'Tonight you haf taken a great step. You behave good; very good. I haf no complaints for you. Not till initiation do you receive baptism and perform service to temple. Also then you will sign pact in your own blood, and will be granted in exchange first stage off power to influence others. But before this you must perform some act decreed as test off your willingness to serve Our Lord Satan intelligently and well.'

He wheezed a little, then went on. 'You must continue attendance at the Tuesdays off Mrs. Wardeel. She ees a stupid woman, but serves good purpose in gathering at her house peoples interested in the occult. Most are harmless fools; but sometimes there comes one like yourself, worthy off advancement and suitable for employment in the great work off Our Lord Satan. I attend always for purpose off recognizing such. It will be there, next week, the week after, I do not know; but when Abaddon tells me to, that I shall inform you off the task allotted to you.'

At Hyde Park Corner he set her down. It seemed to her that a whole night must have passed since she had met him at Sloane Square Tube Station; but to her amazement it was still before eleven. Although she could have sworn that she had been in the Temple for hours, the actual ceremony had lasted only twenty minutes.

On her way home in a bus she still felt dazed and terribly exhausted. Her mind was filled with a medley of recollections of sights, sounds and feelings that she had experienced that evening: the body of the skinny Countess, the huge glittering diamond on the finger of Tung-fang Shuo, Abaddon seated in a lounge suit at his desk, her terror on being ordered to deny Jesus Christ, the weight of those terrible lead-soled shoes, the face of the Mother Superior, the embrace of the very tall fair-haired man, her panic as the congregation crowded round her.

Fortunately the bus conductress jogged her memory at the stop she had asked for when taking her ticket. She stumbled off, walked back to her number in Cromwell Road, let herself in, and wearily dragged herself upstairs to her flat.

Going straight to the bathroom she turned on the bath, then tipped some disinfectant into a glass, added water, and taking a gulp began to rinse her mouth. Her impulse to clean it and scrub her face free from the traces left by the score, and more, of mouths that had caressed or slobbered over it brought back into her mind details of the most repulsive kisses to which she had had to submit.

Suddenly she seemed to smell again Ratnadatta's foul breath, her stomach heaved, and she was sick into the basin.

11.Seen in a crystal