parade of incompetents."

She continued her rueful reflections. "Well, item one is, I don't love Nick any more. I couldn't now!" she flung at the smiling green buddha on the mantel. "That's over; I've promised."

Somehow there was not satisfaction in the memory of that promise. It was logical, of course; there wasn't anything else to do now, but still--"That _wasn't_ Nick!" she told herself. "That wasn't _my_ Nick. I guess Dr. Carl is right, and he's a depressed what-ever-it-was; but if he's crazy, so am I! He had me convinced last night; I understood what he meant, and I felt what he wanted me to feel. If he's crazy, I am too; a fine couple we are!"

She continued. "But it wasn't Nick! I saw his face when we drove off, and it had changed again, and that was Nick's face, not the other. And he was sorry; I could see he was sorry, and the other could never have regretted it--not ever! The other isn't--quite human, but Nick is."

She paused, considering the idea. "Of course," she resumed, "I might have imagined that change at the end. I was hazy and quavery, and it's the last thing I _do_ remember; that must have been just before I passed out."

And then, replying to her own objection, "But I _didn't_ imagine it! I saw it happen once before, that other night when--Well, what difference does it make, anyway? It's over, and I've given my promise."

But she was unable to dismiss the matter as easily as that. There was some uncanny, elusive element in it that fascinated her. Cruel, terrible, demoniac, he might have been; he had also been kind, lovable, and gentle. Yet Dr. Carl had told her that split personalities could contain no characteristics that were not present in the original, normal character. Was cruelty, then, a part of kindness? Was cruelty merely the lack of kindness, or, cynical thought, was kindness but the lack of cruelty? Which qualities were positive in the antagonistic phases of Nicholas Devine's individuality, and which negative? Was the gentle, lovable, but indubitably weaker character the split, and the demon of last evening his normal self? Or vice-versa? Or were both of these fragmentary entities, portions of some greater personality as yet unapparent to her?

The whole matter was a mystery; she shrugged in helpless perplexity.

"I don't think Dr. Carl knows as much about it as he says," she mused. "I don't think psychiatry or any other science knows that much 

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