, his physical presence no
force. Looking at his clear-cut, handsome face
and big powerful form, Veronica wondered
whether it was she who was to blame ; had her
taste in these intangible spiritual flavours been
vitiated by her association with Lucas ? Could
she, if she no longer received unhealthful stimuli,
grow accustomed to a wholesome but insipid
diet ? All Veronica's early training, the influence
of her home-life, her religious teaching, bade her
forget the macabre dream of the past months and
return to the healthy normal life symbolized by
Butler.

THE DEMON LOVER 177

It seemed as if her guardian angel stood at
the cross-roads, and said to her : " This way lies
peace and a simple happiness. That way lie
battle and storm, and a soul to be snatched from
the burning. We would not have you driven to
such a destiny, therefore we have placed before
you an alternative that your choice may be free."
But she had known Lucas, and she could not
forget. He had opened up to her soul wide
vistas down which go the paths that lead over
the horizon ; he had taught her the need of
spaciousness; could she ever settle down within
the small circle of protecting walls that would be
drawn around her should she cast in her lot with
Alee ? Would the friendship of the village
respectables compensate her for the closing of
the veil ?
It would not! Veronica knew that it would
not, and it was only because she had glimpsed
the sinister side of the Unseen that she could
even contemplate such a thing. The little cold
wind that died down as suddenly as it sprang up--
the strange glow of the mastiff's eyes seen in the
darkness of his kennel--if it had not been for these
things she would not have looked at Butler, but
they seemed to presage a strange world of
unknown horrors that might at any moment close
in upon her, and from which he, and he alone,
could save her ; should she remain by herself,
then, step by step, she would be drawn deeper
into the unseen world of whose heights and
depths she had hitherto had but fugitive glimpses.
It was this dread that made her try to see all
the best that was in Butler and what he had to
offer her, and to esteem a tranquil though

178 THE DEMON LOVER

humdrum life at a high value as an alternative
to the heights and horrors that Lucas, even though
dead, seemed still to be able to open up to her, and
to value the simple, kindly, conventionally good
character of Alee, even though she could not
help contrasting it with the strange fire that
had burnt in Lucas.
It was these thoughts that made her bestow
upon the former her rare, slow, Monna Lisa smile
as she opened the window to admit him when
he came to see her that evening, and this smile,
following upon the removal of material obstructions,
swung the keystone of his resolution into
place. Without waiting to enter the room, half
in and half out of the window as he was, he
caught her in his arms.
" Veronica," he said, " do you know what I
have come for ? " He looked down into her
big, grey-blue eyes, and for the first time a twinge
of doubt assailed him, the eyes were veiled,
remote, something lay behind them that was
hidden from him ; there were depths in this
girl that he could not comprehend, that were so
far outside his understanding that he could not
even frame a question as to their nature. Veronica,
however, though she remained passive, did not
repulse him, but allowed herself to be led to the
fireside in his embrace, where she gently disengaged
herself and sank into her usual chair.
He stood before her. " Veronica," he said,
" I want you to be my wife."
Veronica did not answer. Chin on hand, she
sat motionless, gazing into the fire. Among the
coals her imagination pictured the face of Lucas,
and her mind asked him : " How will it affect

THE DEMON LOVER 179

you if I do this thing ? Do you still need me
in your new state ? Will you feel that I have
been disloyal to you if I take this means of
escape from the things with which I cannot cope ?
I gave myself to you when I kissed you, here, on
the very spot where he is standing, that last
night of your life ; and now that I know that you
died for me, the pledge is doubly binding. If
you need me, I will remain, but if you do not
need me, then I will take this way of escape
that is offered me."

A faint sound from the other side of the room
roused her ; a dead leaf, borne by some wandering
current of air, had drifted across the window-sill
and fallen upon the polished wood within.
" Damn that window," exclaimed Butler,
upon whom the interruption seemed to have an
irritating effect, and, crossing the room in his
heavy shooting boots, he shut it noisily. Returning
to the hearth, he took his stand before the girl
once more. " Well, Veronica," he said. " What
is it to be ? "
To Veronica, a cold, invisible darkness seemed
to have flowed into the room while the window
was open. Her old terror of the Unseen returned
to her with renewed force, and, turning to Butler
as a tower of refuge, she held out both her hands ;
he caught them in his strong, warm grasp, and,
dropping on one knee before her, brought his
eager face on a level with hers. But as she
looked into his eyes, a sudden knowledge
came to her that she had nothing to give him,
for her soul had followed another man out into
the darkness; then, looking over his head, she
saw that the flame of the lamp was burning with

180 THE DEMON LOVER

diminished luminosity, the shadows from the
corners of the room were closing in about the
hearth, and her grip suddenly tightened upon
the hands that held hers. And yet she could
not give him her promise ; could not, in spite of
the horrors it contained, cut herself off from
the unseen world.
She rose unsteadily to her feet. " I must have
time to think," she said. " It means so much,
I must have time to think it out. Go, now,
please, Alee. Come back to-morrow morning,
and I will give you your answer."
He straightened himself beside her. " Any
way," he said, " I am going to kiss you before I
go," and catching her in his arms, he kissed her
full on the lips. For an instant a vision of
Lucas's face, distorted with rage, gnashing its
teeth at them, appeared before Veronica's eyes.
Butler released her. " Bye-bye," he said. " I'll
be round bright and early ; or if anything should
happen to prevent my coming, I will see that
you get word."
A sudden thought leapt to Veronica's mind
that, had she been the lover, there was nothing
that would have prevented her from coming to
learn her fate, and securing the window behind
him, she stood listening to his departing footsteps,
heavy upon the gravel. He reached the edge of
the wood, and the sounds ceased as he set foot
upon the soft earth path. Suddenly
Veronica's heart stood still ; silent and swift-
moving as a shadow, the mastiff passed the
window, nose to ground, hot upon the scent of
the retreating man.
Veronica, her senses paralysed, leant up against

THE DEMON LOVER 181

the window-frame for support. Should she cry
out to warn him ? Should she snatch up some
weapon and go after him ? Should she run to
the cottages for help ? Even as she debated,
there rang out upon the night air a cry, wild,
appalling, cut short in the middle. Then there
was silence. Veronica's knees gave under her,
and she dropped in a huddled heap into a near-by
chair.
For a time she lay with her head buried in
the cushions. Then she lifted it. Would the
dog return ? Eyes straining into the darkness, she
waited, and she had not long to wait. An
uncertain shadow moved upon the lawn, and then
a heavy head rose above the steps that led to the
terrace, and the dog stood without.
A rope of dark-coloured foam hung from his
muzzle, and his flanks heaved ; he was an old
dog, and the struggle had tried him. The eyes
of the girl stared into the dog's, those of the
animal filled with a strange phosphorescence.
He reared up on his hind legs and placed a paw
on the window-pane. Veronica watched with a
helpless fascination as the crazy woodwork bulged
inwards till the catch slipped and the window
burst open ; a pair of brindled shoulders filled
the aperture and paused, as if waiting for an
invitation. Veronica made neither sound nor
movement, and the animal entered.
It came up to her and rested its muzzle upon
her knee. Still she made no movement; the horror
of the beast that had killed one of her own kind
surged up within her, but a strange paralysis held
her motionless. A sense of her feeling towards
it seemed to communicate itself to the dog's mind,

182 THE DEMON LOVER

for the hair upon its neck rose in anger and a low
growl came from between its teeth ; then, as
Veronica watched, the pupils of its eyes slowly
contracted till two disks of greenish-brown,
opaque as china, looked back at her. Something
in Veronica's brain snapped and then seemed to
open ; the face of a man superimposed itself
upon the face of the dog ; old, forgotten tales of
were-wolves came to her, of creatures, half animal,
half human, the bodies of beasts ensouled by
magicians, a tangle of fairy tales and ghost stories
raced through her mind, till the animal at her knee
sat back on its haunches and lolled a red tongue
out of its mouth in a grin, as if to say, " So at last
you understand."
Then Veronica fainted. When she recovered,
the dog had gone, but the window still stood
open ; with shaking hands she secured it, and
then, dazed and numb, dragged herself up to her
room. Between sleeping and waking she lay till
the dawn was grey against the windows, and then
exhaustion supervened and true sleep came upon
her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

VERONICA WOKE TO FIND WARM AUTUMN SUN-
light streaming into her room and her ears
filled with the song of the birds; for a moment
her spirits rose up to greet the bright fresh
morning, and then a shadow fell across them,
making the sunlight seem pale and cold ; newly
roused from deep sleep, she could not for a moment
realize what it was that set her apart from the
bright morning about her and enveloped her in
cold dark shadow. Then she remembered Lucas.
Sitting up in bed and gazing with unseeing
eyes at the treetops outlined against the blue of
the sky, she reviewed her life since she had come
in contact with that strange being. Doors had 
been set ajar in her soul; a door that led up to 
the stars, and a door that led down to the under-
world, and the denizens of both planes now had 
access to her ; she had been caught up in currents 
of fate that mercifully leave most men untouched, 
and she was being carried swiftly forward towards 
some goal; there was no purposelessness, no
random eddy in the great tide that set so swiftly,
and only the most resolute struggles on her part
could enable her to reach the fast-receding shore.
Lucas was not dead ; she knew that much with
a certain inner conviction ; moreover, he had not 
abandoned his pursuit of her, she knew that also ; 
somewhere, close to her though invisible, 
he hovered, and there were certain forms of matter 
that he could bend to his use and make to serve him, 
for a few seconds at least, as a vehicle of 
manifestation ; spirit of outer darkness that he was, 
he came in the cold eddying wind

184 THE DEMON LOVER

that, arising out of stillness, tossed up the dead
leaves in a spiral dance and died away as suddenly
as it had come ; not many seconds could his will
hold that fugitive form together, but long enough,
and strong enough to burst open the frail
fastenings of the French window and cast her
papers to the floor as if with the sweep of an
angry hand.
She saw it all so clearly now ; Lucas, the disembodied
mind unable to manifest, unable to
materialize save in fleeting and unstable forms,
yet fully aware of all that transpired, and unchanged
by death, was actuated by the same
unscrupulous will that had carried him through
life ; all his interests and desires being centred
upon matter held him earth-bound ; bodiless,
formless, he still craved the things of the body,
and Veronica was the focus of his desire.
Finally, urged on by who knows what devils
of jealous hate and frustrated longing, he had
seized upon and obsessed the body of the dog,
poor brindled brute, and now, velvet-pawed,
heavy jowled, went upon his purpose in the
vehicle of a lower life, yet one to which his
temperament was closer akin than to that of man
whose form he aped. There was more of the
hunting-hound in Lucas than of the human
being; the gentle spaniel, the wise sheepdog,
were nearer humanity than he ; no such vehicle
had he chosen, but an older, savager breed had
been found to fulfil his purpose.
In the old days in the Bloomsbury square
Veronica had felt the prime horror to be that she
could not speak to any human being of the
experiences through which she was passing; she

THE DEMON LOVER 185

would only have been looked upon as mad ; there
were times when she looked upon herself as mad,
when she wished with all her heart that Lucas
and all appertaining to him were a delusion even
at the cost of the deprivation of her freedom ;
at least she would know that the world was sane,
built to the measure of the three dimensions and
solid substance, but she found herself moving in
a world that was as mad as a lunatic's dream.
The invisible collar that Lucas had put about
her neck was a commonplace phenomenon of
suggestion, had she but known it; but what of
this dog with the eyes and purpose of a man ?
Mediaeval literature is full of such stories, often
of a very circumstantial nature, but she did not
know that either, and perhaps it was just as well.
Butler she thought of with pitying horror as a
man who had met with a terrible death ; from
herself he seemed strangely remote, his love-
making she had almost forgotten--that long
drawn out second in which she had watched the
dog's eyes contract to angry pinpoints had swept
her back into the heart of the maelstrom from
which she had sought to escape ; Lucas alone she
was concerned with, and Lucas filled her horizon.
No longer, however, did she think of him as the
man towards whom her heart had softened as the
time of their brief association drew to its close,
rather he was once again the man of dark and
unknown purposes who had used her unscrupulously
for his own ends. Lucas, the man of the
trance-work, Lucas, the murderer of Butler, who
would drag her with him to the darkness whence
he rose upon his evil work could he once lay hands
upon her soul,--and alone in her sunlit bedroom,

186 THE DEMON LOVER

she shivered as if the chill of that darkness were
already about her.
She did not remain alone long however; the old
caretaker appeared, and by gestures rather than
speech intimated that someone was below who
wished to see her. Dressing hastily, Veronica
descended to the shuttered hall of the old mansion;
there she found two men, one of whom she knew,
but the other was a stranger. The former was
the doctor who had been called in when Lucas
was found dead ; but he was also the father of
Alee, and from his presence Veronica guessed
that the odium of the whole terrible affair would
be laid at her door. Powerless to defend herself,
to offer any explanation, or to make known the
real state of affairs, she fell back upon the tactics
of, the inquest whereat she had been asked to
explain the fate of another man who had been
found dead in her vicinity, and now, as then, her
interlocutors knew perfectly well that there was
more in the matter than their questioning could
lay bare. They also felt, and the doctor, for his
part, showed it very plainly, that the two deaths
were in some way connected, and that Veronica
was at the bottom of them, and his attitude
towards her could not have shown greater
detestation if he had caught her red-handed ;
his companion, obviously uncomfortable at this
manifestation of hate, stood switching his riding-
boots uneasily with a hunting-crop, and staring
at this girl, the subject of so much local rumour,
whom he now met face to face for the first time.
Veronica, for her part, merely stated any facts
that were required of her, offering no comment
upon them, well knowing that neither of these

THE DEMON LOVER 187

men could hit upon the hidden links that bound
the whole affair together ; Lucas's struggle with
the Fraternity, his abuse of its teaching and his
execution, the very existence, in fact, of a secret
science that dealt with unknown powers, were
beyond the ken of these two matter-of-fact
Englishmen, save that the father, his wits
sharpened for a moment by the shock of his
son's death, realized intuitively that this strange
outbreak on the dog's part was no more in the
ordinary course of events than the stoppage of
Lucas's heart, and circumstantial evidence
directed him towards the girl who in each case
had been the last to see the dead man alive.
Finally, the cross-examination having elicited 
nothing save that Butler was a regular visitor 
at the Grange (Veronica spared her interlocutor 
the information that his son had proposed marriage,
the man, baffled and angry, turned to his companion 
and exclaimed, " Well, Hargreaves, what
do you make of this extraordinary affair? For the 
first time the other man spoke: " If
you want my opinion, doctor, there is nothing
mysterious about it, it is just a plain case of
hydrophobia, and the best thing to do is to dispose 
of the dog so that he can't infect any others. 
The only thing that isn't plain is, how a chained-
up beast like that got it in the first place ? I 
suppose you have no objection to my destroying
him. Miss Mainwaring ? It has got to be done,
and I will do it quite painlessly. I am the Vet, 
you know."
Veronica recoiled till she came to the wall and,
leaning up against it, gazed into space with
Unseeing eyes, the men staring at her in astonishment.

188 THE DEMON LOVER

To her, Lucas and the dog were one, and,
horror though he might be, she could not pass
sentence of death upon him.
Finally she found her voice. " I--I should
like time--to think it over," she said.
The doctor spoke sharply. " You can't
have time," he said. " The beast is loose,
and heavens only knows what he may do
next."
Here was a fresh horror, the dog, mad or
obsessed, was free to range at will, she had
forgotten that.
Then the stranger spoke : " I quite understand
your feeling for your animal," he said. " But I am
afraid he will have to be destroyed, and without
delay, too ; think of the children down the lane ;
it is much the most merciful thing to do, and he
is an old dog, any way."
Veronica bowed her head. " Do as you
please," she said, " Only bury him a long way off,
and deep," and she turned away into the billiard
room.
For a time she sat alone, staring into space,
companioned only by the goggling fish in the
glass cases. Lucas, who had drawn so near,
seemed very remote at the present moment. She
wondered what they would do to him--those
men out there, and what would happen to him
when they destroyed his dog-form ? Now that
he was in danger of attack her sympathies, womanlike,
went out to him. Would he be able to
pick up his contact with her again when forced
out of this, his present refuge ? Evil though he
was, the thought of his loss filled her with
desolation.

