He explained to her that, just as the early Christians had been forced to go underground to avoid persecution by the government in Rome, so, when Christianity had later gained a hold on other governments, the followers of the Old religion had had to seek safety from the laws enacted against them by going underground. He said that the word 'witchcraft' had originally been 'wisecraft', derived from 'craft-of-the-wise', and that the belief that witches and wizards were necessarily evil people was a most mistaken one. Some had been charlatans, but a high percentage of them had been people who had passed through many incarnations, were initiates who understood the great truths, and so enjoyed occult power. And it was the recognition that they wielded such powers, and fear of them by the ignorant Christian priests, which had led to their persecution.

He then talked to her of the heavenly bodies, the influence they exerted on human beings, and how those influences could be made use of to further the interests of initiates who had learned the secret of timing their acts to coincide with cosmic rays most favourable to their success. By such means, he said, money could be acquired without working for it, positions secured, and either fertility or sterility made certain. But, he added, such operations needed to be undertaken only by initiates who were temporarily isolated from the Brotherhood, as at the meetings of its Lodges each Master was invested with the power to give swift aid to followers of the Path in achieving all their reasonable desires - as she was about to see for herself that night.

He was describing to her certain rain-making and fertility rites, still practised with success by peoples remote from civilization who had had handed down to them a little of the old wisdom, when the taxi at last drew up.

Quickly untying the handkerchief that blindfolded her, Ratnadatta got out. As he paid off the taxi she looked about her and saw that they were in a dark street, lined on both sides by mean houses. There was a little group of men in caps talking together outside a public house on the corner, but otherwise few people in sight.

Taking her arm, Ratnadatta hurried her along in the other direction. They turned a corner into another mean street along one side of which there was a high blank wall. At its end the wall continued at a right angle as one side of a narrow lane. Entering it they walked on for about a hundred yards. Mary saw then that it was a cul-de-sac, with an end that broadened out into a small court in which, with their lights out, half-a-dozen cars were parked.