“You must tell me all your impressions, even your fancies; they are quite as important as your certainties.”

“I had a vague idea that it was someone connected with my forgotten dream, someone who had been at me in my sleep, someone of great strength and great ability⁠—of great force⁠—quite an unusual personality⁠—and, I was certain, too⁠—a woman.”

“A good woman?” asked John Silence quietly.

Pender started a little at the question and his sallow face flushed; it seemed to surprise him. But he shook his head quickly with an indefinable look of horror.

“Evil,” he answered briefly, “appallingly evil, and yet mingled with the sheer wickedness of it was also a certain perverseness⁠—the perversity of the unbalanced mind.”

He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes.