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“You would not believe me if I told you.”
     
    A moment later she was walking in the street, on her way home.
     
    That night Pierre noticed that she was more nervous than ever. She toyed with the silver at dinner, stared at her plate, ate little. He said gently:
     
    “You don’t seem to have much appetite, dear.”
     
    “Well enough,” Sara said curtly.
     
    He remained silent, then, for a little. But at length his concern overcame his natural tolerance.
     
    “I think,” he said, “a tonic would do - wonders for you. How’s a trip to Europe sound? Portugal? Spain? Take the Clipper to Lisbon? Better yet, South America.”
     
    She said nothing. He began to expand,
     
    “I’ve some business I could do in Buenos Aires.”
     
    Sara said shortly, “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
     
    And she got up and left the table. But when she reached her room, she collapsed on her bed. She did want to go somewhere: she did want to get away. What contrariness forced her to answer Pierre as she did?
     
    Emotion shook her. But she did not cry. Never in her life had she wept. She sat upon the edge of the bed; she could see her reflection in the long mirror on the wall. She would go down and tell Pierre she wanted the trip—and she would add that it was awfully thoughtful of him. But she didn’t.
     
    Pierre, sitting below, stirred his coffee thoughtfully.
     
    “Damn the girl!”
     
    Anybody could see she needed a change.
     
    But Pierre, who thrived on debating questions that didn’t mean a thing, shrank from argument with Sara about anything that mattered. He realized later that it might have been the one time in his life when he should have forced his will on hers.
     
    Another day; again Sara sat stiffly in the room where the gaunt gray cat preened herself and the lean-faced man busied himself with the innumerable papers at his table.
    Again, as before, there was a period of absorption. Sara relaxed, and she received. Under the brightening ray those clouded hungers focused into sharper relief. From vague values they took on some semblance of positive appetite. But it was still only a semblance, still unrecognized. She knew only that she was stumbling down some spiritual or psychical lane, serving a novitiate for an order the purpose of which escaped her.
     
    Again, during a moment when the current withdrew, Sara questioned, “Who are you?”
     
    And again the man gave the same answer.
     
    “I think I would believe you,” Sara said.
     
    The man smiled thinly.
     
    “If I said the name, all this”—and the gesture of a graceful hand embraced the room— “would melt away. You, too, will find that out some day. We explain nothing. We admit nothing. That is confession.” Slyly, he added, “And if confession is good for the soul, it also closes the world we wish to enter.”
     
    “You,” Sara asked, “have entered?”
     
    The man threw back his head and laughed.
     
    “One enters his own home,” he said. “You would enter through surrender.”
     
    She thought about that. Then:
     
    “If I surrender?”
     
    “You would not know this world.”
     
    “But the other. What would it be like?”
     
    “That,” he replied, “is what you are learning.”
     
    There were other visitors that afternoon. When the first—a fat greasy-handed Polish woman—entered the room, the period of receptivity ended.
     
    The woman squatted down in a chair beside Sara. The fastidious girl, at any other time, would have found discreet reason to remove herself. That she did not was evidence, even to herself, of a profound change of character. She sat quietly until she was dismissed.
    As she made her way down the corridor, she met still another woman even fatter than the Pole, even more unkempt. The woman leered at her as she passed.
     
    Outdoors, Sara paused in the dirty sunlight that filtered through the city’s smoke. Her head throbbed. She drew a cool hand across her hot temple.
     
    This was insanity, she