“It is quite enough for me,” said Orth.

The next night, as his train travelled over the great wastes of Lancashire, a thousand chimneys were spouting forth columns of fire.  Where the sky was not red it was black.  The place looked like hell.  Another time Orth’s imagination would have gathered immediate inspiration from this wildest region of England.  The fair and peaceful counties of the south had nothing to compare in infernal grandeur with these acres of flaming columns.  The chimneys were invisible in the lower darkness of the night; the fires might have leaped straight from the angry caldron of the earth.

But Orth was in a subjective world, searching for all he had ever heard of occultism.  He recalled that the sinful dead are doomed, according to this belief, to linger for vast reaches of time in that borderland which is close to earth, eventually sent back to work out their final salvation; that they work it out among the descendants of the people they have wronged; that suicide is held by the devotees of occultism to be a cardinal sin, abhorred and execrated.

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics.  As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world.  If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so.

Upon Orth’s return to Chillingsworth, he called at once upon the child, and found her happy among his gifts.  She put her arms about his neck, and covered his serene unlined face with soft kisses.  This completed the conquest.  Orth from that moment adored her as a child, irrespective of the psychological problem.

Gradually he managed to monopolize her.  From long walks it was but a step to take her home for luncheon.  The hours of her visits lengthened.  He had a room fitted up as a nursery and filled with the wonders of toyland.  He took her to London to see the pantomimes; two days before Christmas, to buy presents for her relatives; and together they strung them upon the most wonderful Christmas-tree that the old hall of Chillingsworth had ever embraced.  She had a donkey-cart, and a trained nurse, disguised as a maid, to wait upon her.  Before a month had passed she was living in state at Chillingsworth and paying daily visits to her mother.  Mrs. Root was deeply flattered, and apparently well content.  Orth told her plainly that he should make the child independent, and educate her, meanwhile.  Mrs. Root intended to spend six months in England, and Orth was in no hurry to alarm her by broaching his ultimate design.