The devil gave no verbal answer. 🔊 He merely looked at Soames and pointed with rigid forefinger to the door. 🔊 Soames was wretchedly rising from his chair when, with a desperate, quick gesture, I swept together two dinner-knives that were on the table, and laid their blades across each other. 🔊 The devil stepped sharp back against the table behind him, averting his face and shuddering. 🔊

"You are not superstitious!" he hissed. 🔊

"Not at all," I smiled. 🔊

"Soames," he said as to an underling, but without turning his face, "put those knives straight!" 🔊

With an inhibitive gesture to my friend, "Mr. Soames," I said emphatically to the devil, "is a Catholic diabolist"; 🔊 but my poor friend did the devil's bidding, not mine; 🔊 and now, with his master's eyes again fixed on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. 🔊 I tried to speak. It was he that spoke. 🔊 "Try," was the prayer he threw back at me as the devil pushed him roughly out through the door—"Try to make them know that I did exist!" 🔊

In another instant I, too, was through that door. 🔊 I stood staring all ways, up the street, across it, down it. 🔊 There was moonlight and lamplight, but there was not Soames nor that other. 🔊