“How d’you mean—­experiences?” said the witch, after eating one sandwich in silent ecstasy.  “I was up in the sky last night, talking to a German.  Was that an experience?”

“The sky last night was surely no place for a lady,” said Mr. Frere with rather sour joviality.

“Oh, I know what she means,” said Miss MacBee earnestly.  “I was up in the sky last night too——­”

“Great Scott,” exclaimed the witch.  “But——­”

“Yes, I was,” persisted Miss MacBee.  “I lay on the hammock which I have had slung in my cellar, and shut my eyes, and loosed my spirit, and it shot upward like a lark released.  It detached itself from the common trammels of the body, yes, my spirit, in shining armour, fought with the false, cruel spirits of murderers.”

“I hadn’t got any shining armour,” sighed the witch, who had been looking a little puzzled.  “But I had the hell of a wrangle with a Boche witch who came over.  We fought till we fell off our broomsticks, and then she quoted the Daily Mail at me, and then she fell through a hole and broke her back over the cross on St. Paul’s.”

It was Miss MacBee’s turn to look puzzled, but she said to Miss Ford:  “My dear, you have brought us a real mystic.”

Mr. Frere, though emitting an applauding murmur, leaned back and fixed his face in the ambiguous expression of one who, while listening with interest to the conversation of liars, is determined not to appear deceived.

“How d’you mean—­mystic?” asked the witch.  “I don’t think I can have made myself clear.  Excuse me,” she added to Miss Ford, “but this room smells awfully clever to any one coming in from outside.  Do you mind if I dance a little, to move the air about?”

“We shall be delighted,” said Miss Ford indulgently.  “Shall I play for you?”

The witch did not answer; she rose, and as she rose she threw a little white paper packet into the fire.  She danced round the sofa and the chairs.  The floor shook a little, and all her watchers twisted their necks gravely, like lizards watching an active fly.

The parlour-maid, by appearing in the doorway with an inaudible announcement, diverted their attention, though she did not interrupt the witch’s exercises.

A very respectable-looking man came in.  Darnby Frere, who was a student of Henry James’s works, and therefore constantly made elaborate guesses on matters that did not concern him, and then forgot them because—­unlike Mr. James’s guesses—­they were always wrong, gave the newcomer credit for being perhaps a shopwalker, or perhaps a South-Eastern and Chatham ticket-collector, but surely a chapel-goer.

At any rate the stranger looked ill at ease, and especially disconcerted by the sight of the dancing witch.

Miss Ford realised by now that her Wednesday had for some reason gone mad.  She had lost her hold on the reins of that usually dignified equipage; there was nothing now for her to do but to grip tight and keep her head.