The girl shook a bewildered head.

“It is a riddle?” she asked, wearily.

“A riddle?” Victor echoed.  “Why, one may safely term it that.  Is not the Future always a riddle?  Nature knows the Future as the Past, but Nature holds it secret, lest man go mad with too much knowledge.  Only to the few, the favoured, does she grant rare glimpses through media which she has provided for the use of the initiate—­such as this crystal here, in which I was studying your future, when you came in, the high future I plan for you.”

“And—­you won’t tell me?”

“I may not.  It is forbidden.  Nature deals unkindly with those who violate her confidence.  But—­who knows?”

He checked himself as if struck by a new turn of thought, and studied the girl’s face intently.

“Who knows?” he repeated, as if to himself.

“What—?”

“It is quite within the bounds of possibility,” Victor mused, “that you should have inherited some of the psychic power which was born in me.  Perhaps—­who knows?—­to you as well Nature will be supple and disclose her secrets....  If you care to seek her favour?”

“But—­how?”

“By consulting the crystal.”

Sofia’s eyes sought that coldly burning stone.  Her head was so heavy, she hesitated, oppressed by misgivings without shape that she could name, phases of formless timidity having rise in some source which she was too tired to search out.

But she lingered and continued to stare at the crystal.

“Why not?” Victor’s accents were gently persuasive.  “At worst, you can only fail.  And if you do not fail, it will make me happy to think that you have been given a little insight into my dreams for you.”

“Yes,” Sofia assented in a whisper—­“why not?”

Victor drew her forward by the hand.

“Look,” he said “look deep!  Divest your mind as nearly as you can of all thought—­let the crystal give up its message to a mind devoid of prejudice, its receptiveness unimpaired.  Think of nothing, if you can manage it—­simply look and see.”

Automatically to a degree the girl obeyed, already in a phase of crepuscular hypnosis, her surface senses dulled by the potent “wine of China.”  And watching her closely, Victor permitted himself a smile of satisfaction as he noted the rapidity with which she yielded to the hypnogenic spell of the translucent quartz; how her breathing quickened, then took on a measured tempo like that of a sleeper; how a faint flush warmed the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, how her dilate eyes grew fixed in an unwinking stare, and slightly glassed....