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knowledgeable, but he led an evil life and he was a plaything compared to Joanna. She longed to adore him, and she could only mock at him and herself. Yet she was fierce for him after the flesh and she made him her child’s father and hated him for his feebleness. She would strike and taunt him while the child was in her womb, for love and anger and hate and scorn and fear. The child was a seven-months child, and it died. The father ran away from her the day before it was born, and the same night was killed in a street accident when he was drunk. But Joanna, when she heard that the child was dead, screamed once and her face changed, and the Tarot cards that she sought (as we have all done), and the myth of gods that she studied, and the child that should have been a lord of power and was instead a five-hours-old body of death—these tangled themselves in her brain forever; and for fifty years she has sought the thing that she calls Osiris because it dies and Horus because it lives and at night little sweet names which only Stephen hears. And it has one and twenty faces, which are the faces of them within and of the Tarots, and when she finds the limbs that have been torn apart by her enemy, who is her husband and is Set and is we who seek the cards also, she thinks she will again become the Queen of Heaven, and the twice twenty-one gods shall adore her with incense and chanting. No doubt she is mad, Henry, but I had rather deal with your other mad creature than with her.”
    Henry meditated for some time, walking about the room in silence; then he said, “Well, there’s no reason why she should hear of it, unless she snuffs the news up out of the air.”
    â€œShe may even do that,” Aaron said. “Her life is not as ours, and the air and the lords of the sceptres are one.”
    â€œIn any case, I don’t see what she can do to interfere with us,” Henry answered. “She had her chance and lost it. I will see that I don’t lose mine. As for Coningsby——” He walked up and down the room for a few minutes in silence; then he said, “I’ve a good mind to try and get them here for Christmas. It’s a month off; that ought to give me time. You could manage, I suppose?”
    â€œWhat good would that be?” his grandfather asked.
    Henry sat down again. “Why, it’s clear,” he said, “that we shall have to let them know something—Nancy and her father anyhow. If he’s got to give us the cards, he’s got to have a reason for doing it, and so far as I can see——”
    â€œYou’re not going to show him them ?” Aaron exclaimed, glancing over his shoulder at the door of the inner room.
    â€œWhy not?” Henry asked lightly. “What does it matter? There’re all sorts of explanations. Besides, I want to show Nancy, and she’ll be able to work on him better if he’s seen them.”
    â€œBut he’ll tell people!” Aaron protested.
    â€œWhat can he tell them?” Henry asked. “And, if he does, who’s to believe him? Besides—after we’ve got the cards … well, we don’t know what we can do, do we? I’m sure that’s the best. See, I’ll ask Nancy, and she’ll bring her aunt, I suppose.”
    â€œHer aunt?” Aaron interrupted sharply. “How many are you going to bring? Who is this aunt?”
    â€œHer aunt,” Henry said, “is just the opposite to her father. As serene and undisturbed as … as they are. Nothing puts her out; nothing disturbs her. Yet she isn’t a fool. She’ll be quite harmless, however; it won’t matter whether she sees or not. She’ll be interested, but not concerned. Well, Nancy and her aunt and her father. I’ll try and dodge the brother; he’s simply a bore. There’ll be the three of them, and me; say, for—Christmas Day’s on a Saturday, isn’t it?—say, from