Mary's reaction to the ordeal through which she had passed led to her again contemplating abandoning her self-imposed mission. Although she could not yet resume her old life at Wimbledon, there was nothing to stop her packing her tilings and leaving Cromwell Road without telling anyone where she was moving, and taking rooms under another name in a different part of London. Or, as she had an ample reserve of money, she could refuse further offers of work as a model and take a few weeks' holiday at the seaside.

The idea of going to Dublin for a while then occurred to her. Soon after Teddy's death she had received a letter of condolence from her young brother. He had said that he was doing quite well in an advertising agency, in which he had found an opening, and was living as a p.g. with a pleasant family. He was her only relative, and the only person she could think of who would at once open to her a new circle of acquaintances, and so solve the question of the loneliness which afflicted her. But, on second thoughts, she felt that a visit to Dublin would revive too sharply her memories of her year of misery there; so the problem of her unhappy isolation remained.

Moreover, by Monday night she was reasoning with herself that after having submitted to Saturday's ceremony it would be absurd to throw away the advantages she might gain from it. To hear the task she was to be set, as a test of her willingness to serve the Devil, should at least give her one more chance of finding out more about the Brotherhood. She might have an opportunity of cultivating her acquaintance with the Countess and Tung-fang Shuo and, if she were allowed to mingle with the rest, perhaps even manage matters so that the very tall fair-haired man, who had obviously been most strongly attracted to her, would make a date to take her out to dinner, After all, she need not carry out the test job given to her, and when the pace looked like getting too hot she could always make a bolt for it to some little seaside place or a village in the country. In consequence, she went again, as Ratnadatta had told her to, on Tuesday evening to Mrs. Wardeel's.

The lecture that night was given by a sprightly, grey-haired American woman, and was on the subject of the doctrine of Theosophy. She started off by enunciating the heart of the creed - that everyone reaches perfection in the end, but must first pass through many incarnations, during which they are subject to the law of 'Karma', and so can increase or decrease the number of lives they must spend on earth in accordance with the efforts they make, or lack of them, to purge themselves from selfishness and all evil tendencies. She then proceeded to describe the Occult Hierarchy.