*       *       *       *       *

On the second flight, Norman heard a phone ringing. As he was walking
down the hall, it stopped. He opened the door. Tansy was standing by the bed, speaking into the
phone. Its dull blackness, curving from mouth to ear emphasized the
pallor of lips and cheek and the whiteness of the toweling. "This is Tansy Saylor," she was saying tonelessly. "I want my soul." A pause. "Can't you hear me, Evelyn? This is Tansy Saylor. I want my
soul." He had completely forgotten the call he had put in. It had been done in
a moment of crazy anger. He hadn't even any clear idea of what he had
been going to say. He stepped forward. A low wailing sound was coming from the phone. Tansy was talking against it. "This is Tansy Saylor. I want my soul." He was almost there. The wailing sound had swiftly risen to a squeal,
but mixed with it was an intermittent windy whirring. He reached out to take the phone. But at that instant the phone twisted
like a stumpy black worm, whipped tight to the skin, and dug into chin
and neck just below the ear, like a double-ended black paw. The squeal
became a muffled sucking. If you tore that away, you would tear the face with it. He knew. He
dropped to his knees and ripped the cord from the wall. Violet sparks
spat from the torn wire. The loose end writhed like a wounded snake,
whipped around his forearm, tightened spasmodically, then relaxed. He stood up. The phone had fallen to the floor. There was nothing out
of the ordinary about it now. Tansy was still standing in the same place. Not an atom of fear showed
in her expression. With the unconcernedness of a machine, she had
lifted a hand and was slowly massaging cheek and neck. From the corner
of the squeezed lips a few drops of blood were trickling. The rack, he was thinking, would be too good for that woman. Or the
scourge, or the wheel. So foully to attack a mere empty creature was
an ultimate, unspeakable viciousness, like crushing a kitten under your
heel. Perhaps the Boot, or the Funnel--

Swiftly the phantasmagoria of the Inquisition faded from his mind, as
his first surge of anger spent itself and settled down to a steady hate. "What did she say to you?" he asked evenly. "She kept saying, 'Who is this? Who is this?' That was all. Then she
stopped and the noise began." "How did she sound?" "She sounded very frightened." "Good!" He smacked his fist against his palm. "Magic works," he said
grimly. "We'll make it work better. She'll be more frightened after we
begin." "Perhaps you have already begun." He did not understand at the time the significance of that toneless
reply. XII. The rhythmic rattle and surge of the train had a soothing monotony. You could hear the engine puffing lustily. The wide, heat-baked, green
fields swinging past the window of the compartment, drowsed in the
noonday sun. The farms and cattle and horses dotting them here and
there, looked equally somnolent. He would have liked to sleep, but he
knew he would not be able to. And as for--She apparently never slept. "I want to run over some things," he said. "Interrupt me if you hear
anything that sounds wrong or you don't understand." From the corner of his eye he noted the figure sitting between him and
the window nod once. It occurred to him that there was something terrible about an
adaptability that could familiarize him even to--her, so that now after
only a day and a half he was using her as a kind of thinking machine,
asking for her memories and reactions in the same way that a man might
direct a servant to put a certain record on the phonograph. At the same time he knew that he was able to make this close contact
endurable only by carefully directing his thoughts and actions--like
the trick he had acquired of never quite looking at her directly. And
he kept himself nerved up with the thought of what lay ahead, and his
determination to regain what had been lost, and his hate. The present
condition was only temporary. But if he once let himself start to
think what it would mean to live a lifetime, to share bed and board,
with that--blackness--coldness--vacancy. Other people noticed the difference all right. Like those crowds they'd
had to push through in New York yesterday. Somehow people always edged
away, so they wouldn't have to touch her, and he had caught more than
one following glance, poised between curiosity and fear. And when
that other woman started to scream--lucky they had been able to lose
themselves in the crowd. The brief stopover at New York had provided him with some vitally
necessary materials, though he still felt hampered by the lack of his
library and notes. But he had been glad last night when it was over. The compartment seemed a haven of privacy. What was it those other people noticed? True, if you looked closely,
the heavy cosmetics only provided a grotesque and garish contrast to
the underlying pallor, and powder did not wholly conceal the ugly dark
bruise around the mouth. But the veil helped, and you had to look very
closely--the cosmetics were practically a theatrical make-up. Was it
her walk that they noticed, or the way her clothes hung--her clothes
always looked a little like a scarecrow's now, though you could not put
your finger on the reason. Or was it--

But that was what he must not think about. *       *       *       *       *

"Magic is a practical science." He talked to the wall, as if dictating. "There is all the difference in the world between a formula in
physics and a formula in magic, although they have the same name. The
former describes, in terse mathematical symbols, some cause-effect
relationship of wide generality. But a formula in magic is a way of
getting or accomplishing something. It always takes into account the
motivation or desire of the person performing the magic--be it greed,
love, revenge, or what-not. Whereas the experiment in physics is
essentially independent of the experimenter. In short, there has been
little or no "pure"--nonpractical--magic, comparable to pure science. "This distinction between physics and magic is just an accident of
history. Physics is ultimately as practical as magic--but it possesses
a superstructure of theory that magic lacks. Magic could be given such
a superstructure by research in pure magic and by the investigation
and correlation of the magic formulas of different peoples and times,
with a view to deriving basic formulas which could be expressed in
mathematical symbols and which would have a wide application. Most
persons practicing magic have been too interested in immediate results
to bother about theory. But just as research in pure science has
ultimately led, seemingly by accident, to results of vast practical
importance, so research in pure magic might be expected to yield
similar results." He waited a moment for comment, then went on.