Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/15

Rh "You can use my irons," I said, "you'll never be able to iron your things properly with one."

"Oh, no," she said, "I'm going to use Diana's."

"I don’t know how you can like her so much," I said. "She's so unsympathetic; she shuts herself up there and doesn't care for anybody."

"You don't know her," she said, "I've lived with her before."

There was a strange mystery about the feeling between them. It was the custom of the little Priestess to go about her business of cleaning her room, which was spotless, washing her clothes, making her meditations, and going to the Occult classes or services, to which she had pledged herself, without letting any personal feeling intervene. I used to be conscious, in a cold sort of fashion, of her neighbourhood, and her light used to be put in the window, with its reflection behind it, to burn all night. It comforted me rather, when I went there, to see the reflection on the white wall from my own window till I found my own bright, beautiful star—Venus or Mars, I don't know which—which looked down on me night after night.

But she did not like me; she would have nothing to do with me at all.

She tried to persuade Naomi to join one of her occult classes.

"I'm sure you would be most psychic," she said in her impressive way, looking up at Naomi with eyes full of serious importance, "we might find we could form a class here."

"Oh, I'm not sure that I would join," I said, laughing. The occult had never appealed to me.

"Oh, I don't mean you," she said coldly, "I mean Naomi."

But Naomi was not sure either. In a way she was a believer in the occult too. She used to make me both amused and irritable with her dreams and omens. She was Irish and perhaps she owed her superstitions to her nationality. She had many talks with Diana when I was out and I used sometimes to get little glimpses of occult ideas in our long talks afterwards.

Once, Naomi had a bad cold and stayed in bed. I had called through her window to her in the morning, on my way out. When I came in the same way in the evening to ask after her, she said, "Di has been here—all my fears are gone. I'm not feverish now."

"Fears!" I thought, and wondered. How strange to have fears when you lay in bed with a cold.

She knew I laughed at her belief in omens, in palmists, clairvoyants, etc.