'Oh, that was all nonsense.' Mary spoke with confidence, yet she had an uneasy memory of the clairvoyant's face as she had warned her that she was heading for trouble. Could she, after all, have seen in her crystal darkly an aura of evil round her questioner, and - sudden thought - could the 'fair-haired chap' possibly be the very tall Satanist who, on the previous Saturday evening, had lifted her off her feet and kissed her until she was gasping for breath?

'Of course,' Barney agreed. 'The old bag was just throwing out whatever struck her as the most likely draw to induce suckers to spend a couple of quid on a private consultation. As I'm dark, in my case it was a ravishing blonde, and the suggestion that she was going to lead me a dance the subtle twist to intrigue me into wanting to hear just what sort of a dance she might lead me. But as I don't happen to be interested in a blonde, and even if I met one, am too busy just now to run after her, Madame Zero, or whatever she calls herself, was barking up the wrong tree.'

Mary did not reply, but she was thinking, 'You don't realize it, my gay boyo, but you are escorting a blonde home here and now, and with a little luck, it's a pretty dance she is going to lead you!' After a moment, she asked: 'What did you think of the lecture?'

'The first part made sense. Everything these people say about reincarnation is so logical that there seems no answer to their arguments in support of it.'

'Yes, there's something awfully reasonable about regarding the world as a school at which we get a move up, or not, at the opening of each new term as a result of the good or bad marks we have earned the term before. It is much more attractive than the idea of a Day of Judgment on which everyone is tried on their performance in a single life and either carried up to heaven or thrown down to hell, for all eternity.'

'I don't mind paying up for my lapses,' Barney remarked, 'but, like old Omar Khayyám, I feel that when the last Trump sounds we'd be justified in saying to God, "You made me as I am, so what about it?" '

Mary laughed. 'I don't think I'd have the courage to do that; and I really am on the way to becoming a reincarnationist. To have made one's own bed and have to lie on it until one can make a better is the sort of treatment no one could reasonably complain about.'