nothing about this as yet. She wasn't home when I brought you in, and she's not awake yet this morning. We'll tell her you had an automobile accident; explain away those bruises.--And now, how did you get them?"
"I fell, I guess. Two or three times."
"That bruise on your cheek isn't from falling."
The girl shuddered. Now in the calm light of morning, the events of last night seemed doubly horrible; she doubted her ability to believe them, so incredible did they seem. She was at a loss to explain even her own actions, and those of Nicholas Devine were simply beyond comprehension, a chapter from some dark and blasphemous book of ancient times--the Kabbala or the Necronomicon.
"What happened, Pat?" queried the Doctor gently. "Tell me," he urged her.
"I--can't explain it," she said doubtfully. "He took me to that place, but drinking the liquor was my own fault. I did it out of spite because I saw he didn't--care for me. And then--" She fell silent.
"Yes? And then?"
"Well--he began to talk about the beauty of evil, the delights of evil, and his eyes glared at me, and--I don't understand it at all, Dr. Carl, but all of a sudden I was--yielding. Do you see?"
"I see," he said gently, soberly.
"Suddenly I seemed to comprehend what he meant--all that about the supreme pleasure of evil. And I was sort of--swept away. The dress--was his fault, but I--somehow I'd lost the power to resist. I guess I was drunk."
"And the bruises? And your cut lips?" queried the Doctor grimly.
"Yes," she said in a low voice. "He--struck me. After a while I didn't care. He could have--would have done other things, only we were interrupted, and had to leave. And that's all, Dr. Carl.""Isn't that enough?" he groaned. "Pat, I should have killed the fiend there!"

"I'm glad you didn't."

"Do you mean to say you'd care?"

"I--don't know."

"Are you intimating that you still love him?"

"No," she said thoughtfully. "No, I don't love him, but--Dr. Carl, there's something inexplicable about this. There's something I don't understand, but I'm certain of one thing!"

"What's that?"

"That it wasn't Nick--not _my_ Nick--who did those things to me last night. It wasn't, Dr. Carl!"

"Pat, you're being a fool!"

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