THE DEMON LOVER 189

Even as she mused, a wild hullabaloo broke
out in the kitchen; someone, feminine, was
having violent hysterics, and her shrieks rose high
above a chorus of male voices raised in consternation.
Veronica ran down the long passage that
led to the back premises, and there found
the old caretaker laid out upon the floor and
shrieking at the full pitch of her lungs ; a number 
of white-faced rustics drew back at Veronica's 
entrance, eyeing her askance.
What is the matter ? " demanded the girl, confronting 
them. No one replied, and the group faded away through 
the half-opened door almost invisibly ; the old woman, 
rising with difficulty, crept into the pantry, where 
a pop, followed by a gurgling, sufficiently accounted 
for her activities. Spying the inevitable small boy 
in the yard, watching
proceedings, Veronica darted out and caught
him by his ragged jacket before he could
escape.
" What happened ? " she demanded of him.
" They shot the dog, miss," he replied writhing
in her grasp.
" I know that, but what are they all so
a» frightened of ? It is no use wriggling, I won't 
let you go till you tell me." " It--it was the gentleman, 
miss," said the boy in a husky whisper. " He's come back."
" What gentleman ? " demanded Veronica.
The dark gentleman, who was here with you, Miss. He 
came out of the kennel when they shot the dog, I seed 
'un myself, we all seed 'un ; he came out of the kennel, 
and he stood up there
in the sunlight, as plain as plain could be, grinnin'

190 THE DEMON LOVER

at us, and then he faded away like a puff of smoke,
a bit at a time, like, till he was all gone. But I
seed 'un, and we all seed 'un. Let me go, Miss,"
and with a final squirm he shot out of Veronica's
hands and escaped.
Veronica returned to the billiard room in a
brown study, but even as she opened the door,
she was aware that some one awaited her. Had
the doctor or his companion returned to have
speech with her ? She looked round for them by
the hearth, in the window embrasures, but there
was no one there. Crossing the room, she
stepped out through the French window on to
the terrace, and almost without realizing what
she was doing, held it open for the one who
followed. There she turned and faced That
which was beside her.
" So you have come back ? " she said.
She waited, as if expecting a reply, but none
came. Then she spoke again. " I cannot forgive
what you did to Alee Butler, nor this matter of
the dog ; I can forgive what you did to me, that
was over and forgotten, but the dog was horrible,
and I cannot forgive that."
Silence fell again. Veronica had said what she
had to say, but no reply could reach her senses.
She turned, recrossed the gravel path, entered the
French window and shut it quickly behind her.
Then she stood watching. The day was still and
sunny, a true day of the Indian Summer, but
presently, as she expected, the dead leaves lying
in the angles of the steps began to be stirred by a
little breeze ; they rose up in the grip of a miniature
whirlwind and smote upon the pane ; the
window bulged inwards, the crazy catch slipping,

THE DEMON LOVER 191

but Veronica put her hand on the frame and thrust 
it home again, then she set a heavy armchair against 
it. The leaves, tossed all over the terrace by the 
last indignant gust, slowly settled down again, baffled.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

FROM THAT TIME ONWARDS VERONICA SELDOM
knew what it was to be alone. It was just
like the old days, Lucas was somewhere about.
The vividness of the impression varied however
during bright sunlight, especially if she herself
were in the direct rays of the sun, she would be
immune from his influence, but on a grey day,
and especially as dusk crept on, the presence
would grow increasingly tangible, till, with the 
onset of darkness, Lucas himself was beside her.
She could see nothing, hear nothing, no shred of
communication reached her from beyond the
grave, yet she felt the very moods of his temperament.
Sometimes there was a delighted Lucas,
an angry Lucas, or a Lucas striving his hardest
to bend her to his will and finding the medium
in which he functioned too tenuous for his
purpose. Then sometimes would come the quick
transition from an unseen, disembodied mind to
the only material form that he could command,
a fugitive vortex of ice-cold air that tossed the
fallen leaves about her in its impotent endeavours
to clasp her form with its formless arms. This,
she knew, was the manifestation of an angry
Lucas, and she could quite understand why spirits
are always regarded as being either devils or
angels, for it is only under the impetus of a strong
emotion, whether of hate or love, that the
majority of them can manifest themselves upon
the material plane ; the man, in his ordinary
state of consciousness, can only be perceived by
those few unfortunates we call sensitives.
Having at last succeeded in making her aware
of his presence, however, his powers seemed to

THE DEMON LOVER 193

be increasing. Whether she was growing more
a psychic, or he more adept at bending matter
to his will, cannot be known, but the fact remains
that a rapport had been set up between the mind
of the dead man and the living girl, and that
telepathy was in full swing between them.
To the living, the return of even the beloved
dead is apt to be something of an ordeal, but to
Veronica, knowing Lucas to be evil, and feeling
herself in his power, the manifestation of that
dark presence was the consummation of all the
horrors of nightmare and childhood's phantom
terrors. Though she knew his moods, she could
not divine his thoughts, and it was some little
time before she discovered that hers could be
read by him with the greatest readiness. If she
allowed her thoughts to wander to Alee the
atmosphere in her immediate vicinity filled with
a menacing anger, and time and again the whirlwind
dance of the leaves would toss themselves
up in their impotent displeasure. But if, on the
other hand, she allowed her thoughts to dwell
upon the few short hours of companionship and
sympathy that had preceded Lucas's death, if she 
sent out a questioning wish into the darkness,
seeking to know if it were well with her friend,
then the room glowed with a strange warmth that
seemed to wrap itself about her form in a mantle
of invisible light.
Veronica gradually learnt to know the moods
of her unseen visitor, and soon the presence, 
which at first had had for her all the horror of the
unknown, became familiar and was accepted more
or less as a matter of course ; though she still
dreaded it, she feared it no more than she had

194 THE DEMON LOVER

feared the man while he still dwelt in his
habitation of flesh, and as time went on, his old
uncanny fascination began to assert itself again ;
she found herself watching for his approach as
the light faded, and in some curious, subconscious
way, lending herself to his manifestation. She
dreaded him, yet she would have missed him
had he not appeared, and so, in her old state of
repulsive fascination, or fascinated repulsion, the
days passed by, and with the passing of each,
darkness fell earlier and Lucas's period of power
lengthened.
It was towards All Hallows Eve that he at
last succeeded in crossing the boundary of the
unmanifest and gaining his footing upon the
plane of life. A bright frosty day had tempted
Veronica to a long walk, and coming in as dusk
fell, she had been glad to fling her weary body
into a big arm chair by the hearth and doze in
the fire-lit room till such time as the old caretaker
should bring the lamp. There, every
muscle relaxed, she lay back among the cushions,
her mind questing out in the long daydreams
of youth. Lucas, as an entity, seemed remote
that night; she had shaken off his presence
when she passed in her wanderings beyond the
range of his manifestation, and he had not yet
re-discovered her. So, for once, she was alone.
Her mind wandered towards the strange
being who, crossing her path, had deflected the
whole course of her life. She thought of him
and she thought of Alee, comparing the two men,
and she knew beyond all doubting that never,
never, could she have found contentment with
that good-hearted, cheery fellow whom the world

THE DEMON LOVER 195

would have considered such an ideal husband.
There was more satisfaction for her in being bent to
the dark purposes of Lucas than in being cherished
by Alee, for in so doing, she was living ; the
great currents of the universe swept around her,
the tremendous vitality of the man radiated out
upon her, and she felt that she was growing,
advancing, rising above herself, and that the
Great Unseen, whence all things come and
whither they all return, was drawing near to her.
Musing thus, between sleeping and waking, her
eyes gazing steadily into the heart of the glowing
coals, she suddenly felt that swift swoop into outer
space that had always heralded her departure
upon the strange journeys of the soul on which
Lucas had despatched her. This time, however,
oblivion did not close upon her ; instead,
she remained aware of her surroundings, although
all power of movement seemed to be inhibited.
For a while she lay thus, in a dreamy, somnolent
state that was not unpleasant, then a new
sensation made itself felt, as if something were
being drawn out of her left side, at first a trickling,
then a strange draining sensation, and she saw a
white, mistlike pool accumulating at her feet.
Slowly the pool spread out, rose up, took form
in front of her in the semblance of a tenuous,
sheeted ghost, and then, in a dark hollow of the
draperies, a face began to form, and it was the
face of Lucas.
Veronica, drained of vitality, lay back in
her chair, and saw the dead man take life before
her. The bright dark eyes gazed into her clouded
ones; the lips, red with lifeblood, drew close to
her palid ones; and the arms, strong as in life,

196 THE DEMON LOVER

closed round her form that seemed all shrunken
inside her clothes.
This strange manifestation did not last many
moments ; Lucas dared not prolong it; and in
a few seconds the devitalized girl felt life flowing
back into her, and simultaneously, saw the form
before her shrink, lose outline, and subside into
an amorphous pool of mist at her feet. Then she
awoke as from a dream, asking herself whether
this strange experience had any existence outside
her imagination.
After supper it seemed even more unreal,
and when she awoke from a heavy dreamless
sleep in the morning, all but a vague memory
had vanished. The day passed slowly by in minor 
tasks; a walk in the intervals of rain, needlework,
a novel, received, but did not engross her
attention, until, the lamps being lit, Veronica
suddenly remembered a letter to her lawyer that 
demanded an answer. Sitting down to
the writing table, she dipped her pen in the ink,
and then fell to nibbling the end of it, for she
was not a fluent correspondent, and business
matters had ever been beyond her, and, having
written ' Dear Sir,' she stuck fast, pen poised
above paper, when, to her surprise, she saw a
line of writing slowly trace itself across the
blank white page.
" How are you, Veronica ? Justin writing."
The girl stared in amazement at the words
that slowly formed themselves under her
eyes. The pen, without volition of hers, had
written ; the writing, though done by her hand,
was not her usual script, yet it was curiously
familiar. It was a man's hand, and Justin was a

THE DEMON LOVER 197

man's name. She knew no one called Justin,
yet, in some odd way, it sounded familiar in
her ears. Where had she heard it before ? Ah,
now she remembered, it was the name of the
Roman Lucas had told her about, the man who
had loved and lost a girl in the days of that
ancient, world-wide empire.
" Exactly. Justinian was his name, and Justin
is my name, the English version of the Latin
word, just as I am the English version of the
Roman soldier, only perhaps you know me better
as J. Lucas."
Again the hand had written without her
volition, and Veronica sat transfixed, gazing at
the words that formed themselves upon the
paper, so aptly answering her unspoken thought.
Once again the writing commenced. " You
will stand by me, won't you, Veronica ? You
will see me through ? I am depending on you,
you know." Then, as if divining with that
shrewd mind of his the line of appeal that would
influence her : " If you do not help me, I am lost.
Don't fail me, Veronica ! "
What woman could resist such an appeal ?
Veronica--whose first thought had been panic-
stricken flight out into the garden, the road,
anywhere--remained motionless, listening, waiting
for the next manifestation of this unseen presence
that hovered about her.
Again the pen began to move, and her eyes
followed the writing.
" You did very well last night; the subtle
ethers are easily detached from your dense
body, and I can draw them out and build myself
a form with them, but I am afraid it will be too

198 THE DEMON LOVER

much of a strain for you to do it often by yourself ;
what we really want is a group of people to sit
in a circle, then everybody contributes a little,
and no one has the whole strain of it. It is one
thing to take the ethers out, and quite another
to put them back again, and if they don't go
back, then you die too. I suppose there is no
possibility of forming a circle ? "
Veronica had no comment to make, all this
was entirely beyond her. There was certainly
no one whom she could ask to join her in this
strange and terrible undertaking, if that was
what he meant. Evidently it was, for the writing
continued. " Then the only thing I can suggest
is that I form a partial materialization from you,
and then we get as close as we can to some other
people, and I pick up the rest of the stuff I want
from them. I think I can manage it if we wait
till they are asleep. At any rate, we can... " 
but Veronica flung down her pen, hastily opened
the window, and went out on to the terrace.
What horrible experiment was the dead man
contemplating ? She was entirely ignorant of
these things, even her imagination had never
envisaged the strange forces Lucas employed nor
the yet stranger aims and affairs that occupied
his attention. The secret fraternity that taught
these things--the unseen beings that co-operated
--the invisible forces that gave rise to the effects
we see upon this material plane--of all these
she had never even suspected the existence
until she found herself plunged into the very
midst of them. Now, it seemed to her, that she
saw them upon every side, as if, having once got

THE DEMON LOVER 199

in touch with these forces, she could never now
escape from them, and whereas most people
only experienced the result of their own actions,
great currents of evolving and disintegrating life
swept her backwards and forwards in their tides.
Alone, bewildered, helpless, the concentrated
will of Lucas held her bound, unable to resist;
and Lucas was no more dead than she was, he
was merely without a body, and was evidently
bent upon supplying the deficiency by whatever
means he could bend to his purpose.
Maddest of phantasies! Veronica knew it
could be nothing but a dream. Her mind was giving 
way under the strain. She had better go 
and see the doctor and ask him to take charge of
her and put her in an asylum or wherever it was
that people who dreamed such dreams as hers
were safely put away. But then, irony of ironies,
the doctor would have none of her ; even in
death Lucas's arch-enemy served his purposes,
I and the dead Alee effectually barred Veronica's
retreat; she could almost hear chuckling laughter 
as she realized this.
Soon the gathering darkness and bitter wind drove 
her within doors, and the evening passed rapidly 
away to bedtime as Veronica turned over and over 
in her mind the memories of all
these uncanny transactions. The more she
thought about them, the stranger they became ;
any single incident could be explained away, but
not this consecutive series, each of which seemed
to hinge upon the others and play its part in
causation. There were too many of them for
a casuistry to deal with, and perforce she had to
accept the theory that she had got herself into

200 THE DEMON LOVER

the track of some little-known, but by no means
non-existent form of energy.
Veronica, stretching out her hand to her
candle, paused, her hand in mid-air. The
Presence was in the room, she could feel it at her
elbow. Slowly she sank back into the chair
from which she had risen, and as she sank back,
the downward rush of the soul into space
commenced. Once again the strange substance
which was her life flowed from her left side and
drew itself out into the sheeted form with which
tradition has made us familiar, and again Lucas's
eyes looked out at her from the folds of its
whiteness. But here the process was arrested,
condensation went no further, only the eyes were 
fully materialized ; the rest of the form hung
like a wreath of smoke upon the air.
Veronica, still in full possession of her
faculties though feeling strangely light and
detached, returned gaze for gaze of those dark
eyes. Lips and throat were not sufficiently
materialized for speech, but the eyes compelled
her with their hypnotic gaze, and slowly she rose
from her chair and stood before him, compelled,
yet eager to do his will. Following him, she
moved over to a corner of the room where the
old trench coat lay over a chair, the coat that
to her always seemed an emanation of Lucas's
personality, and with this girt about her, she
seemed more than ever bound to him in some
strange unity of the soul.
The eyes shone with an uncanny light, half
tenderness, half triumph, and as the grey form
moved over to the window, Veronica moved
after it. It seemed to her as if no weight pressed

THE DEMON LOVER 201

her feet to the ground and that she had only to
think of a place in order to find herself there;
and indeed her body responded with an extraordinary
facility to every command of her mind ;
swiftly, effortlessly, all impulses were acted out
as fast as they were formulated, and on the heels
of the drifting mist-like form she moved swiftly
down the darkened terrace.
A tenuous silver cord of vapour connected
her with the gliding shadow ahead, and she
knew that at all costs that cord must be kept
intact. Then she noticed another and still
stranger phenomenon, pitch dark though it was,
she could see quite plainly in a leaden-grey
twilight. To her, the landscape was illuminated
with a peculiar livid light such as is seen at
the time of a total eclipse of the sun, only of
much less intensity, and no shadows were thrown
by any object.
They moved with swift, effortless speed down
the weed-grown driveway and out into the road
on the river bank, and then turned to the left,
and Veronica guessed that their objective was
the row of labourers' cottages that stood a little
way down the lane. Hardly daring to breathe,
she followed the shadowy form that drew her
by the silver cord till both she and her half-
seen guide halted under the wall of the nearest
cottage.
For a moment the dark pools of the eyes were
turned towards her, and then, like a wreath of
smoke, the form rose into the air above her head,
and she saw that it was pressing itself againt the
small leaded panes that hung in the crazy window-
frame up under the cottage eaves. Some crack

202 THE DEMON LOVER

must have been found, for the drifting mist
slowly disappeared till nothing but the tenuous
silver trail was left that connected it with her
own body.
For an eternity she waited, no sound issuing
from the cottages, and then she heard a faint
creaking as the casement above her head was
opened and a hand appeared upon the window
sill. An amorphous mist had drifted in through
the crack, but it was a distinctly physical form
that came out, and from the thud with which
it struck the ground, Veronica knew that it
must have a certain amount of weight. Then
it came towards her over the rank winter
vegetation, and she saw, swathed and cowled in
soft grey drapery, the figure of Lucas as
she had known him in life.
Slipping his hand through her arm in the old
familiar gesture, he led her swiftly down the
lane by which they had come, and back through
the garden to the terrace.
Wood-ash still glowed redly on the hearth in
the billiard room, and Veronica, seizing the poker,
would have stirred it into flame, for she was
perished with cold and fear, when a hand that
was entirely tangible was laid upon her arm, and
a familiar voice said in her ear : Steady, child,
I cannot stand much light, you know."
With that authoritative touch of his he led
her unresisting back to her chair, and there,
as she lay among the cushions, he bent over her.
" Now I am going to give back to you what I
have borrowed. It will not be safe to keep you
too long in your present condition." he said,
and even as he spoke the words, Veronica felt the

THE DEMON LOVER 203

returning flow of the vital forces that had been
partially withdrawn. This time, however, the
figure before her did not entirely dematerialize
when she returned to waking consciousness,
there remained of the erstwhile tangible form a
drifting mist marked by dark pools of blackness
where there had been eyes. That which he had
taken from the sleeping people in the cottages
he retained, while returning to her the elements
she had lent him.
The floating form drew near as if to take
farewell of her, and then, gliding over to the
window, slowly drifted forth through an aperture
in the rotting frame, while Veronica, dazed and
exhausted, struck a light and surveyed the now
empty room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TVO

THE NEXT MORNING VERONICA FELT THAT SHE
could but regard the whole transaction as a
bad dream, and lying in bed between sleeping
and waking, she was thanking her stars that it
was not real, when a pair of soaked and mud-
stained slippers caught her eyes. She gazed at
these, but still refused to admit the possibility
of reality to the memories of yesternight; a
dream they must be if she were to keep her
sanity, and to her sanity Veronica was determined
to cling.
After breakfast she was taking her morning
walk along the lane on the river bank, when a
sound of wheels behind her made her look round,
and there was the doctor, Alee's father, driving
along the grass-grown roadway in his dog cart.
He gave her one glance, and shaking the reins,
drove swiftly past without any other sign of
recognition than was conveyed by that look of
hate and repulsion. True, this man of the
objective world had not been able to assign any
other cause of death than heart failure in the
case of Lucas, nor of haemorrhage of the jugular
vein from dog-bite in the case of his son, yet the
intuition that slumbers in the densest of us told
him that in some way Veronica was connected
with these happenings--that there was something
about the girl which did not fall within
the laws of his three-dimensional universe. What
it was, he could not define, even to himself,
but he hated and dreaded her as children and
dogs hate and fear, without reason assigned, yet
with an unerring instinct.
Veronica continued her walk down the over-

THE DEMON LOVER 205

grown lane, and presently reached the row of
labourers' cottages that had been the scene of
her dream of the previous night. Even by
daylight she could not cast off the horror of that
memory; its shadow still hung about her. There
was the angle of the rose-covered porch where
she had stood; and there, up under the eaves,
the little window by which Lucas had entered.
Thank God it was but a dream, she reassured
herself. Then she dropped her eyes to the muddy
ground over which she was picking her way, and
stopped as if turned to stone : a footprint which
was not that of a heavy peasant boot was clearly
outlined in the soft earth. Small feet in high-
heeled slippers had passed that way. She
remembered the little grey suede shoes, with
their Louis heels and shining buckles, one of the
first things that she had bought with the lavish
salary Lucas had paid her, and that now lay
soaked and ruined upon her bedroom floor.
With fast-beating heart she searched the soft
ground for the print of a man's lightly shod foot
that should companion them if her terrible
dream were reality. But such there was not.
The small feet had walked alone down that
pitch-dark lane through the stormy night. Hobnailed
boots had passed that way, but no other
human foot had left its track. But even as she
drew a sigh of relief at this lack of confirmation
of her fears, she saw that beside the print of the
high-heeled shoes ran another and stranger
trail, as if something had been dragged along over
the ground, yet with here and there a footprint;
yet not a true human footprint, but rather a pad-
like mark, as of extremities imperfectly finished.

