Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/292

280 that there was something in the sound which braced me up; a quality which was suited to my mood, I drew the case into my dressing-room. I unpacked it. There she was inside, in the best possible condition; as ready, as willing, as happy, as on the day when I first saw her, in the place where she was born. She had borne her voyage and subsequent confinement surprisingly well; neither in her bearing nor appearance was there anything which even hinted at a trace of resentment for the treatment which she had received. As she showed me what she could do, laughing all the time, I said to myself, 'With her aid I shall be more than a match for my brother.'

"I had got her out, but, like the genie the fisherman released in the Arabian story, she was not easy to put back again. Without her consent it was impossible to replace her in the packing-case. Her consent she refused to give. When I persisted in my attempts to do without it, she brought me nearer to a sudden end than I had ever been before. Whereupon I desisted. I left her where she was. That display of her powers, and of her readiness to use them, compelled me to the reflection that in her I had found not only a collaborator, but possibly something else as well. One thing I certainly had found—an inseparable companion.

"From that hour, when, in the silence of the