"The trustees are
meeting tomorrow afternoon." Mrs. Gunnison sat down in the chair he had vacated. "My regards to Tansy," she said. "I'll be seeing her tonight at the
Carr's--that is, if she's recovered sufficiently." And to know that Tansy's soul was listening to the thoughts behind
those words, in complete intimacy--He walked out rapidly and shut the
door behind him. While his hand was still on the knob, he saw Mrs. Gunnison's green
purse lying on the table and, beyond it, the display case of items in
physical chemistry. In that one long moment he smashed the plan he had
been contemplating and built a new one. There was one girl in the outer office--a student employee. He went up
to her desk. "Miss Miller," he said, "would you be so kind as to get me the grade
sheets on the following people?" And he rattled off half a dozen
student names. "The sheets are in the Recorder's Office, Professor Saylor," she said,
a little doubtfully. "I know. But you tell them I sent you. Dr. Gunnison and I want to look
them over." Obediently she took down the names. As the door closed behind her he pulled out the top drawer of her desk
and found the key for the display case where he knew he would find it,
on the bunch with the rest. A few minutes later Mrs. Gunnison came out. She did not see him at
first, because he was standing to one side of the door. "I thought I heard you go out," she said sharply. Then, in her usual
blunt manner, "Are you waiting for me to leave, so you can talk to
Harold alone?" He did not answer. He glanced at her nose, frowning a little. She picked up her purse. "There's really no point in your trying to
make a secret of it," she said. "I know as much about your troubles
here as he does--in fact, considerably more. And, to be honest, they're
pretty bad." Her voice had begun to assume the arrogance of the victor. She smiled at him. He continued to look at her nose. "And you needn't pretend you're not worried," she went on, her voice
reacting irritably to his silence. "Because I know you are. And
tomorrow Pollard will ask for your resignation. What are you staring
at?" "Nothing," he answered, hastily averting his glance. "You saw a smudge on my nose!" "Oh, no. No." With an incredulous sniff, she took out her mirror, glanced at it
puzzledly for a moment, then with a shrug held it up for a detailed
inspection of her face. Now was the moment, if only he could gauge it right. He was taut with
expectation, cold with a feeling that the threads of destiny had come
into his hands. The second hand of the wall clock seemed to stand still. He dared not wait longer. In a soft yet straining voice he uttered the
words, "Break glass. Shatter soul. Scatter glass. Come soul." With a swift crackling, not very loud, yet with a tinkle to it, the
mirror in Mrs. Gunnison's hand puffed into a little cloud of iridescent
dust. Instantly he felt a weight add itself to his mind, a tangible
darkness press down upon his thoughts. And his mind seemed to grasp
instinctively at the darkness and hold it there. The gasp of astonishment or fear that issued from Mrs. Gunnison's lips
was cut short. What seemed a loose, stupid look flowed slowly over her
face, but that was only because her face lost all expression whatsoever. He stepped up to her and took her arm. "Come with me," he said. "It's your best chance." Docilely she followed him into the hall. Near the stairs they met Miss
Miller, returning with a handful of large cards. "I'm very sorry to have put you to the trouble," he told her. "But it
turned out that we didn't need them. You had better return them to the
Recorder's Office." The girl nodded with a polite but somewhat wry smile. Professors! *       *       *       *       *

As Norman escorted Mrs. Gunnison out of the Administration Building,
the darkness pressing upon his thoughts parted--as black storm clouds
might part at sunset, letting through a narrow beam of crimson light. So, through the painfully bright slit in the darkness lying against his
thoughts, there poured a flood of impotent red rage, of obscene anger. In a moment this cleared, and an intelligible thought appeared. This thought, as the rage preceding it, was so intolerably _like_
Mrs. Gunnison, such an intense concentration of what he had known only
in diluted form, that his mind almost lost its hold on the dark entity
pressing against it. For a moment his thoughts quailed at the touch of
naked personality. He stared ahead, and his steps wandered like those
of a drunken man. But only for a moment. "How did you do it?" was the thought. His own thoughts rallied, and, before he realized it, had answered:

"It was the Prince Rupert mirror from the display case. The warmth of
your fingers shattered it. I held it lightly in folds of my kerchief
while transferring it to your pocketbook. When the mirror breaks and
the reflection is shattered, the soul is temporarily caught outside. At such times it is vulnerable." All this, without the machinery of speech to delay it, flashed in an
instant. He must be more cautious from now on. "Where are you taking my body?" "To our house." "What do you want?" "My wife's soul." There was a long pause. The slit in the darkness closed, then opened
again. "You cannot take it. I hold it, as you hold my soul. But my soul hides
it from you. And my soul holds it." "I cannot take it. But I can hold your soul until you return my wife's
soul to her body." "What if I refuse?" "Your husband is a realist. He will not believe what your body tells
him. He will consult the best alienists. He will be very much grieved. But in the end he will commit your body to an asylum." He could sense defeat and submission--and a kind of panic, too--in the
texture of the answering thought. But defeat and submission were not
yet admitted directly. "You will not be able to hold my soul. You hate it. It fills you with
abhorrence. Your mind will not be able to endure it." Then, in immediate substantiation of this statement, there came
through the slit a nasty trickle growing swiftly to a spate. His chief
detestations were quickly spied out and rasped upon. He began to hurry
his steps, so that the mindless hulk beside him breathed hard. *       *       *       *       *

"There was Ann," came the thoughts, not in words but in the complete
fullness of memory. "Ann came to work for me eight years ago. A
frail-looking little blonde, but able to get through a hard day's work
for all that. She was very submissive, and a prey to fear. Do you know
that it is possible to rule people through fear alone, without an atom
of direct force? A sharp word, a stern look--It's the implications that
do it, not what's said directly. Gradually I gathered about myself all
the grim prestige that father, teacher, and preacher had had for Ann. I
could make her cry by looking at her in a certain way. I could make her
writhe with fright just by standing outside the door of her bedroom.