206 THE DEMON LOVER

A sound attracted her attention, and she
looked up to perceive what she had not noticed
before, that the doctor's horse was tied to the
fence, and that the doctor himself stood at the
gate of the first cottage, from which he had
evidently just issued, and was observing her
actions intently.
She faced him, alarmed. What was the
meaning of this scrutiny which was so manifestly
antagonistic ? Did he suspect that midnight
expedition, and if so, what would he do to her ?
Then he spoke. " A child died in that cottage
last night, and four others are seriously ill. They
were quite all right when they went to bed."
They stood looking into each other's eyes,
neither able to offer any comment on this brief
narrative; Veronica, because the paralysis of
utter horror had descended upon her, and the
doctor because he had no words that would
embody the unformed intuitions within him.
The man's eyes were directed to the ground
where Veronica's had been, and he took a step
forward as if he were about to inspect that which
had attracted her attention. But even as he did so,
the little cold wind, now so familiar, sprang up,
and a great drift of autumn leaves swept across
the roadway in its wake, completely obliterating
the tell-tale prints. At the same moment the
horse, that had been standing quietly waiting
for his master, suddenly reared up with such
force that the rotting wood to which he was
tied gave way, and he was off down the lane with
the reins streaming behind him.
The doctor paused irresolute, uncertain for a
moment whether to pursue his investigation or

THE DEMON LOVER 207

his vanishing steed, and finally set off at a run
after the latter; the marks on the ground,
which the girl had apparently been examining,
would keep, any attempt on her part to obliterate
them must be detected.
Veronica, her knees giving under her, crept
away from the ill-omened spot till, unable to go
any further, she sank down upon one of the many
fallen trees that lay about in that neglected place.
From there, she could still see the lane by the
cottages, though herself hidden by undergrowth.
Presently she heard the sound of wheels in
the roadway, and saw the doctor returning with
his now chastened horse. When, however, the
sober beast again reached the last cottage, he swung
round so suddenly that one wheel of the trap
went down the ditch and very nearly tipped
the doctor out. That worthy, believing himself
to be unobserved, relieved his feelings with
words, then, taking the now thoroughly
demoralized horse by the head, proceeded to
lead him past the scene of his panic. Dark
streaks of sweat sprang out on the sleek bay coat
despite the coldness of the day, as with ears laid
back and eyes rolling wildly, the terrified animal
reluctantly followed its master down the lane.
It was obvious that the doctor wished to pause
and examine whatever it was that had attracted
Veronica's attention upon the ground, but the
horse was almost unmanageable ; moreover the
great drift of leaves, diligently swept up by the
little cold wind, had obliterated all landmarks
of stone and puddle by which he had calculated
on identifying the spot, so that he himself
searched where no mark was, and the pawing

208 THE DEMON LOVER

hoofs of his beast obliterated for ever the only
physical evidence of the midnight expedition.
Returning to the billiard room, where the
goggling fish lent her their company, Veronica
faced the issue. It was useless to regard the
happenings as a bad dream ; however far they
might range beyond normal experience, she had
to accept them as actual. There in the cottage
a child lay dead, and four others sick unto death.
Such was the price that had to be paid that a
dead man might live even such shadowy life as
Lucas had achieved. The vitality which vivified
him could only be obtained by the depletion of
others. There was not enough to go round,
and some had to go short when the uninvited
guest dipped his spoon into the platter. Lucas,
remorseless individualist that he was, stole from
those who could offer least defence to his
depredations--young children. Veronica remembered
the little new-made graves that she had
seen when she visited the churchyard, and
wondered how many lives had been sacrificed in
order that Lucas might keep his footing on the
plane of manifestation.
Of one thing she was quite determined,
however, no more little children should be
harmed if it were in her power to prevent it.
There was a very great deal of the mother
instinct in Veronica, and Lucas could not have
found a surer way of making her turn at bay
than by attacking children. Timid, ready to
suffer all things rather than rebel where her own
welfare was concerned, she rose up like a tigress
when little helpless things demanded her protection.
Lucas had outraged the eternal mother,

THE DEMON LOVER 209

preserver of life, and the force of all the conserving
powers of Nature came in behind little simple
Veronica, now roused for the first time.
Small personal matters that affect the lives of
individuals can be fought out upon a personal basis
and need spread no further, but when men and
women tamper with unseen forces, they are apt
to become the channels of those forces in a way
with which they have not reckoned. That which
they have invoked for their use is liable to use
them, and their individual struggles overflow
into the cosmos. So Lucas, using elemental
forces, had aroused the elements, and they,
striving to adjust the balance that his self-seeking
hand had thrown out, found a channel through
a nature that was close kin to their own.
Veronica, because she used her mind but little,
was much influenced by the great forces that
press the simpler forms of life into manifestation,
forces with which the average civilized man has
little concern, but which guide children, animals,
and those animal children which we call savages.
Likewise they take under their protection those
child-souls which sometimes come to birth even
in the most civilized of industrial cities, and then,
provided these are allowed to live close to nature
as it is necessary to their well-being that they
should, the elemental forces playing upon the
human intellect will produce those outbursts of
lyric creativeness that lighten the darkness of our
bat-eyed culture. But civilization seldom cares
to risk such outbreaks, and education, ethics, and
philanthropy do their utmost to minimise the
risk.
Veronica had not the intellect necessary for

210 THE DEMON LOVER

the translation of the forms of one plane of
existence into their corresponding symbols upon
another plane ; she was a medium in the true
sense of the word, a transparency through which
the light of a higher world could penetrate the
opacity of our earth, and ere long that world
discovered her, and then her days of peace were
at an end.
Veronica had not many ideas in her little head,
but she had a harmonized nature that enabled
such ideas as she had to be given effect. All her
resources could be brought to bear at a single
point ; there was no division of aims in Veronica.
Upon one thing she was quite determined now,
Lucas should attack no more children ; she would
lend herself to no more materializations that
could be turned to such ghastly purposes. As
the day wore on she waited the coming of dusk,
knowing full well that it would bring Lucas, and
she prepared herself for the contest that she
knew must ensue. What line he would take
with her, she did not know, but upon one thing
she was doggedly determined ; she would not
leave the room, and she shrewdly suspected that
if she wouldn't, Lucas couldn't, owing to the
tenuous silver cord that united them when
materialization took place. What Lucas would
do to her by way of retaliation Veronica did not
know, and strangely enough, had ceased to care.
Things had gone too far for her to care: it was
like some weird dream in which one leaps off
precipices and nothing ever happens.
Darkness set in early that night, for the sunset
had been veiled in clouds, and hardly had the
last light gone before Veronica was aware of the

THE DEMON LOVER 211

shadowy cowled figure with the dark flashing eyes
that seemed to build itself out of the shadows.
Apparently Lucas had now got enough ectoplasm
gathered together to enable him to manifest at
will, provided the light was dim enough, but not
enough for speech or any definite action. More
of this strange subtle substance had to be obtained
from somewhere if he were to continue in the
land of living beings, and Veronica was
determined that he should not have it at such
ghastly cost. How he was to be prevented was
another matter, but she was determined that he
should not have her co-operation, and she
believed that her refusal would cripple his power
in the present stage of his upbuilding.
She knew that they were embarked upon a
trial of strength, and braced her whole being to
meet it. The dark eyes among the grey drapery
showed that their owner was well aware of this
change of attitude on her part; they looked
surprised, reproachful, but the anger that
Veronica had expected was absent.
The sensation of the swift downward swoop
with which she was now so familiar passed through
Veronica's nerves, and once again she saw the
mist-like substance flow from her that should
turn Lucas into the semblance of a living man.
Not much was needed for this accomplishment
now, and in a condition very near her normal
consciousness Veronica saw Lucas materialize
before her.
There he stood in the dim red glow of the
coals, swathed and cowled in soft grey drapery,
but the hands looked as if they could grip, and
the face showed the colour of life under its dark

212 THE DEMON LOVER

skin. She had never thought of her friend as
dead, and so his return, from that point of view,
was no shock to her ; from the moment of her
discovery of his body upon the sunlit bed on that
far-away summer morning, she had known that
he was only waiting his opportunity to come back
to her, and that sooner or later that opportunity
would come. She had watched for him, and
finally her watching had been rewarded, and he
had appeared. She had for him now just the
same feelings that she had had for him in life,
in fact in some ways she liked him better ; in
the old days, in the house in the Bloomsbury
square, she had been dependent upon his goodwill
(a somewhat uncertain quantity), now he was
dependent upon her for his very existence, part
of her substance had gone to build up his form,
and in some curious way her mother-instinct
went forth to this being that was made of her
own life. His very dependence upon her gave
him his strongest hold over her. Veronica, in
her new-found mother-spirit, might resist
aggression, but, on the other hand, she would
cherish fiercely anything that depended upon
her, and Lucas in his half-materialized condition
was as dependent upon her life as an unborn
child.
The process having gone as far as Lucas dared
to carry it, the available life forces having been
shared out between the partners in this strange
enterprise, they faced each other, the man
partly materialized, and the girl partly de-
materialized. Again the grey world that shone
with its own light was open to her ; again the
soul that she had known as Justin Lucas took on

THE DEMON LOVER 213

the semblance of a man, and actuated by the
same emotions that had stirred it in life, moved 
towards her, and a voice, low and toneless, but
quite distinct, sounded in her ears.
" Well, Veronica, are you pleased to see me ? "
She made him no answer. Great as was her
horror of him, and of the strange conditions of
his reappearing, yet he still had a fascination
for her. This he seemed to divine, for the
shadowy lips curved into a smile.
" Not altogether displeased ? We are coming
along, Veronica."
There was, a pause while they studied each
other. Veronica noted the way he had concentrated
such substance as was available for
his use in the upper parts of his form ; head,
shoulders and hands were well materialized, but
the lower limbs tailed off in a long floating wisp
of drapery. Like some strange merman of the
shadows he rose up before her, his body from the
hips downwards merging into the dark ocean of
chaos whence he drew his being.
Then the man spoke again. " Now, Veronica,
the next thing is to finish the process we began
last night. I have marked down a house on
the other side of the village that I want to go to,
and if you will put on some shoes that have not
got high heels, we will make a start."
But Veronica did not stir, and the dark eyes
among the shadowy drapery opened wide in
amazement, for, practised hypnotist that he was,
Lucas had never before had experience of a
subject who went easily into trance and then
Proved unamenable to suggestion. He did not
know that Veronica had ' gone off' with her

214 THE DEMON LOVER

mind concentrated upon the idea that she would
not leave the room, and that this prior autosuggestion
would nullify all subsequent commands.
Within the limits of the four walls she was his to
command at will, but outside the four walls
neither he nor anyone else could make her
go.
Baffled by the turn affairs had taken, Lucas
shifted his ground.
" Aren't you going to help me ? " he said.
Veronica, motionless in her chair as a statue,
tuined her face towards him as if the closed eyes
had sight.
" One of those children is dead," she said ;
" and the others are very ill."
" I am sorry the child is dead," said Lucas.
" I must have taken more from it than it could
stand. The others will be all right in a day or
two ; they will soon pick up again."
" There have been several children who have
died from what you did to them," said Veronica,
drawing a bow at a venture.
" Have there ? Children die very easily ; such
a small withdrawal of vitality seems to deplete
them."
" There won't be any more," answered
Veronica.
" No, I hope not," said Lucas. " But come,
now, we want to make a start. I think one more
expedition will do the trick."
" There will not be another expedition," said
Veronica.
" Oh yes, there will," said Lucas, and the dark
brows met in a frown under the grey hooded
draperies as he concentrated the gaze of his eyes

THE DEMON LOVER 215

upon her. The hand, long-fingered and flat-
palmed as in life, shot out towards her and
passed with a slow stroking movement down
across her face. Veronica's body did not stir,
but down again into the dark blue abyss sank her
soul as the hypnotic trance deepened under
Lucas's manipulations.
Again he essayed to command her upon this
deeper level of trance, and again her mind, set
to a keynote, resisted. Yet again he sent her
swooping to a still lower level, and yet
again she eluded him. Then, angered and
baffled beyond caution, he thrust her out a third
time, when, to his surprise, the rigidity left her
figure, and she sank back among the cushions
like a child asleep, a look of wonderful peace
taking the place of the strained, anxious expression
of her face. For Lucas had over-reached himself
as those so often will who seek to tamper with
natural laws, he had thrust Veronica out beyond
any plane upon which he himself could function ;
she had escaped from his control; her soul
had passed from the subjective condition of
hypnotic trance and become objective upon a
higher plane of consciousness; subconsciousness
had given place to superconsciousness, and
Veronica had escaped.
There are not many hypnotists who can put a
subject in this state of trance, and there are not
many individuals who are capable of so functioning,
but such exist, of both kinds, and sometimes they
meet, with astonishing results. Veronica's soul,
hounded deeper and yet deeper into the subjective
ttatc, had suddenly broken through into those
regions known to occultists as the Spheres of

216 THE DEMON LOVER

Safety. The soul had gone to its own place and
was among its own kind.
A smile parted Veronica's lips, and she seemed
to be answering a greeting. Lucas, watching
her, knew that she had passed to those regions
for the right of entrance to which he had sold his
soul ; something in her own nature had given
her the key to the gate that was barred to him.
He watched and waited, unable to follow her
where she had gone. He remembered the time
when an unknown Power had intervened on her
behalf upon the road to Brighton, striking him
down with the sudden impact of Its force, from
some such plane as this It had come, and Lucas
asked himself what manner of soul it was that
functioned through the child-like personality of
Veronica. Of ancient lineage and high initiation
it must be in order to contact these levels ;
Lucas wondered that he had never detected her
status before. He had believed her to be a
little, primitive, unevolved creature ; whereas,
she was evolved beyond the transmitting power
of her brain.
The immortal soul overshadowed rather than
incarnated in the body of Veronica Mainwaring,
and the personality built up by the experiences
of a single life had hitherto given but little
indication of that which lay behind it. He
guessed that she had no need to incarnate
upon her own account ; earth had no lessons to
teach a soul of this type, her place was elsewhere ;
he might have guessed this from her desirelessness 
and lack of all resentment. Why, then, was
she here at all ? Some tie held her bound ;
some link yet remained between her and this

THE DEMON LOVER 217

plane of existence. Lucas was well aware that
in past lives they had trodden the same path,
and worked together at the same occult work ;
there is no stronger bond than this; it will hold
when the cords of love and hate are loosened.
Lucas had lost track of her after that last fateful
incarnation at Avignon, when she had definitely
chosen the White, and he the Black Path, and had
paid with his life for his choice. That age may
have been dark in many respects, and its wisest
men ignorant as we reckon learning to-day, but
there were some things which they knew that
their successors of a more enlightened period
have forgotten, and certain aspects of psychology
were among them. They had some acquaintance
with the rarer powers of the mind and they knew
their dangers. The white magic of the mystic was
understood and reverenced, but they saw to it
that he or she who manifested these abnormal
powers was well disciplined by confessor and
convent rule ; they did not permit such folk to
be a law unto themselves, well-knowing the risks
to which they were exposed ; and if any person
showed signs of a like power which was not
dedicated to holy use, that person was burnt to
ashes, and his knowledge perished with him ;
for, knowing the dangers of such power should
it be unhallowed, the men of that age took no
chances, and they were wise in their generation.
No doubt many innocent persons perished, no
doubt evidence was admitted at the trials that
was not weighed in the balance of impartial
justice, but there is equally no doubt in the
minds of those who have studied the evidence
that there was a widespread knowledge at that

218 THE DEMON LOVER

time of certain practices which the great occult
fraternities, who are the guardians of these
things, have always tried to keep secret, and that
this knowledge got into evil and untrustworthy
hands and was terribly abused. It is believed
to-day by those uninformed that it was an
ignorant and corrupt priesthood who instigated
these prosecutions, but this was not so. The
first alarm came from the men who held the
keys of the secret gateway in that generation ;
men who were far more highly trained in the
arts they tried to stamp out than any
of those who practised them. The Church has
never sought to destroy the powers of the inner
life, she has only sought to regulate their use and
to prevent their unguarded and unhallowed
abuse, and in so doing she has safeguarded
mankind from evils little suspected by modern
men in a Christian country. Such men as Lucas
were common in Europe in the Middle Ages;
the well-attested records of their doings exist
in official archives for any who care to look for
them, and they are only rare to-day because a
priesthood despised as ignorant and obscurantist
stood on guard between common men and the
powers of darkness; and well it would be in this
day, which is seeing just such a recrudescence of
interest in the unseen, if an initiate priesthood
could again guard our civilization from dangers
of which it little suspects the nature.
Lucas waited impatiently while Veronica's
soul wandered in the regions of light whither he
could not penetrate. The shadows were his
kingdom, and the dark waters of the abyss whence
elemental substance can be drawn ; he was of

THE DEMON LOVER 219

the Unseen, but she was of the Light that
blinds by its brightness--and that light barred
his way as effectually as a granite wall; he could
but await her return, not knowing what she
would bring with her.
What Veronica brought, she herself could not
have told him, for the doors of that bright
world closed behind her as she passed out and
memory was sealed. She woke from her trance
as naturally as a child from sleep to find the room
glowing with a strange warmth. She was alone,
but the aroma of Lucas's presence hung about
the room just as the odour of tobacco smoke
lingers, and was readily perceptible to her hyper-
sensitized condition. Somewhere, in the stormy
night outside he was tossed and buffeted by the
winds of space, houseless, companionless, with no
rest for the sole of his foot nor where to lay his
head. He who had defied the laws of life was
caught in their cross-currents, and the great
smooth flow of evolution was twisted into a
maelstrom as he sought to deflect its tides to his
petty personal ends. He had invoked the wind
with success, but the whirlwind had followed on
its heels. It is one thing to call upon the cyclone
to fill our sails and drive us upon our course
regardless of what men's houses be blown down
and the crops of their patient toil laid to the
earth, but it is quite another thing to tack into the
teeth of the anti-cyclone that inevitably follows ;
if we invoke the laws of nature, we must abide
by the laws of nature, and their prime maxim is
that action and reaction are equal and opposite
on the plane upon which they are invoked.
Back they come with the swing of a pendulum,

220 THE DEMON LOVER

and though the initiate of the Lesser Mysteries
can set going that pendulum, he cannot escape
its return swing; it is only the initiate of the
Greater Mysteries who knoweth the secret of
the escapement.
Veronica was aware of a curious sense of
buoyancy and freedom ; she seemed to have been
relieved of a great weight, a load had rolled from
her shoulders. Life pulsed within her, and yet
she was heavy with sleep. Like one roused in
the middle of the night, she was refreshed, yet
ready to turn over again and sink back into the
depths of slumber whence she had been recalled.
Veronica lit her candle, and with unsteady
feet went up to bed, as yet she did not seem to be
fully back in the flesh after her far journey;
her soul still desired to move without her body,
and made no allowances for its limitations.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

SHE AWOKE IN THE MORNING CONSCIOUS OF
having dreamt, but her dreams were vague
and fugitive, as dreams usually are, yet somehow
she had the impression that these dreams were
not as other dreams, there was a different quality
about them, and the dream-images that floated
vaguely through her memory were of a type she
had never known before. And yet they were
vaguely familiar; like forgotten childhood
memories, they drifted elusively and would not
be linked on to the chain of her history. Somewhere,
at some time, she had known those tall,
slow-moving figures, distinguished by the colours
of their cloaks; somewhere she had heard the
deep resonant tones of their speech, and their
language was not strange to her.
The wind had fallen, and the day was still with
the warm stillness that sometimes comes in the
late autumn, and Veronica, walking in the garden,
sought to piece together her broken memories.
But they resisted all her efforts; sought, they
fled before her ; but left to their own devices
as in dreamy abstraction she gazed at the blue
distances, they thronged and pressed about her
as if seeking to attract her attention. The
corner of some grey mediaeval cloister faded into
the high white pillars of a great temple, and these
again gave place to the clear bright radiance of
last night's dream scene.
Sometimes the sound of the voices returned
to her ears. Someone had told her to place
herself in his hands and trust him; she was
to trust unreservedly, and she would be guided ;
something was to be made plain to her, someone

222 THE DEMON LOVER

was to be sent, but who, and what, remained
obscure ; broad general impressions lingered in
her mind but details eluded her. She gathered
that the struggle she had hitherto waged unaided
had been taken in hand by higher powers which
were in some way concerned in what was going
on, as if Lucas had intruded upon their territory
and outraged them. He had often hinted to
her of other forms of existence, none the less real
and potent because they are imperceptible to
our senses. It seemed to her that, even as these
forms of life are unreal to us, so must we be
unreal to them, but upon this occasion, deflected
from the normal by the machinations of Lucas,
she had become aware of their existence, and
they, equally, had become aware of hers. She
realized their wisdom and power to aid, and they
were aware of her defencelessness and danger.
A link, slender and uncertain, but still a link,
had been formed between the two phases of
existence, and across the gulf they could signal
to each other.
She was no longer alone and unfriended;
solitary though her life might appear, yet the
unseen was close about her and she was aware of it,
There are some people who, once having become
aware of the existence of a supernatural reality,
attribute everything to its agency ; the mouse
in the skirting, the wind in the chimney, are
ministering spirits, and a special providence
attends upon all their affairs; or, contrariwise,
malignant devils lurk in creaking furniture and
have to be chivvied with elaborate rituals. To
neither of these types did Veronica belong;
when the Unseen obtruded itself upon her, she

THE DEMON LOVER 223

was forced to accept it, but as soon as it receded
into the background again, she questioned the
truth of her memories and attributed them to
dream or imagination. Veronica did not wish
to believe in the Unseen, but she had had it
forced upon her.
She queried persistently the reality of last
night's experience; there was no means by
which she could test its truth, no trace was left
by the presences that had come and gone. There
was but one thing she could test them by, in her
memory there lingered a feeling that a definite
promise had been made that someone would
come to her upon the physical plane,
that the Unseen could communicate with others
as well as herself, and that one of these others
had been told to come to her and help her.
She gathered that she had found her way into
some great organization that had branches upon
many planes of existence, and that its members
would come to her assistance in case of need,
and at the same time had the right to demand
service of her. They differed entirely from the
dark, cold, forces that companioned Lucas,
these seemed to belong to something old, subhuman,
that mankind had left behind and
forgotten ; that aspect of the Unseen which now
approached her seemed to belong to a kingdom
that mankind had as yet hardly glimpsed. Lucas
resuscitated the dead past; through Veronica
there came to birth the living future.
The day passed away uneventfully, Lucas's
hour had not yet come, it was not till after dark
that he could function. Veronica knew the time
of his manifestation, and awaited him. As before,

224 THE DEMON LOVER

the deepening of the twilight heralded his arrival,
and with the passing of the last light a presence
made itself known in the room. Again the same
process was repeated, the available life forces were
divided, till these two met upon common ground,
half way between the unseen and the seen.
The cowled figure formed itself and spoke :
" Veronica, we must come to an understanding.
Are you going to help me or not ? "
Veronica faced him as she had often faced him
in life. " I will do anything I can to help you,"
she said. " But you shall not do that ghastly thing
to the children again if I can prevent it."
" What else can I do ? " said the cowled figure.
" If I do not replenish my vitality I cannot hold
even this form together, and then I go to the
Second Death. You do not know what that is,
do you, Veronica ? "
She shook her head, " I know nothing about
these things."
" Just as well for you. All the same, we are
in for them now, and have got to cope with them
as best we can. But I can tell you this, I do not
wish to go to that Second Death. You will not
send me to that, will you Veronica ? "
In his urgency he swayed towards her, and a hand
that was as real as in life was laid upon her arm.
Veronica put out her hand, and the soft smooth
draperies under her touch were like no textile
she had ever felt. " I do not want to do you any
harm, Mr. Lucas, I would not do you any harm
for the world, but I cannot let you hurt those
children, I must protect them. It is all so
horrible. Why must these things be ? "
" Because they cannot be helped," answered

THE DEMON LOVER 225

the man. <( I have got to feed or die, and I don't
propose to die if I can help it."
" But you are dead," cried Veronica.
" There is no such thing as death in the way
you mean," answered the man. " I have lost
the machine that was given me to work before
such time as the forces that drive it are withdrawn.
The forces are there, intact. I am alive, very
much alive, and if I can once succeed in building
myself a machine, I will live as you live, and then
I will come for you, Veronica I But at- present I
am only half way there, I must have more life,
and I have got to take it where I can get it."
" You shall not take it from the children again,'
said Veronica. " I will not fail you ; I promised,
and I shall keep my word. What I can do for
you I will do, but the children you shall not
have."
She faced him : young, and even for her years
curiously immature, yet with a force that was as
old as Nature shining through her. Motherhood
incarnate represented itself through that childish
figure ; she was the immortal female defending
the young of her kind, the fiercest thing alive.
Even the man she loved might not touch the
children. And Lucas knew it. Veronica moved
blindly, as her instincts prompted her, but Lucas
knew what forces they were that drove her ; he
knew that he had sought to revive a thing that
evolution itself had stamped out, the power of
the strong to break away from the herd and feed
upon the helpless young of their own species,
and Nature herself had risen up and said : " This
shall not be," and found a ready means of expression
in the pliable young girl whom he had himself

226 THE DEMON LOVER

taught to be a medium. The anti-cyclone had
set in, and the principalities and powers that
Lucas had outraged were coming into action.
Veronica spoke again. " I do not understand
these things, Mr. Lucas, but I am willing to do
whatever I can to help you, I am not afraid ;
and although I do not understand them, yet I
seem to know something about them."
" I dare say you do," said Lucas. " And you
will know more before you have finished. There
is only one thing I ask of you, to lend me enough
of your subtle ethers to enable me to collect
material for a body through which I can function,
and if you will not do that, then there is nothing
to be done, we are at a deadlock."
" I am willing to lend you my forces," said
Veronica. " But I will not let you touch the
children."
" And it is only from the children that I am
strong enough at present to take the forces
right out and keep them," he answered. " If I
persist in drawing upon your forces, I shall draw
you over to my phase of existence--death in life--
Veronica, and even I draw the line at that. I do
not draw the line at much, but I draw it at that.
You won't let me come to you, and I won't draw
you over to me. So there we are, and I hope
you can see a way out of it, for I cannot."
Veronica had no answer to offer. The grey
form before her swayed like the blown flame of a
candle as emotions that were still human
coursed through it.
Lucas spoke again. " If I did not love you
it would not matter, but I love you, and I cannot
do this thing. Why is it that my love for you

THE DEMON LOVER 227

--the best thing I have ever known--should be
the thing that has dragged me down ? If I had
not cared what happened to you, I could have
let the brethren strike you and escaped myself
as I had always intended to, but when it came
to the point I couldn't do it. I should have
lived, but I should have been alone, and that
was no good to me. Now, again, I could draw
myself back on to the life-plane by using your
forces, but then I should have pushed you out
here, we should only have changed places, and
I should be alone again. Why didn't I meet
you before I got myself mixed up in these things ?
I do not believe I should have wanted to do them
if I had had you ; and now it is too late, there is
no path of returning from the place I have come
to save by the use of other people's lives, and
that you will not let me do, and I'm damned if I
am going to use your life, Veronica. I am damned
already, so it probably would not make much
difference, but, anyway, I am not going to do
that."
The room, dimly lit by the dying fire, was a
cave of darkness; no stars looked in through the
uncurtained windows, for the night was clouded
without. The lamp was unlit, and the fire, that
form of life which is not of our evolution, seemed
repressed and made sinister by the presence of
this being who had intruded upon a world where
he had no right to be. Something of his nature
had entered into the fire and influenced
its burning; it was no longer the cheery hearth
of human comfort, but a flickering witch-light
that ministered to spells. Lucas, when he
returned from the unseen, did not come alone,

228 THE DEMON LOVER

but a multitude of others slipped through the
door that opened to admit him. Beings of
another order of life, penetrating to our world
with the eager curiosity with which the psychic
investigator intrudes upon theirs.
The thinning of the veil had set up a process
of spiritual osmosis, and the more vigorous
forms of the unseen were beginning to absorb
the life of the plane of manifestation. Lucas
had known all along that herein lay the danger.
By refusing to pass on to the place appointed, the
Judgment Hall of Osiris, as it is called, he had
taken up his abode in the antechamber between
the unseen and the seen, the realm of that which
has no form, whence the root-substance of matter
is drawn and to which it returns when the
ensouling life has outworn it. Herein function
creatures of another order of creation to our
own, whose nearest analogy is in the saprophytic
life of the bacteria ; the scavengers of creation,
they have their place in its processes, but, should
they obtrude beyond their appointed sphere,
they are the most horrible of phenomena.
It was in this world of the abyss that Lucas
was dwelling, and to whose influences he was
exposing the only being he had ever cared for.
He knew, both from the teaching of the occult
school in which he had been trained and by his
own experiences since he had quitted the physical
body, what cold hell of disintegration it was to
which he had come ; he also knew that, should
he fail to keep his footing in the world of manifestation--should
he no longer be able, through
depletion of vitality, to hold his tenuous form
together, then he would be drawn again into the

THE DEMON LOVER 229

flow of the cosmic laws, and the process of death,
which by his knowledge he had been able to
hold in abeyance, would continue its course, the
last shred of etheric substance which served to
anchor him to the world of matter would fall
away, and his naked soul would depart to the place of judgment to face its reckoning. For
there is a balancing of accounts at the end of
each incarnation ; the books are made up, that
which we owe the universe is demanded of us
and that which the universe owes us is paid
over; these two transactions constitute the
experiences known as Purgatory and the Lesser
Heaven. Then, the balance having been
adjusted, as far as it can be adjusted, by subjective
realization, the soul is ready to embark upon a
new venture in the world of matter ; experience
having been transmuted into faculty and a balance struck between the good and evil of its
nature ; it has, as it were, gone into voluntary
liquidation, realized its assets and acknowledged
its debts. Lucas was an absconding debtor, he
dared not present himself for examination because
his transactions in the unseen powers had been
fraudulent, he had converted trust monies to his
own use when he employed cosmic powers for
personal ends; an account would be demanded
of him which he could not give, and he had little
mind to face the consequences.
Having no physical organs that could draw
energy from the animal and vegetable kingdoms
by the processes of ingestion and digestion, he
had to obtain his energy ready-made from those
who had--he thus became a parasite, living upon
the vitality of others, and what happened to

230 THE DEMON LOVER

those others we have already seen. Had such
mysterious child-deaths taken place in the Middle
Ages they would have been recognized for what
they were, and a vigorous vampire-hunt set on
foot; the body of the suspect would have been
dug up, and if it were found to have resisted
decomposition, as would be the case if the soul that
had inhabited it were maintaining its hold upon
the world of form, it would have been burnt to
ashes, for fire alone can break the hold of the
semi-dead upon their house of flesh.
No such knowledge was available in our
enlightened day, neither coroner nor undertaker
guessed the significance of the unmarred
body of Lucas, and so the drama of life-in-death
was allowed to work itself out. The forces of
the Outer Dark were taking part in the events
of human life; it remained to be seen if the
forces of the Inner Light could cope with them.

