They were fixed on her with a kind of abstract intimacy; she felt at once more individual to him than ever before and yet as if the individuality which he discerned was something of which she herself was not yet conscious. And while she looked back into them, thrilling to that remote concentration, she found she was looking only at the chair, and was brought back at once from that separate interaction to the remembrance of their business. She started with the shock, and both the men in the room looked at her.

"Don't be frightened," Sir Giles said, with an effort controlling his phrases, and "It's all right, you know," Montague added coldly.

"I'm not frightened, thank you," Chloe said, hating them both with a sudden intensity, but she knew she lied. She was frightened; she was frightened of them. The Crown of Suleiman, the strange happenings, Lord Arglay's movements -these were what had stirred her emotions and shaken her, and those shaken emotions were loosed within her in a sudden horror, yet of what she did not know. It seemed as if there were two combinations; one had vanished, and the other she loathed, but to that she was suddenly abandoned. It -was ridiculous, it was insane. "What on earth are you afraid of?" she asked herself, "do you think either of them is going to assault you?" And beyond and despite herself, and as if thinking of some assault she could not visualize or imagine she answered, "Yes, I do."

Lord Arglay, as he sat down wearing the Crown, had directed his eyes and mind towards Chloe. For the first few moments half a score of ordinary irrelevant thoughts leapt in his mind. She was efficient, she was rather good-looking, she was, under the detached patience with which she took his dictation, avid of ideas and facts, she was desirous-but of what Lord Arglay doubted if she knew and was quite certain he did not. He put the irrelevancies aside, by mere habitual practice, held his mind empty and prepared, as if to receive some important answer which could then be directed to its proper place in the particular order to which it belonged, allowed the image of Chloe Burnett and the thought of her home to enter, and shut his mind down on them. The Crown pressed on his forehead; he involuntarily united the physical consciousness and the mental; either received the other. His interior purpose suddenly lost hold; a dizziness caught him, through which he was aware only of a dominating attraction-his being yearned, to some power above, around, within him. The dizziness increased and then was gone; his head ached; the Stone pressed heavily on it, then more lightly. He found himself opening his eyes.

He opened them on a strange room, and realized that he was standing by the door. It was a not too well furnished roon -not, obviously, his own kind. There were two comfortable armchairs; there was a bookcase; a table; another chair; pictures; a little reproduction of the Victory of Samothrace, a poor Buddha, a vase or two. On the table a box of cigarettes and a matchbox; some sort of needlework; a book; the Neu Statesman. Lord Arglay drew a deep breath. So it worked. He walked to the table, then he went over to the window and looked out. It was the ordinary suburban street, a few ordinary people-three men, a woman, four children. He felt the curtains-they seemed actual. He felt himself with the same result. He went back to the table and picked up the New Statesman, then he sat down in one of the comfortable chairs as if to consider. But as he leant back against the cushions he remembered that the experiment was only half done; he could consider afterwards. The immediate thing was to return with the paper; if that were done, all was done that could be at the moment. "I wish there were someone here to speak to," he thought. "I wonder-I suppose they would see me." He thought of going down into the street and asking his way to some imaginary road, but the difficulty in passing anyone outside Chloe Burnett's room occurred to him and he desisted. Return, then.