hanging there looking down with that strange, hateful, rather kindly determination.
"Bunny Whipple's wife—" she thought again. "I saw her yesterday—and the silly little fool recognized me. She would have spoken to me had I given her the chance. Spoken to me as she wrote me—asking me to give her back her husband's love—love—"
Her mind formed the word, caressed it as if it were something futile and soft and naïve and laughable, like a ball of cotton or a tiny kitten—
The next moment, she whipped it aside with all her hard will. She sat up straight.
For, at the forming of the word, the Thing which a second earlier had been a pin-point sitting on the gilded edge of a Sèvres vase, bloated and stretched gigantically, leaped up, appeared to float, leaped again toward the ceiling as if trying to jerk it away from the cross beams.
Then, just as suddenly, it dropped on the floor. It lay there, roaring with laughter.
Diana did not hear the laughter. She felt it. She knew it.
Too, she knew exactly where it was; between the large buhl table and the divan. She'd get it and