CHAPTER TfFENTT-FOUR
FERONICA AWOKE TO FIND THE FIRE SHROUDED
V
in grey ash and the dawn-light looking in
at the windows. It had frozen hard in the
night, and the sun rose upon a silver world.
Lucas was gone, but the atmosphere of his
presence still hung about the room. The girl
flung open the windows and stepped out into
the clean coldness of the autumn dawn ; the
grey light was fast changing to a rosy radiance
and, late in the year though it was, there were
murmurings in the tree-tops. Veronica stood,
face to the east, waiting for the sun to clear the
hills, for though the sky was alight, the valley
lay in the shadow of the earth-bend. She was a
very different girl to the one who had watched
sunrises among the Surrey hills; naturally of a
sensitive disposition, as Lucas had divined when
the employment agency sent her, among dozens
of others, in response to his bogus request for a
secretary, the experiences through which she had
passed were rapidly awaking her psychic vision,
and things which, though all about us, pass
unperceived by ordinary mortals, were fast
coming into the focus of her consciousness; and
so, in that clear, frosty winter dawn she heard
one of the most wonderful things in the world--
the cosmic powers changing guard as the sun
forces ' take over' from the darkness, the
manifest alternating with the unmanifest; she
heard the great humming musical rhythms by
which the sensitive can recognize the potencies
that are manifesting, just as the experienced
mechanic can tell the make of a car by its engine-
note ; she felt the wind of their passing and

*3«


232 THE DEMON LOVER

could see the great rivers of light up and down
the sky that marked their path. The ebbing
tide of night gave place to the flood of daybreak
and all creation rejoiced, but she did not forget
that the relaxation of evening would be equally
welcome to a tired world. Light is good and
darkness is good, if so be they keep their just
proportions; ebb and flow, action and reaction,
all equal and opposite, through which, and by
means of which, evolution mounts its spiral.
For a while she listened until the cosmic
rhythms settled down to their new motif and the
world took up its day's work. Cocks crowed on
distant farms, and a clop-clop of heavy hoofs
on the high-road showed that the plough teams
were going to their labours. Man's day had
begun. The still, mist-laden air of the valley
began to throb with the sound of human activities.
The harsh panting of a locomotive as it breasted
the grade out of Beckering Junction gave the
rhythm of the age of iron, and Veronica, back
once more in the world of matter, set herself to
pace the terrace until such time as her ancient
domestic should elect to serve breakfast.
Time never hangs upon the hands of those who
have once penetrated into the subjective world of
mind, for there is ever work to be done with the
mental images, and Veronica had much to think
about. As she walked, she reviewed the transactions
that had led up to her present situation ;
to her mind had come a lucidity it had never
before possessed, and behind the train of memory-
pictures she could discern the causes that linked
them together. Some door within her consciousness
had been opened during the night's

THE DEMON LOVER 233

experiences, and it seemed as if she had gained
access to chambers in her house of mind which
hitherto had been barred to her.
In these new regions of the opening subconscious
she found a series of vignettes--clear
but remote, like the memories of early childhood
--of herself under different circumstances and
conditions of existence, and these she recognised
to be memories of previous lives. She knew that
she had formed a tie with Lucas at some time
during these lives, and that it was the influence
of this tie which she still felt, and which made her
feel that she could never achieve with any other
human being the closeness of spiritual relationship
which was possible with him. Evil though
he was, he was nearer to her than anyone
else.
As she studied the dream-pictures, they grew
clearer. Temple and grove and great resonant
rituals built themselves up before her inner
vision in elaborate fantasies, and with a sudden
flash she realized that these were akin to the
scenes she had witnessed when Lucas drove her
across the spinning barrier of psychic force that
guarded the forbidden degrees of his own
Fraternity. These things, if not identical in
form, were similar in force, and some connection
existed between them.
But these new chambers that had opened in
her mind were not only stored with picture-
images, but with a forgotten lore that, fragment
by fragment as associations touched it, came
back into memory; the subconscious was
becoming conscious, and in its depths were found
stored the memories of past lives. Swiftly the

234 THE DEMON LOVER

revelation dawned upon the girl pacing the
terrace in the pale early sunlight. In the bright
dawn of human life, when the unseen world had
been very close to mankind and the priest-kings
still ruled their peoples, she had entered the
mystery-schools that then flourished and had
there learnt to work with one with whom, when
once the bond was established, she had worked
again and again until there came a life of crisis
in which one was tempted and fell to the lust of
power, while the other held firm to the faith.
The physical vehicles, shattered by the rending
forces that now tore them, soon released the
souls they held bound in the flesh, and in due
season these souls had again returned to the
world of form in that Roman incarnation of
which Lucas had told Veronica the story upon
the road to Brighton ; Veronica, with her widened
vision, was now able to read behind the incidents,
and knew that the one had been able to enter
the great new tide of spiritual life that had been
poured out upon the world from the hills of
Galilee, whereas the other had sought the old
pagan mysteries, had turned from the future to
the past, and reverted to a primitive type.
Again, at Avignon, the story had been repeated,
one soul had been drawn into the spiritual current
of its age, and the other had turned to a pagan
folklore. In the present life Veronica knew
that they had come together again, but the end
of the story was not yet written. A flash of
intuition revealed to her that of these spiritual
yoke-fellows, the one had dealt with the forces
of the mind, and the other with the forces of
the heart ; and that each, deprived of the other,

THE DEMON LOVER 235

was baffled. The one was a mind without
conscience; the other, feelings without understanding.
Together they could touch the heights,
but apart, the one was a knave and the other a fool.
It was the contact with Lucas that had opened
Veronica's intellect, and the contact with Veronica
that had touched Lucas's conscience.
Realization had come to Veronica and was
dawning in Lucas, but they were in the thick
of a toil of consequences that past lives had set
swirling about them, and it might well be that
realization had come too late for any solution to
be found in the present incarnation. Veronica
could not see her way through the maze, and she
realized that Lucas, in the strange, morbid,
life-in-death and death-in-life to which he had
condemned himself, might well pass beyond the
power of any aid, human or divine, and be drawn
into the gulfs of Chaos, whence there is no return.
Smoke rising from the kitchen chimney showed
that breakfast was at last under way, and Veronica
was turning towards the house when a footstep
attracted her attention, and she saw, approaching
through the dew-laden shrubberies, a figure
voluminously garbed in an old-fashioned Inverness
cape and laden with an antique Gladstone bag,
and in another minute her old friend of the long
white beard stood before her and grasped her
hand in greeting.
Amazed beyond words at this unexpected
visitation, Veronica entirely forgot the duties of
hospitality, and it was not until the old man
had led her into the billiard room and divested
himself of his wrappings that she enquired the
reason for his journey.

Z36 THE DEMON LOVER

He shot a keen glance at her from under his
heavy grey brows.
" Did you not expect any one ? " he said.
Veronica looked at him blankly for a moment,
and then, remembering the promised visitor of
her vision-dreams, hesitated, uncertain whether
to speak or not, for, though she herself was fast
becoming more certain of the reality of her
experiences and had ceased to attribute them to
imagination, it had never occurred to her that
anyone else might share them, and she feared to
expose herself to ridicule or suspicion should she
reveal her knowledge. But the old man's eyes
challenged hers, and she accepted the challenge.
<( Yes," she said slowly. " I was expecting
someone, but I was not quite certain--I did not
know it would be you--it took me by surprise
when I saw you."
The old eyes, strangely brilliant in that faded
face, continued to study her acutely.
" Who was it told you to expect someone ? "
he asked blandly.
Veronica returned his gaze squarely, she knew
that she was being tested ; the old man's thoughts
were perceptible to her, and she felt that hers
were equally so to him ; concealment between
them was both useless and needless. She
answered his question in the spirit in which it
was asked.
" THEY told me," was her reply.
" Then you know THEM ? "
She bowed her head. It was sufficient. They
understood each other.
The old woman appeared with a laden tray,
and seeing a second person present, shuffled off

THE DEMON LOVER 237

to boil another egg. Nothing ever perturbed
her or seemed to rouse her curiosity. Had she
found the Cham of Tartary confabulating with
Veronica, she would have boiled him an egg
without question. Lucas had trained her well.
The meal was occupied with the courtesies of
the table and enquiries as to Veronica's health
and other mundane matters. Both felt that there
were things to be told that were too momentous
to bear the interruptions necessitated by eating,
but as soon as the old man was ensconced in one
of the big leather arm-chairs, and his pipe was
well alight, he looked across the fireplace to
where Veronica occupied the other arm-chair,
and remarked : " Things, I take it, have been
happening ? "
He invited confidences, and Veronica determined
to burn her boats behind her and give
them.
" Dr. Latimer," she said, " I am going to tell
you the truth ; perhaps you will think I am mad,
but it is the truth, whether you believe it or not."
" I expect I shall believe it," the old man
replied. " There are certain things which some
of us know, though the world in general may be
ignorant of them."
" After you left me," Veronica began, " everything
was quiet for a little while, and I began to
think that I had made a mistake and that death
was--what most people think it is, and that
everything was finished ; but, on the other hand,
I felt it wasn't, and that presently I should be
wanted."
" You neither heard nor saw anything ? "
questioned the old man.

238 THE DEMON LOVER

" Nothing. I simply had a kind of feeling, and
though one part of me said it was all nonsense and
I was making a fool of myself, it was the deep,
inner part of me, my real self, that felt like that,
and I stuck to it; but it was so vague, and so
faint, that I could not make out anything definite
until one day I happened to put on an old
coat that had belonged to Mr. Lucas, and that
seemed to put me right back into his atmosphere
again, and I knew that he wanted me to go down
to his grave. I had never been, because I did
not wish to think of him as dead, but when I got
that feeling I obeyed it and went."
" Did you feel anything there ? " asked the
old man.
" Nothing," replied Veronica. " It simply
made me realize that Mr. Lucas was really and
truly dead and tha^ I had better think of other
things. But on my way back through the wood
there was something, I don't know quite what it
was. It was like a little cold wind that came
from nowhere, and it simply made us shudder."
" Who was ' us ' ? " enquired the old man,
quickly.
<( It was Alee Butler and myself. He was the
son of the doctor here; you may remember him
at the inquest."
" Was the son ? " the old man queried again.
(< Is someone dead ? "
Veronica twisted her hands together nervously.
" Yes," she replied slowly. " Several people are
dead. That is the thing I want to talk to you
about."
The old man removed the pipe from his mouth,
and the curl of smoke arising from it slowly died

THE DEMON LOVER 239

away. Veronica glanced furtively over her
shoulder, as if in search of eavesdroppers, and then
plunged into her story.
" When I went to the graveyard," she said,
" I saw four children's graves, all newly made,
and this is a tiny village, only one street." She
paused and looked sharply at the old man to see
what he would make of this statement. He
nodded.
" I am not surprised," he said.
" There have been other children who have
died since then : two others that I know of. I
will tell you about them presently, but I want to
tell you about Alee first. I got to know him when
I went to the churchyard. He was very kind
and showed me where the grave was. It would
have been rather trying, all alone."
" Did they bury Justin in consecrated
ground ? " asked the old man.
" I think so," said Veronica, " but not in the
old part of the churchyard round the church,
but in the new part, over against the river, and
right up in the far corner of that."
" That accounts for a good deal," said the old
man. " A modern Anglican consecration is
nothing approaching as powerful as one that was
done before the Reformation. They would have
spared themselves a good deal if they had allowed
Justin to lie in the shadow of the church.
Christian charity can rarely be dispensed with
safely."
" Alee walked home with me through the
wood. I was rather upset by the visit to the
grave, and also I think that he was attracted
towards me ; after that, he often came to see

240 THE DEMON LOVER

me, and in the end he asked me to marry him.
I think that that was what did it."
" Did what ? "
" Led to his death," said Veronica, steadying
her voice with an effort. " We had a dog here,
and one night it had a queer kind of seizure
and---- " She hesitated. How could she possibly
recount these wild imaginings ? <( And it
went mad and broke loose and killed Mr. Butler,"
she tailed off lamely.
" What was done with the dog ? " demanded
her interlocutor.
" They had it shot."
" And its body ? "
" They thought it had hydrophobia, so they
sent its body to the destructor at Ambridge."
" Good," said the old man, with an air of
satisfaction. " That is the only thing to do in
a case like this. And after the dog was destroyed,
did you have any more trouble ? "
" Yes," said Veronica, slowly. " We did.
Mr. Lucas came here into this very room, and
materialized over there where you are sitting."
" Did any one see him beside yourself ? "
" Not on that occasion, but when they shot
the dog a whole lot of people saw him, and the
district is simply scared to death, and the old
caretaker started drinking and has been drinking
ever since."
" How did he perform the materialization ? "
" He had got a certain amount of substance
from the children he had killed, and he borrows
the rest from me."
" Borrows ? "
" Yes, he borrows enough to be able to

THE DEMON LOVER 241

materialize and talk to me, and then returns it
and dematerializes when he has finished."
" Has he done this often ? "
" Four or five times."
(< What effect does it have on you ? "
Veronica hesitated. " It does not affect me
much at the time," she said at length. " In
fact, each time he does it it affects me less, but
I find that I am beginning to want to--to do
the same sort of thing to other people. When I
went down the lane the other day a little child
ran out to me, and I picked it up and cuddled it;
it seemed to me as if I could feel the vitality
radiating from it. The mother ran out and
snatched it from me, and I was thankful, for I
realized that I was doing just the same thing as
Mr. Lucas had done. I wouldn't do it again,
now I know what it means, but it is rather awful
to feel that way, isn't it ? "
The old man pulled at his extinguished pipe
for some time before replying. Finally he
spoke.
" Would it be possible to open Lucas's grave
without being observed, or should we be obliged
to get a permit from the Home Office ? "
" I should think it would be quite possible,"
replied Veronica. " But I should not like
anything to be done that could hurt Mr. Lucas.
The old man looked at her keenly.
" What is the position between you and
Lucas ? " he asked.
" There is an old bond," answered the girl.
" I thought as much. And what may be the
nature of that bond ? "
" We worked together in some of the old

242 THE DEMON LOVER

temples, and then, later, there was trouble and
we drifted apart. But we needed each other.
In fact, I think a great deal of the trouble came
from our being apart. He acted as a brain to
me, and I was a heart to him. Then in this life
we met again, but things were in such a tangle
that we can't get them straightened out. Mr.
Lucas did all sorts of wrong things with me.
He doesn't care what he does. And even now he
isn't properly dead, and he daren't die completely,
because if he did he would go to some awful
place and probably be lost altogether, and the
only way he can keep alive is by taking other
people's vitality."
" Have you ever heard of vampires ? " said the
old man.
" Yes," answered Veronica. " And--and I
have also heard of were-wolves."
Silence fell. between them.
Finally the girl spoke. " Do you know what
the Second Death means ? " she asked.
" It means the disintegration of the personality,
the unit of incarnation--and its absorbtion by
the individuality--the unit of evolution. John
Smith, shall we say, dies, and the ego, which we
will call Johannes, absorbs the experiences of
John Smith. The personality is as mortal as
the body, it is only the spirit which is eternal.
The first death is that of the physical form,
and the second death that of the body of desire
ensouled by the concrete mind. When that is
gone, the abstract mind, ensouled by the divine
spirit, abides in its own place, which is commonly
called heaven, until the time comes for its
reincarnation."

THE DEMON LOVER 243

" Why is Mr. Lucas so afraid of the Second
Death ? "
" Because that is the day of reckoning whereon
the personality has to answer for its doings.
Lucas dreads the day of reckoning, and not
without reason, either."
Veronica gazed dreamily out of the window
for a while.
" I suppose if anyone heard us," she said at
length, " they would think we were mad, and
that our minds were wandering."
" Doubtless," said her companion drily. " But
how would they propose to stop the deaths ?
They have an amazing infant mortality for so
small a place : they cannot explain that away."

CHAPTER IWWir-PIVS

LUCAS NEVER APPEARED DURING THE HOURS OP
daylight, it was only as the darkness came
on that he might be expected, so Veronica
showed the old man over her little estate, and
pointed out the different objects that were
connected with the problem they had to solve.
They had visited Lucas's bedroom, where the
last blooms of the red rambler shed mildewed
leaves upon the windowsill. As the old man
gathered them thoughtfully into his hand,
Veronica felt that he was surveying the scene with
other senses than his five physical ones.
They inspected the empty dog-kennel, beside
which still lay the unbuckled collar attached to
its chain, and then, from a discreet distance, they
surveyed the cottages in the lane. Finally they
followed the wood path that led to the churchyard
and stood beside a mound of rough earth that
was slowly subsiding under the autumn
rains.
For a long time the old man remained bareheaded
beside the mound, musing upon who
knows what ? Communing with the soul of the
dead man, or dreaming of what might have been
had the son of his spirit been a worthy successor.
Finally he knelt and laid upon the wet earth the
handful of rain-beaten blooms that he had
gathered from the rambler that encircled the
dead man's bed-chamber. Veronica also knelt,
and shaped the dull red flowers into the semblance
of a cross. The old man did not seek to dissuade
her, indeed, she seemed to have carried out a wish
which he had not dared to express.
" Perhaps, after all, he was entitled to it.
244

THE DEMON LOVER 245

Who are we to judge him ? To each man his
own Master," was his only comment.
The evening saw them gathered in the familiar
billiard room. The wood fire threw its uncertain
light, and as soon as the old woman had removed
the evening meal, Dr. Latimer extinguished the
lamp.
" In the ordinary way," said the old man,
" I should not allow you to go into trance without
taking the proper precautions, but under the
present circumstances we must leave the gates
open and allow what will to come through,
otherwise we might exclude something which
was essential."
They had not long to wait. As the flames died
down and the logs sank to a red glow, Veronica
felt the draining of her substance which showed
that her resources were being drawn upon, and
once again the cowled figure began to form
itself in the shadows. The mist-like exudation
condensed itself into floating draperies in the
folds whereof hands and features slowly appeared,
with pools of illimitable blackness for the eyes.
His attention being concentrated upon
Veronica, it was not until fully materialized that
Lucas perceived the presence of a third person.
Instantly his form shot up to twice its normal
height, and the draperies spread out into great
bat-like wings as he hovered over the venerable
white-^bearded figure sitting motionless in the
depths of the chair. So readily did the tenuous
ectoplasm respond to the ensouling mind that
great claws sprang out at the ends of the fingers
as they stretched towards the throat of their
intended victim. There they hovered for a

246 THE DEMON LOVER

moment, irresolute. But the clear brilliance of
the blue eyes never wavered under their heavy
white eyebrows, and the threatening, overhanging
form slowly retreated, the spreading bat-wings
were indrawn, till at last, in the exact semblance
of an Egyptian mummy, Lucas stood upon the defensive.
At length the old man spoke.
" Greeting, my son, in the name of Those
whom we both serve."
A quiver ran through the rigid form confronting
him, and a thin fold of drapery seemed to shake
itself free from the swathing mummy-bands and
hang like a long, loose sleeve.
" Whence come you ? " came the questioning
voice, as if in some set formula, the quaver of
old age sounding in an undertone through its
ritual resonance.
" From the Abyss," came at length the
unwilling answer.
" And whither go you ? "
There was a pause, broken only by the slow
ash falling in the fire and the rhythmic breathing
of Veronica. The log had burnt through and
broken before the answer came, but the old man
nevef stirred.
Then Lucas spoke.
" I am in Outer Darkness," he said. " Blown
about by the winds of space. It is useless to ask
me whither I am going, for I cannot tell you."
" Depart, my son, depart, and be at peace,"
said the old man. <( Face your reckoning and
meet it, and then, when the day of life dawns
for you once more, you can return to the Path
whence you have turned aside."

