“But of what is she ’horribly afraid’?” Bedient asked.

“Of the Spaniard—­her husband.  Somehow he has managed to madden her with fear.  She trembles at his name or approach like a horse that has been cruelly beaten.”

Only for a moment had Miss Mallory revealed the depth of her interest in the affairs of The Pleiad.  An observer would have taken the pair for the merest acquaintances.  The coffee-room murmured with many undertones.  They arranged to meet at luncheon the following day and quickly separated.  Miss Mallory was now aware that her avenues of action would be closed, if it were noted that she had more than a casual interest in Andrew Bedient.

The latter saw nothing further of Senor Rey for two days, and did not catch even a second glimpse of Jim Framtree.  His hours of darkness and daylight were given over to the old destructive monotony—­the dark drifting of his mind, all the constellations of love and labor and life shut off by the black mass of nimbus.  His identity became lost to all order; the forces of his being seemed in some process of fermentation.  His hours alone were animate with psychic experiences, but he attached no significance to them, because he believed them the direct result of physical weakness.  Again and again he turned upon himself fiercely, discovering that an hour had passed, while he had been tranced in strange attention for the recurrence of some voice in his brain.  Angrily, he would brush the whole phantasmagoria away, force himself back into the world of Equatoria, stride out of his rooms, if it were day, and down into the city; but the pressure of the deeper activities of his mind would steal back and command him.  His physical nature was sunk into a great ennui, and the other forces were the mightier.

Bedient comprehended this descent; even wondered how far down a man could go—­and live.  It was the first thing that ever mastered him.  The temptation to leave Framtree and to take even a flying trip to India—­since New York was not for him—­this was tangible, and he whipped it, though the conflict used up all his power.  He had nothing left to combat the vague psychic thrall that appeared to be destroying his life.  An understanding friend, as David Cairns had come to be, would have perceived startling changes in Andrew Bedient, and forthwith would have contended with the enemy for every inch of advance.  Bedient was a bit awed by his great weakness.  His physical deterioration did not trouble him, but his anchorage in the great work of his time had given way.  He had to stop and think hard, to recall the least and simplest of his conceptions of service.  His sense of shame was consuming in that all the good within him was gone, because he was destined to be denied a human mate.

As to his exterior fortunes, there was substance in the matters pertaining to the Glow-worm, which Miss Mallory brought, but they hardly held him past the moments of their telling.  They had met for luncheon.  She was unable to speak for a moment.  Bedient wondered if he looked so badly as that.  The woman summoned all her powers to compel his mind with what was so absorbing to her.  He was not a little impressed by her exceeding kindness.  They were seated opposite at a small table in the very centre of the luncheon-room.