THE DEMON LOVER 247

The bat-like wings unfolded themselves
threateningly from the drapery as Lucas answered
angrily. " It is not in your power to bid me
depart; I have made good my foothold on the
plane of manifestation to that extent at any
rate. We can defy you, between us."
The old man turned to Veronica. " My
daughter," he said, " it is not in my power to
make Justin face his reckoning, as he very truly
says, because I cannot drive him out of the form
he has built for himself without shattering you,
for it is built in part of your substance, but if
you will withdraw yourself from him, then I
can send him to his own place."
Veronica slowly raised herself up in her chair
and looked from one to another of the two
who confronted her. To her psychic condition,
neither of them seemed material, but to be
different types of force, each expressed through
the vehicle of a mind. The old man appeared
to her as a prism, transmitting a ray from a
great sun hung in space, but Lucas shone with a
phosphorescence, luminous as certain fungi are
luminous, with the light of their own putrefaction.

" Where will he go ? " she said at length.
<( Where is his own place. Will it be well with
him there ? "
Lucas laughed, and the sound seemed to be
taken up by innumerable voices. Every flicker
of firelight, every draught of the crazy house
seemed to cackle with ghastly merriment.
" My own place," he said, " is the Dark Planet
of Disintegration, the Wandering Planet, that has
no orbit. There I shall be returned, cell by

248 THE DEMON LOVER

cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, to
the primordial substance whence I arose, for it
will not be Purgatory I go to, but annihilation,
for I have given myself unreservedly to darkness
and said to evil, ' be thou my good.' "
" Are you quite sure, my son, that you have
given yourself unreservedly to evil ? " said the
old man.
" It is not my fault if I haven't 1 " snarled
Lucas.
Veronica's voice cut across their dispute. " I
could not send him to destruction, Dr. Latimer.
I may be very foolish and very wrong, but I
really could not do it. I do not think he can do
anyone any harm if I won't help him, and perhaps
if we give him time, he may have a chance to
put things right."
(< Time is the one thing we cannot give him,
my dear. There is no slack water in the cosmic
tides. He must go one way or the other, back
into life or out to the death of the soul."
" Then why can he not come back, if such a
thing is possible ? "
" Because he can only come back through you,
and then you will be where he is now."
" Is that so very terrible ? " said Veronica.
" It is," said Lucas, briefly.
" For the second time," said the old man,
concentrating his gaze upon the shrouded figure
before him. " Where are you going, my son ? "
Lucas did not answer.
" Do you intend to go to your reckoning ? "
The bat-wings folded closer round the swathed
figure and a shudder seemed to run through it.
" Not if I can help it."

THE DEMON LOVER 249

" Then do you propose to maintain yourself
in manifestation by means of the life-forces of
this girl ? "
There was a long pause as Lucas seemed to be
unable to come to a decision.
" It will have to be one or the other," said the
old man.
" I know that," said Lucas.
He looked at Veronica as she lay back in the
big chair, and she leant towards him anxiously.
(< I do not know what it all means," she said,
" but I shall not send you away, I said I would
stand by you and I will. I cannot let you hurt
the children, but I will not send you away
myself."
Lucas smiled a crooked smile.
" I may have to send myself away, little
Veronica."
The old man became tensely still in his chair,
and seemed hardly to breathe as he waited for
the next words from the grey shadow in the
corner.
The fire had died to darkness before they were
spoken.
" There are some things---- " the words came
slow and heavy, like drops of water falling in a
cavern, " --which cannot be done."
Again silence fell upon the room, unbroken
by any sound, within or without, and finally the
voice of Lucas spoke again.
" If it were anyone but you, Veronica--no, it
cannot be done." Then the voice, gathering
strength, rang like a bell, and into it came a
note that was almost joy. " This is good-bye,
Veronica. Good-bye and God bless you, go free

250 THE DEMON LOVER

and be happy. Forget as much as you can and
forgive the rest. Or, if you must remember,
then remember that I loved you."
Veronica rose up in the darkness and faced
him, and the old man, watching, saw that the
child Veronica was no more, for the soul which
had lived through the ages had at last entered
into full possession of its tenement.
" I shall forget nothing, and there is nothing
to forgive. This thing had to be, and we have
worked it out together. To you I have been a
soul, and to me you shall be a mind. If you go
to the Dark Planet, I will go with you, and if I
remain here, you will return to me."
" It is not for us to say what we will do," said
Lucas. " I go to Those who will deal with me as
They see fit---- " and throwing up his hand he
cried in a voice of evocation " ----for I go to
my reckoning."
The utterance of the words seemed to bring
with them a sudden change. The cowled grey
figure was shot through as with streaks of fire,
and crimson fumes rolled up all around like the
light of a burning city. Once again the cackling
laughter rose up from every shadow and crevice
of that haunted house, and peal upon peal of
hooting merriment answered from high overhead
where the night clouds raced across the face of
the moon. It seemed as if every patch of gloom
harboured triumphant evil and Lucas had been
delivered into its hands. A blast of furious gale
struck the house broadside till the place rocked
on its foundations, rafters and beams creaking as
if the whole crazy structure were coming down.
The windows, torn bodily from their frames,

THE DEMON LOVER 251

crashed on to the floor in a shower of flying glass.
Something that was thicker than the darkness
swept into the room with the gale, passed swiftly
over all its surfaces, touching them with intangible
tentacles till it found that which it sought, and
then swept out again as it had come. The gale
sank as suddenly as it had arisen; the room,
vacated of all presences, was simply a shattered
human dwelling-place wrecked by a cyclone.
No trace remained of the forces that had swept it
or the passions that had invoked them, save only
that an intolerable stench of putrefaction rolled
up in waves from the corner where the grey
cowled figure had stood.


CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE TERRIFIC WIND DIED AWAY AS SUDDENLY AS
it had arisen, leaving the room in utter
darkness. Veronica could hear the old man
fumbling for the matches. The little pale flame
lit up at last, a feeble gleam among the shadows
The lamp, smashed to fragments, lay in a corner,
and the old doctor turned slowly round, seeking
for something to ligh". As he turned, he suddenly
stopped with a half-strangled exclamation, for,
framed in the shattered window-space, stood the
figure of a man. They both gazed at it in
speechless amazement as the dying flame of the
match illumined the strange, impassive countenance,
exaggerating with its nickering shadows the
deep lines of the parchment skin, the hollow
cheeks, the high cheek-bones, the great jaw and
the lofty forehead. The eyes, deep-set and
glittering, were those of the hawk, not the
Mongol, otherwise the newcomer might have
passed for an Asiatic rather than a European, and
the lithe, silent movement with which he entered
the room confirmed the illusion of the East,
yet Veronica knew that this man was not an
Asiatic, any more than he was a Westerner ;
he was absolutely detached. He gave the impression
of tremendous power, utterly impersonal,
completely under control. Veronica had seen
enough of the members of the mysterious
Fraternity in whose headquarters she had been
concealed to recognize the sign manual of its
discipline. The glittering eyes of Dr. Latimcr,
the catlike movement of Lucas, the sense of
impersonal power of the hard-faced man, all
these she saw developed to a far greater degree
252

THE DEMON LOVER 253

and concentrated in a single individual. She
knew without telling that this man had to do
with the Fraternity, but was far higher, far
bigger, than the men she had so far encountered
in the handling of its affairs. He as far transcended
Lucas as Lucas transcended herself, and
she knew without telling that he was not only a
man to be obeyed, but to be trusted.
The match burnt itself out in the old man's
fingers while he gazed speechless at this apparition,
and the room was once again in darkness and
silence.
The voice of the stranger broke the spell.
" You know me ? "
" Yes, you are--you are--the Third." Dr.
Latimer spoke brokenly, like a man overwhelmed
by emotion.
" Quite right. I am the Third. Now I
suggest that you strike a light. There are
matters I wish to discuss with you."
Veronica could here the footsteps of the
stranger as he crossed the bare parquet. He
moved in the darkness with the precision of a
man who could see where he was going, and the
clink of metal told her that he had laid hands on
the two brass bedroom candlesticks that stood
on the table near the door. By the time Dr.
Latimer had got the match alight, he was standing
before him, holding the candlesticks.
Veronica could now examine him at her
leisure. The loose frieze overcoat he wore
exaggerated his height and the massiveness of
his frame, but as he laid it aside she saw that
he was clad in the ordinary lounge suit of civilization.
Unlike some students of the occult, the

254 THE DEMON LOVER

members of this fraternity, which really possessed
power and knowledge, did not seek to be
impressive, but rather to conceal themselves
under the bushel of convention in order to
pursue their studies undisturbed. " Don't stir
up Mrs. Grundy," Lucas had once said to her,
" she is an old lady well worth conciliating if
you want to be let alone." The newcomer was
evidently of the same opinion, for mien and
manner were studiously approximated to the
ordinary.
He knelt before the smouldering hearth and
drew the ashes together gently, as if handling
living creatures. The instantaneous blazing of
the fire under his hand seemed to Veronica of a
piece with his power to move in the darkness:
he might wear ordinary clothes, but he was no
ordinary man.
For the first time he looked directly at her as
she sat motionless in her big chair, as she had
sat ever since his entrance.
" Come, my child," he said, laying his hand on
hers. " Draw up to the fire and warm yourself.
You are cold."
That kindly touch, which had nothing of a
man's familiarity in it, told Veronica yet more
about the stranger. Dr. Latimer had brains
and kindness, but no strength ; the hard-faced
man had brains and strength, but no kindness ;
the newcomer had all three, and Veronica knew
by this that he was a far greater man in every
way than either of the others was ever likely
to be.
" Talk of angels and you hear their wings,"
says the proverb, and even as she thought of her

THE DEMON LOVER 255

old opponent, a step sounded on the gravel of
the terrace, and his burly figure stood framed in the window.
He looked just as surprised to see the man
who had called himself the Third as Dr. Latimer
had looked, and Veronica had a secret suspicion
that he was not any too pleased. He was not the
type of man who would take kindly to yielding,
and the stranger would certainly rule any group
in which he found himself. On the other hand,
she knew intuitively that Dr. Latimer was
immensely relieved at the intervention of the
unknown man, and quite ready to trust the issue
into his hands.
" If you will be good enough to come in, Mr.
Fordice," said that personage, " we will be able
to close the window."
The hard-faced man gave a grunt that sounded
rather resentful of even this reasonable request,
but nevertheless he did as he was asked, and lent
his assistance to secure the mouldering shutters
that threatened to fall bodily into the room.
No questions were asked or answered, but
nevertheless, Veronica, with her quickened
intuition, felt certain that each of these three
men had obeyed a silent summons, though
whether that summons had issued from the Third,
or whether he, too, had been summoned, she
could not tell. They were gathered in a semicircle
round the now blazing fire, and two pipes
and a cigar were rapidly obscuring the atmosphere,
and still no word was spoken ; she felt that these
men were " sensing" the state of affairs,
" sensing " each other, and acting and reacting
in a way which she could not divine. She had

256 THE DEMON LOVER

always thought that occultists were ascetic
people who touched neither meat, drink nor
tobacco, but Dr. Latimer had always eaten
without a murmer whatever the caretaker had
chosen to set before him, and the Third was
smoking a long black cigar that would have put
the average man upon his back. They might
be psychics, but they were certainly not sensitives.
Finally the Third spoke. " We must settle
this matter as speedily as possible," he said.
" Time is an important factor in the case."
" I thought it had been settled," said the
hard-faced man, with something that closely
approached a sneer.
" I thought so, too," said Dr. Latimer, looking
up in surprise. " Lucas, in my hearing, accepted
his fate and went out to the Judgment Hall of
Osiris."
" And was turned back at the gate," said the
Third, " for his time was not yet come. They
would no more accept him than they would
accept a murdered man or----" he paused
significantly, " --a suicide."
" Would you consider," said the hard-faced
man, " that a criminal who was executed in
accordance with the law was a murdered man ? "
" The law of the land rules the land," said the
Third, " and when the Race Spirit takes a life,
it is a death according to the law, and therefore
a natural death ; whether it is right or wise to
take that life, is another matter, and in any case
the issue is one we are not concerned with here,
for the law was not invoked. It was a private
vendetta, gentlemen, and it is no use pretending
otherwise, and the consequences of your rash

THE DEMON LOVER 257

action you must face, for you have caused a soul
to leave its body before its natural term had
arrived, and that soul, therefore, ' walks' as
surely as any other suicide."
" Why do you keep on emphasizing the word
suicide ? " asked the man he had called Fordice,
peering sharply at the Third.
<( Because I do not know what other word to
use for a man who voluntarily vacates his body,
the makers of dictionaries had not foreseen such
an eventuality as the one we are discussing.
No, gentlemen, with all your cleverness you did
not even succeed in ' bagging' our friend. He
eluded you."
Fordice gave a sound that was almost a snarl.
He was evidently more annoyed to learn that
his magic had failed of its purpose than relieved
to find that he had not got a crime on his
conscience. His character appeared to have
undergone a profound change even during the
short time that Veronica had known him ; the
evil of which Lucas had rid his soul seemed to
have entered into him.
<l The question is, what do you propose to
do with our friend ? " continued the Third.
" He is a member of your Lodge, gentlemen, it
is your problem."
" The reason he does not go to his last account
is that he is a vampire," said Fordice. " If you
opened the grave you would probably find his
body as fresh as when it was buried."
" Precisely," said the Third. <( We all know
that. But the question is: What are you going
to do about it ? "
" You also know the traditional way of dealing

258 THE DEMON LOVER

with vampires, no doubt ? " answered his
opponent, the sneer appearing openly on the
surface of his expression.
" I knew it before you were born," said the
Third, a slow smile stirring the lines of his face.
" But, considering the circumstances under which
this man became a vampire, would you be justified
in using it. You, of all men ? "
At this home thrust the hard-faced man
winced and kept silence.
" It has always been my belief," said Dr.
Latimer, " that Justin, with all his faults, did not
enter our Fraternity without a reason, and it is
also my belief that when he gave himself as a
voluntary sacrifice to save another, he wiped
out a very great deal, if not all, of his debt."
" Did he not contract a fresh debt when he
elected to become a vampire ? " asked Fordice.
" Admittedly. But do you not think that he
wiped that out also when he went voluntarily
to the Second Death ? Remember, we had not
power to force him to surrender his wraith-form,
he laid it down of his own free will rather than
injure one whom he loved. The Second Death
is a terrible thing for a man in his position to
face, and he had no means of knowing that the
Second Death would reject him."
" And even if he had known it," interposed
the Third, " to wander homeless in the Intermediate
State is a much worse thing than to
burn in Hell, for you suffer all the pains of
purgatory with none of its purification. That
soul is out on the astral now, where, between
you, you have despatched him.
" Now, gentlemen, as I told you before, time

THE DEMON LOVER 259

is the essence of the contract, for, deprived of his
peculiar form of sustenence, Lucas will no longer
be able to hold his physical body together, and
you have just about the same time in which to
act as would elapse between death and burial
in the ordinary way. Lucas has returned to his
grave by now, for it is past cockcrow, and he
will probably return to it again to-morrow, but
I doubt if he will be able to use it much longer."
" The correct thing to do is to ' Bury him
at four cross roads, with a stake in his inside,' "
said the hard-faced man, his sneer again getting
the better of his discretion.
His interlocutor looked at him sharply. " Don't
talk nonsense," he said. " That is nothing to do
with the matter. The body will disintegrate,
anyway. Lucas has already renounced his vampiri-
cism. What we have to decide is, whether
we will let events take their natural course and
leave Lucas to wander as an earth-bound spirit
till his time is up, or try to get him back into his
physical body, which is at present lying in deep
trance in the graveyard."
The old man sat up with a start. " Then- then he is not dead ? " he said.
" By no manner of means," said the Third.
" He has performed a very advanced yogi operation,
just such a one as Stevenson records in
' The Master of Balantrae.' If you were to
examine his body, you would probably find that
even the injuries inflicted by the post-mortem
had been reconstructed. He had been out of
his body some time when the death-stroke fell
upon it, and had evidently planned to lie in
trance until he could arrange to get his body

z6o THE DEMON LOVER

exhumed under the proper conditions, living as
a vampire meanwhile. You can read an account
of similar occurrences in ' Dracula,' written by
a man who had more knowledge than Stevenson.
Lucas took a very long chance, it was a thousand
to one against his experiment succeeding, but as
he had managed in holding his form together so
long there is a possibility that he might have
succeeded had he continued. He is a brave
man, and whatever the cruelties by which he
had kept himself going, I can forgive a great
deal to bravery."
He paused and looked round the room, studying
the effect his words had had upon his hearers.
Dr. Latimer was gazing at him in eager perplexity.
There could be no doubt as to the way his wishes
went, but he feared to allow himself to hope too
much lest the disappointment should be too
keen. Lucas had meant a great deal to him,
had been like a son to his lonely old age, and he
had painstakingly transmitted to him all his
laboriously acquired occult knowledge, hoping
to see the younger man accomplish the Great
Work that had been denied to himself.
The hard-faced man had lost the immobile
calm of the trained occultist and had his hand
at his moustache, tugging at it nervously. It
was obvious that a vindictive temper was striving
for the upper hand. He hated having his judgments
reversed, he resented the tacit assumption
of superiority by the stranger, but he appeared
to consider resistance as futile and showed signs
of making good his retreat as best he could. He
rose to his feet.
" I have given you my opinion," he said, " but

THE DEMON LOVER 261

I don't resist your authority. The responsibility
is yours. All I ask is, that you will excuse me
from sharing the consequences."
" That is an absolution I have no power to
give," replied the Third. " You will not see the
end of the consequences of this affair for many
a long life to come. But we hold no man against
his will. If it is your wish to withdraw, you
have my permission to do so."
The hard-faced man pulled on a heavy leather
motoring-coat, his eyes wandering from one to
another of the faces before him. For Veronica
they held something that almost approached pity :
to old Dr. Latimer he gave a glance of resentment
and contempt: the eyes of the Third he was
unable to meet. Nevertheless, he addressed him.
" Things may turn out as you expect," he
said, " or they may not. Lucas may have
succeeded in eluding the Dark Ray or--he may
not. But in any case " (turning to Dr. Latimer),
" I wish him joy of the leavings of the postmortem."
With which parting shot he closed
the door behind him, and they heard his footsteps
die away through the empty, echoing
house.

CHAPTER TffENTr-SEVEN

<( npHAT, OF COURSE, SAID THE THIRD, IS THE
-HL crux of the matter. What has the postmortem
left ? We cannot tell that till we open
the grave. Our immediate practical problem is,
how to get the grave open. There is one person,
however, who has got to be consulted before we
commence this undertaking. Now, Miss Mainwaring, what is your feeling about the matter ?
Do you wish to stand clear of it, also ? If so,
I can put you in my car and drive you across
running water and effectually prevent Lucas
getting on your trail again.Veronica gazed at him, unable to reply for a
moment. The thought of meeting Lucas
quickened her pulses and brought a faint flush
to her cheeks, but the fear of what such a meeting
might mean closed like a cold hand about her
heart. The dark hawk's eyes of the strange man
before her watched her compassionately, but he
made no attempt to help her. It was her deepest
instincts that had to give the answer, and no
influence must be used to sway the surface.
But Veronica's answer was a foregone conclusion.
She had gone too far down this path
to turn back, and the Karma of a million years
was behind her.
" I will stand by--Justin," she said, using the
Christian name of her sinister lover for the first
time. " For I think he will need me when he
comes back."
" I think so, too," said the Third. " In fact,
it would have served little purpose to bring
him back without you, but the decision had to
be free. Pity and duty are no substitutes for
»6»

THE DEMON LOVER 263

love." He looked at the watch on his wrist.
" It has just gone three ; the sun rises at seven-
thirty ; we have, therefore, about three hours
between now and second cock-crow to do that
which we have to do."
" How are we to get the grave opened ? "
enquired Dr. Latimer. " We have no time to
get an order from the Home Office, and clandestine
digging is impractical."
" There are more ways of opening a grave than
with a spade," said the mysterious man with the
hawk-like eyes. " Have you got your robes with
you ? "
" Of course," said the old man, and taking one
of the bedroom candles departed into the
draughty darkness of the whispering, creaking
house.
The solitary remaining candle did no more than
make the darkness palpable in the big room with
its shadowy furniture. The man who called himself
the Third sat for a while gazing silently into the
dying fire, the dull red glow from its embers
throwing strange lights and shadows on his rugged
features, making him look like a giotesque idol
carved by some forgotten race. He seemed far
away in the depths of thought, oblivious of his
remaining companion, and Veronica was able to
study him at her leisure, wondering what manner
of discipline had made him the man he was. Suddenly
he looked up, and crossing the hearthrug,
sat down on a chair close beside hers, taking her
hand in his.
" My child," he said, " Do you realize what
lies before you ? Have you any understanding
of the matter ? "

264 THE DEMON LOVER

Veronica gave him her slow Monna Lisa smile.
" I understand better than you think," she said,
" I have known these things before ? "
" And you remember ? Yes, I see you do.
That is good, very good. I believe we shall be
able to carry this thing through with your
assistance. To rouse Lucas from his trance is a
simple enough matter, but to make him live
afterwards, ah, that is the problem. You will
have to marry him, my child, do you realize that ?
And the mating of an occultist is much more than
the ordinary marrying. You will have to mate
with him in the Unseen as well as on the earth,
and in the Unseen, you must be the male force,
you must be the controller. Your spiritual
nature has got to marry his intellect, and you
must fertilize it, not be fertilized by it. Do you
understand that ? You cannot lean on him on
the Inner Planes, by sheer spirituality you have
got to take the lead. His mind must never get
the upper hand again, your spiritual nature must
be the dominant. Child that you are, can you
do it ? Can you hold a man of that type by his
ideals ? "
Veronica withdrew her eyes from his and gazed
far off into the shadows. Could she do what
was required of her ? Or had she in her ignorance
committed herself to tasks utterly beyond her
capacity ? No one knew her weaknesses better
than Veronica did ; she was only too well aware
of the simplicity and inexperience that made her
a ready prey to the designing, of the diffidence
that prevented her from giving effect even to
that which she knew, and the lack of self confidence
that held her helpless and inarticulate.

THE DEMON LOVER 265

Yet within her there was a curious sense of
power. Little, bright, clear-cut pictures, like
the images seen through the wrong end of a pair
of opera glasses, broke and re-formed before her
eyes in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope. The
portico of a temple, with its great pillars sparkling
white in the sun ; then the bowed, silent congregation
within, the drifting incense and the
shifting lights; then the darkness of the Holy of
Holies, with the coals in the tripod glowing redly
and the dim forms of elemental spirits shaping
themselves in the fume.
The man's hands held hers in a grip of iron, his
eyes burned themselves into her brain.
" Oh Pythoness! " he said, " Can you not
remember ? "
She looked at him with eyes that seemed to
gaze through deep water, but as the light cleared,
she saw that about his face were forming the
folds of the striped head-dress of Egypt ; behind
him rose the shadow of a vast pylon. His hands
crushed hers as his will drove into her, and she
could feel the burning heat of them against her
skin.
" Oh Priestess of Isis, have you forgotten ? "
His voice boomed and rolled like a drum through
the room. The shadowy pylon behind him came
clear for a moment in rose-red sandstone, then
changed into another though similar, type of
masonry, more roughly hewn, though white as
milk. Far below her, as if seen from a precipice,
the huddled roofs of houses, covered with some
yellow metal that was not gold, gleamed dully
through the thick, misty air, and the sun hung
large in the heavens, like a disk of copper.

266 THE DEMON LOVER

" Helios, Helios, Quanto Rhopantanek! "
breathed the voice in her ear, and all Lost
Atlantis woke to the chant of the Sun-god.
She saw the great processions of the white-clad
priests and remembered the part she had taken
in them : she saw the smoke rise from the sacred
volcano, and knew what her function was, and
she heard her voice answer in the antiphone,
" Quanto Rhopantanek, Helioun I "
She sprang to her feet and threw up her hands
in the Salute of the Sun. The ancient invocation
to the Great Initiator sprang to her lips.

" Waft thou my «out down the River of Naradek :
Bring it to Light, and to Life, and to Love."

The man who was called the Third rose from
his chair and gave the answering salute. Through
all the changes of the vision, his face had been
the one thing that had not changed, under
Egyptian nemys or Atlantean filet, it had been
the same. He looked deeply into her eyes.
" Do you remember me ? " he said.
" Yes," she answered.
" By what name did you call me last ? "
" You were known to us as The Count."
He nodded, and the tenseness went from his
attitude as he relaxed the effort of will he had
been making.
At that moment the door opened and Dr.
Latimer entered, bearing a small black bag in his
hand. He laid it on the table beside another of
similar shape and size that evidently belonged to
the newcomer ; then, without instruction, he
assisted the man who was called the Third, and
also the Count, to shift the furniture into the

THE DEMON LOVER 267

corners of the room and clear a floor-space. Then
he knelt in the middle and held one end of a
thread while his companion drew out a circle
with a lump of putty-like substance attached to
the other end, which left a luminous mark upon
the floor, as of some phosphorus compound.
" What sygils ? " said he, taking another lump
of the same stuff out of his black bag.
" Put the Signs and Seals of the Princes of the
Powers of the Air," replied the other, " I am
going to invoke the Spirits of Tempest. What
we cannot dig up we may be able to wash out
as the grave is almost on the bank of the river."
Veronica was reminded of the famous floorcloth
that Lucas had told her about, the thing
that first turned his thoughts to the study of
occultism. The old man left his companion to
complete the hieroglyphs, and put a small piece
of some black substance on the glowing embers
of the hearth ; when it began to smoulder, he
took it up with tongs and placed it in a
copper thurible of antique workmanship, and
sprinkled what looked like fine gravel upon it. A
dense cloud of smoke went up instantly, filling
the room with aromatic odours and curling into
fantastic forms as the draughts took it. He
delivered the little censer into the hands of
Veronica.
" You must take charge of this," he said, " And
you must on no account let it go out. Keep it
swinging gently all the time."
They turned to see that the other man had
lifted a small table into the centre of the circle
and draped it with a black cloth into the semblance
of an altar. In a little bowl of ruby glass

268 THE DEMON LOVER

a floating wick showed a point of flame as it swam
on the surface of the sacred oil; its light fell with
a ruddy glow on certain metallic objects of peculiar
shape that were disposed around it.
Veronica's attention was distracted for a
moment by the censer in her charge, from which
the smoke had ceased to issue, and mindful of
Dr. Latimer's warning, she swung it back and
forth till the glowing charcoal once more set the
incense smouldering. She looked up to find that
a change had occurred in the room. The personality
of Dr. Latimer had completely disappeared
under the flowing black robe and cowl of an
Inquisitor which he had assumed, but the
individuality of the Third was revealed rather
than hidden by his robes, for his cowl was pushed
back to frame the face, and upon his head he wore
the royal head-dress of Egypt.
He came towards Veronica holding out a
similar robe to that which shrouded Dr. Latimer.
" This you must wear," he said, " for you will
need protection in that which we are about to do."
Veronica, completely enveloped in the flowing
black draperies of the voluminous garment, felt
strangely cut-off from the world. It had evidently
been used for rituals before, for its folds
were full of the smell of incense.
" Now," said the Third, " are we ready ?
Have we got everything ? We can't step outside
the circle once we have started, you know."
He came towards Veronica.
" This is your place," he said. " Whenever you
have finished a circumambulation, come back
here, and be sure and keep the censer going.
There is some more incense in that box. The

THE DEMON LOVER 269

charcoal ought to last out all right. Always go
round the way of the sun. Be sure you never
get into the reverse circumambulation. Don't
try and cut across the circle; whatever happens,
keep going round, and whatever you do, don't
step outside that line. Get the censer going well,
and then walk three times round the circle the
way of the sun."
He returned to the altar, taking his stand with
his back to the East, immediately in front of it.
The light from the floating wick threw into
strong relief the rugged lines of his face ; and the
hawk-like eyes, deep set under heavy brows,
flashed with an unnatural fire. The long black
lines of his draperies added to his height and made
him look gigantic in the shifting shadows, and
the golden head-dress of Egypt, with the serpent
rising as if to strike from above the brow, seemed
the fitting crown for a face that was neither
young nor old, but strangely deathless in its
calm, as if all the races of the earth had risen and
fallen before its unageing wisdom and power.
He raised his arms above his head to their full
extent, and a great shadow followed him across
the ceiling. In his right hand he held a sword,
and the towering figure and the flashing blade
seemed gigantic among the shadows. The Kab-
alistic Cross of purification was marked on brow
and breast, and a strange stillness fell upon the
room.
At a sign from him, Veronica set out upon her
task of pacing the circle. The cowl stifled her,
she could see out of the eye-holes with difficulty,
the incense rose in clouds into her face as she
moved, and at every step she found an increased

270 THE DEMON LOVER

difficulty in balancing. To walk that circle was
no simple task, for she seemed to be pushing her
way through invisible currents. The second
time round, however, was easier, and at the third
round a force seemed to push her along, and when
she returned to the station assigned to her, she
saw that a circle of fire now shone where she had
walked. It appeared and disappeared as she
gazed at it, and she could not make out what it
was that she saw. At first she thought it was an
optical illusion, then she thought that something
had actually caught fire, and finally she realized
that what she saw was not of this earth, and
appeared and disappeared as her consciousness
wavered between two planes.
The Third dropped the point of his sword
upon the symbol on the altar and began the chant
of evocation. Vibrant Names of harsh consonants
rang out into the darkness as demon after
demon was reminded of his oath and conjured
from the abyss to come to the service of the magus.
By the Secret Names of God were they conjured,
and by the names of the great Archangels of the
Elements ; and as each Name rang out in resonant
syllables the atmosphere of the room changed
perceptibly.
Demons of storm, Princes of the Powers of the
Air, Vice-Regents of the Elements, he called them
all by name.
" Oh fiends of the abyss, remember your oath
upon the Symbol. Oh dark and mighty ones,
remember Who calls upon you."
The night without was still, pitch dark, and
frosty. There was no sound within but the
faint shifting of logs on the hearth and the

THE DEMON LOVER 271

perpetual creaking and whispering of the old house
settling upon its timbers. Both men stood like
statues, and Veronica, old memories stirring
within her, maintained the same stillness, for she
had worked ritual magic before, and knew the
discipline that teaches immobility.
The evocation ended, dead silence fell upon the
room. Force seemed to be pouring in a river of
light down the sword on to the symbol, and the
figure of the magician was like a dynamo, vibrating
with the power of its invisible speed. A faint
sigh of wind in the treetops at length broke the
stillness ; then it came again more strongly, and
they heard the scurry of dead leaves over the
frosty ground. It was not the kind of night for
a thunderstorm, but Veronica was put in mind
of the sudden wind that heralds the thunder.
Again the wind rose with a wailing moan, and
the snapping of dead twigs in the shrubberies
could distinctly be heard above it. And then,
without any warning, the crackling volley of
thunder broke out immediately overhead, and
rain came down in torrents.
Veronica had never seen such rain ; it had the
violence of a tropical storm, and falling upon the
frost-bound ground, it ran straight off down every
slope in sheets of water. All about them they
could hear the sound of water on the move, and
before many minutes had passed, the voice of the
river had changed its note.
With the outbreaking of the thunder the
tense forces of the room seemed to be released.
It was as if the power generated by the invocations
had passed from the altar into the cloud, there to
be released as lightning and tempest. The two

272 THE DEMON LOVER

men relaxed their vigilance, and going to the sole
remaining window, stood watching the storm.
As the lightning lit up the sky in flickering
sheets, they could see the river through the gaps
in the trees. It drove before the wind like a
miniature sea and had already risen to cover the
road. Suddenly a far away roaring, like a train
going over a viaduct, fell upon their ears above
the din of the storm. It came steadily nearer,
as if some heavy vehicle were charging down the
cart-track beside the river, and then into their
line of vision came a wall of dark water edged with
foam that rushed along the surface of the river
with the speed of an express train.
" Good heavens, what's that ? " exclaimed both
men simultaneously. They had evidently bargained
for no such manifestation.
In the heaving billows behind the line of foam
great timbers rose and fell like the lances of a
charging army ; part of a hay-rick went past, and
then a farm cart, turning over and over.
<( A dam must have gone somewhere up
stream," said Dr. Latimer, and a big sluice-gate,
coming down flat like a raft, confirmed his words.
Lucas, terrible in death, was even more terrible
in resurrection.
" Quick," exclaimed the Third, " we haven't
a moment to loose I Heaven knows what that
flood-water has done in the graveyard," and out
he went into the raging, buffeting darkness.
Veronica, clutching her censer as if her life
depended on it, went after him, the old man,
still cowled, close upon her heels.
They made their way through the tormented
woods, guided by the squat tower of the church

THE DEMON LOVER 273

that stood out against the darkness at each
lightning-flash. The trees screamed, roared,
crashed and shuddered ; branches came down
like javelins, and the water ran ankle-deep over
the frozen ground that it could not penetrate.
It was undoubtedly the frost-bound earth that
had caused the catastrophe, for all the water that
fell in the valley ran straight down every slope
into the river. Thunder-rain usually falls upon
parched ground that absorbs a vast quantity
before any is thrown off, but frozen ground can
absorb nothing, and rain runs off it as off a roof ;
English streams are not calculated to stand such
an emergency, and the river, already full with
winter rains, was over its banks in five minutes.
They stumbled across the fallen stones of the
graveyard wall and found themselves under the
lee of the church. The ground rose slightly
towards the graveyard, and the road that ran
beside the river was cut out of the slope. The
swollen river was six feet deep on the road, and
raced madly along the retaining wall that held
up the face of the bank, and as they approached
the spot where Lucas lay, a great spout of foam
went up high in the air as a long section of the
wall, its foundations undermined, fell into the
river.
" Here--here it is! " cried Veronica, stumbling
over a low mound of rough earth that lay at the
very edge of the water.
" Be careful. Come back," cried Dr. Latimer,
seizing her arm, " More of the bank may go at
any minute."
" It is going now," said the Third, and even as
he spoke, another mass of the bank peeled away,

274 THE DEMON LOVER

and Veronica had a glimpse of some dark object
sticking out of the yellow clay as the moon broke
fitfully through the racing clouds. It slowly
tilted as the earth was cut from under it by the
water, and the loose clods above, washing away
in the downpour, revealed the long dark outline
of a coffin, which slowly up-ended and slid towards
the river.
With one spring the Third was into the washed-
out grave and seized the metal handle at the
coffin-head that gleamed dully in the moonlight.
The bank was crumbling fast, but he stood his
ground, and Veronica heard a sound of splintering
wood as he forced open the lid of the coffin with
some metal tool. The wood was cheap
and frail and yielded easily, and as the water
reached him, he clambered out of the grave
bearing in his powerful arms a long white form,
and a flash of lightning revealed to Veronica the
features of Lucas, serene in death but unmarred
by corruption, swathed in the stained cerements
of the desecrated grave.

CHAPTER TVENTT-EIGm

THEY MADE THEIR WAY BACK THROUGH THE
roaring darkness. The flickering lightning
revealed sudden glimpses of the churchyard,
with its rows of headstones and black writhing
yew-trees rent by the storm. The ground was
sodden by now, and the two men slipped and
staggered with their burden, leaving Veronica to
follow as best she could, still clutching the censer,
which for some unknown reason, had managed
to remain alight. The girl hoped and prayed
that no one would look out from the upper
windows of the cottages and see them in the
fitful moonlight. What they would make of the
black-robed, ghoulish procession, she could not
guess, but she knew it would certainly be attributed
to the Grange, and even that stolid countryside
had reached the point when it was nearly
ready for a lynching.
They were still far from the shelter of the wood
when her fears were realized. She heard a
window thrown up in the neighbouring darkness.
Then she heard a door open and shut. So far as
she could judge, the sound came down the wind,
indeed, it could hardly have been heard from the
contrary direction, and she guessed that it came
from the house of Dr. Butler, whose garden
abutted on the churchyard.
<( Hurry, hurry," she cried to her companions.
" Some one is coming." They struggled on
towards the shelter of the wood, guided by the
line of tormented yew-trees, and as they passed
the gap in the wall, Veronica, gazing over her
shoulder in terrified apprehension saw the flash
of an electric torch by the corner of the church.

275


276 THE DEMON LOVER

Her companions hurried on, but Veronica paused,
she felt that she must see who came and what was
discovered. The moon broke through a rift in
the clouds, and she distinctly saw a bulky figure
clad in the white macintosh that Dr. Butler
often wore. What strange fatality, what invisible
link caused this man invariably to appear when
anything was toward with regard to Lucas ?
She saw him pause suddenly, as if he had heard
something. He looked about him as if trying to
identify the direction of the sound. She wondered
what it could be. Then he set off and
made a straight line towards the place where she
was hidden. An eddy of wind from the lee of
the woods had carried to him the odour of the
incense from the censer she still bore with her.
She crouched among the bushes like a hunted
creature, petrified, unable to move. The man
came on till he was some thirty feet from the edge
of the trees, and paused irresolute. The eddying
draughts around the yew-trees had carried the telltale
fragrance away. He was not a primitive
savage, and his nose gave him no sure information.
She saw him stand there irresolute, and then,
believing himself to be alone in the darkness,
he lifted his arms above his head and poured out
an incoherent mixture of prayer and cursing in
which her own name was mingled with that of
Lucas and Alee. Then he turned and stumbled
off over the grave-mounds in the direction of his
home, taking with him his grief and his suspicions
to brood over in silence.
Veronica rose from her hiding-place and
followed the half-obliterated path through the
woods, a sudden realization coming to her that

THE DEMON LOVER 277

she was alone in the darkness and storm with all
the unseen presences of the abyss let loose about
her. The storm was not merely a hurricane of
wind and rain, it was unspeakably sinister, like
hands reaching out from the shadows, and the
darkness was palpable, like veil upon veil of soft
black woven stuff. But even as she realized the
subtle intangible influences abroad in the night,
a change began to make itself felt. The howling
tumult of the storm was being penetrated by a
musical note, which gradually dominated its
numberless discordant voices. Slowly they were
dominated, gradually they were drawn into tune ;
then the rhythmical singing itself fell silent and
all was still. The storm had died away as suddenly
as it had risen.
All about her Veronica could hear the drip of
moisture; little wandering eddies of draught
blew in all directions, and the whisper of innumerable
streamlets sounded in the darkness.
The sudden stillness after the din of the storm
left a singing in the ears, the cessation of the
lightning gave the eyes a chance to become
accustomed to the darkness and use what half-
light came from the waning moon. Veronica
hastened down the sodden path, going knee-deep
into the channels of new-formed streams, pushed
through the sodden shrubbery, and mounted the
steps from the lawn, just as Dr. Latimer stepped
out on to the terrace to come in search of her.
A banishing ritual had evidently been done in
the billiard room of the old house, for the altar
had been dismantled of its symbols and the lamp
extinguished.
The body of Lucas lay upon the long sofa

278 THE DEMON LOVER

beside the fire. The grave clothes had been
replaced by one of the black robes worn by the
brethren of the Fraternity, the stains of the
soil were removed, and the black hair, that had
grown long and shaggy, had been roughly cut and
smoothed. There was nothing in his appearance to
shock her, except that the eyes were deeply sunken,
giving an indefinably deathlike look to the face.
Otherwise he might have been lying there asleep.
The Third, still in his sodden robes, stood
beside the window, evidently awaiting her arrival.
" Go quickly," he said, " and change into dry
clothes. We have none too long for the resuscitation, it must be completed before cock-crow.
Now hurry."
Veronica needed no second bidding. She fled
up to her room and hastily changed her dripping
garments and was back again in the billiard room
before the fumbling fingers of old Dr. Latimer
had completed his toilette. The Third still
stood beside the inanimate form of Lucas, and
as she came timidly up to the couch, he put his
arm round her and drew her towards the body
of the dead man he had told her she must marry.
Together they stood looking down into the
masklike face with its sunken eyes.
Veronica was too dazed and numb to know what
she felt towards the man who lay before her.
The fact that corruption had not touched him
convinced her that it would be even as the Third
had said, and that Lucas was in a deep trance
and capable of resurrection. All thought of his
death and burial was obliterated from her mind.
She thought of him as an unconscious man who
would shortly recover consciousness, and with

THE DEMON LOVER 279

whose strange and sinister temperament she would
once again have to contend. She remembered
all he had been to her and all he had done to
her, and if it had not been for the arm of the
strange master of men, adept, saint, or sorcerer,
whatever he might be, that held her so securely,
she felt that, like Ahab, she would have turned
her face to the wall and yielded up her spirit.
But in him she felt an absolute trust, she knew that
it was he who would cope with Lucas, though
he had to depend upon her as the instrument
of his purpose, and she knew that she would not
fail him. Whether her love or her horror of
Justin were the greater, she could not have said
even to herself, but the mysterious adept absolutely
dominated her, not because he controlled
her, but because he inspired her.
The old man joined them, and the Third bade
him sit at the far side of the hearth while he
placed Veronica at the foot of the couch so that
her face would be the first thing the dead man
should see when he opened his eyes. Then,
bending over the inanimate body, he made the
same passes that a hypnotist makes when he recalls
his subject to consciousness.
He had not long to wait. At the third or fourth
stroke a shudder ran through the form of Lucas
and he tried to move, but subsided again. Life
had not yet reanimated the tissues, it was a mere
galvanism of the nerves that followed the movements
of the magnetiser's hand. The Third
placed his open palm upon the chest of the dead
man and slowly raised it up and down ; after a
moment or two the chest followed the movements
and breathing was restored. It was soon

280 THE DEMON LOVER

obvious that the heart had also taken up its beat,
for the face was losing its waxen appearance and
assuming a more normal tint, though still bleached
like the skin of one who has long been in the dark.
The Third turned to Veronica.
" Speak to him," he said, " Call him by name.
Make him come back."
Veronica bent over the foot of the couch.
" Mr. Lucas! " she said hesitatingly.
The hand of the Third fell heavy on her
shoulder.
" That will not do," he said. " You must call
him back with love. He will not come for that."
Veronica struggled with her feelings. The
horror of the dead face, the horror of what the
dead man- had been, filled her with dread and
repulsion. She could not love that, it was no
use. Then came to her the thought of the old
man's words, (< He died in your place. He went
voluntarily to his death to save you." If it had
not been for his love for her, Lucas would not
now be lying dead. She must love him as a
struggling human soul, if not as a man. The
will of the Third compelled her ; it was her
lower self that feared, her higher self that loved,
and having known the higher, she must follow it.
She bent further over the sofa.
" Justin" she said softly, "Justin"
A quiver passed over the face of the recumbent
man. He stirred stiffly, as if with limbs numbed
and cramped, and slowly rose to a sitting position ;
but his face was still that of a sleeper and the
eyes remained closed.
" Can you bear to touch him ? " whispered
the Third to Veronica.

THE DEMON LOVER 281

She came to the side of the couch and took
Lucas's hands in hers. They were cold with the coldness of a serpent, and as she held them the
snake-like fingers slowly closed round hers and
gripped them, and she saw that the nails had
grown long like those of a Chinaman. The man who was called the Third came behind Lucas
and placed his palms on either side of his head.
" Lucas Justin Lucas!" he said in deep
vibrant tones like the low notes of a 'cello.
The lips of the mask-like face slowly unclosed
and a husky murmur came from between them.
" Do you know who I am ? " said the voice of
the man who bent over him.
A faint nod responded.
The Third let go his hold on Lucas's head,
straightened himself, and resting his elbow on the
chimney piece, stood waiting for him to regain
full consciousness. The expressionless face, like
some carven effigy on a tomb, was gradually losing
its ghastly pallor as the slow-moving blood began
to circulate through the veins. The deathly
coldness was passing out of the hands that
Veronica held, and it was obvious that moment
by moment Lucas was returning to life. He
seemed suddenly to become aware of the hands
that held his, and shifted his grip on them as if
to feel their texture.
" Is that Veronica ? " he said-
Veronica could not speak, but her hands quivered
in his, and he bent forward and slowly raised first
one and then the other to his lips, and then sank
back upon the cushions.
For a long time there was silence, Veronica
half-kneeling, half crouching beside the couch

282 THE DEMON LOVER

and Lucas lying motionless as if dead, but with
a difference ; something about him had indefinably
changed, he was obviously a man who was
neither asleep nor dead, but resting; only his
face, with its unopened, sunken eyes, still looked
deathlike.
Finally he spoke again.
" What has become of--the man who was here
when I--first woke ? "
" He is still here," said Veronica.
" Where ? "
" Over there, by the fireplace," replied Veronica.
Lucas slowly turned his head.
" I can't see in this pitch darkness," he said.
" Can't you strike a light ? "
Veronica, nonplussed, did not know what to
reply. The soft warm radiance of the lamp
fell full on his face and the room was brightly lit.
The Third crossed the hearthrug towards them,
and taking Lucas's head in his hands again, turned
his face full to the light and gently lifted first
one and then the other of the eyelids, revealing
empty sockets. He and Dr. Latimer looked at
each other.
" Removed at the post-mortem," said the
Third.
Lucas swung his feet off the couch and sat
upright on its edge.
" Is it necessary to be in the dark ? " he said.
(< Can't anyone strike a light ? "
The Third laid a hand on his shoulder.
" There will be no light for you, my son," he
said.
" What do you mean ? " exclaimed Lucas in a
quick, strained voice.

THE DEMON LOVER 283

No one spoke. He raised his hands to his face
and felt the sockets of his eyes hollow under his
touch.
" Is the room lighted F " he said at length.
" Brightly lighted," said the Third.
Lucas, his face in his hands, sat for a long time
silent. At length he spoke.
" I can't complain," he said. " It is just."
" Well done, my son I " exclaimed the Third.
" There speaks a man. You shall soon see the
Inner Light."
All Veronica's horror of Lucas seemed gone with her knowledge of his blindness, and she
knelt beside him, anxiously watching his face.
He turned his head slowly, from habit, as if
looking round.
" Are you there, Veronica ? " he said.
" Yes," came her whisper from close beside
him, " I'm here."
He put out his hand towards her, and she put
out hers, but he missed it, and touched her head.
His hand rested on it for a moment, and then
dropped to her shoulders, encircling them. He
opened his lips as if to speak, and then paused,
thinking. The realization of his blindness was
gradually dawning on him, and he knew that
he could no longer carry out the scheme he had
planned. True, he had evaded death and returned
to life, but it was death-in-life to which he had
returned.
A chorus of cocks rang out from the distant
farms.
" My curfew," said Lucas with a smile, and
relapsed into silence again.
The Third took his elbow off the mantelpiece,

284 THE DEMON LOVER

and drawing up one of the big leather arm-chairs,
lowered himself into it.
" My son," he said, " the past is past. Let
us consider the future. Have you any plans ? "
" None," said Lucas. " Do with me what you
will."
" But I have many plans, my son, and since
you have put yourself into my hands, I will take
you at your word. You must take up your work
again."
Lucas did not answer.
The Third continued : " As you know, I have
been put of Europe for a good many years now.
Too many, I am afraid. The Fraternity sank to
its embers till you, my son, tried to rekindle it."
Lucas smiled. " It certainly showed signs of
life in places," he said.
" Yes, my son," said the Third, " you were
right, it needed a fresh impulse, but you were
not able to do it single-handed. Three are
required for that, in order to work the sacred
triangle. A positive force, a negative force, and
the reconciler between them. You, my son, are
a positive force."
" I used to be a positive force," said Lucas,
(< but I should not say I could be now."
*' There you are wrong," said the Third. " Being made negative on the physical plane,
you have become positive on the Inner Planes, the
planes whereon we shall work ; and Veronica,
whom your helplessness on the physical plane will
cause to become positive, will again be your
fitting complement for Inner Plane work."
" What has it got to do with Veronica ? " said
Lucas. " She cannot have anything to do

THE DEMON LOVER 285

with the Fraternity, they don't initiate women."
" That is exactly where the trouble has originated,"
replied the Third. " They must have
women in the Fraternity ; it has been the greatest
mistake to exclude them. It was only in
mediaeval times it was done. They must have
the two forces in the Lodge. Strength and
beauty, justice and mercy. For although unbalanced
mercy is but weakness, unbalanced justice
is cruelty and oppression. I propose to initiate
Veronica ; and that you and I and she, silently,
behind the Fraternity, should bring through the
balanced forces that will regenerate it. Are you
willing for that, Veronica ? "
" I am ready for whatever is right," she
answered.
" Then," said the Third, turning to Lucas,
" I propose that you and Veronica should marry."
Lucas threw up his head like a startled horse,
then checked himself.
" What has Veronica got to say to that ? " he
asked in very level tones.
" She gave her consent before we started on
this operation."
Lucas's arm tightened round her.
" Is that so, Veronica ? " he whispered.
For answer she crept closer to him, and forgetful
of the onlookers, he hid his face in her hair.
After a moment or two he raised it.
" There is one other person I should like to
see," he said, " A man who was very good to me
in the old days. Dr. Latimer."
" I am here, Justin," said the old man.
Lucas put out his hand and the trembling old
fingers were placed in it, and for a long time he

286 THE DEMON LOVER

sat silent, his arm round Veronica and his hand
in the old man's.
When at length he raised his face it had a very different expression.
" This is a very big thing we are on," he said.
" Yes, my son," said the Third, " it is. Much
bigger than you realize at present."
" I know that," said Lucas and lapsed into
thought again. Then, " What have I done to
deserve such a chance ? " he said.
" You have realized your mistake and paid for
it without murmuring," replied the man who was
known to them as the Third. " You have
turned again and retraced your steps over the
burning coals without flinching. You have
passed your tests, my son, you are back on the
Path, and the gates stand open before you.
Enter ye in."

The Society of the Inner Light, founded by the late Dion
Fortune, has courses for those who wish seriously to pursue
the study of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Information about
the society may be obtained by writing to the address below.
Please enclose British stamps or international postal coupons
in your letter if you wish a response.

The Secretary
The Society of the Inner Light
38 Steele's Road
London NW3 4RG, England