The Equinox (Volume I, Number IV)

THE EQUINOX snow, and the fair skin wrinkled, and those eyes, that had turned so many happy lives to stone, dulled, and became as pewter dappled with the dregs of wine. The girl of twenty had gone, before him stood a hag of sixty, bent, decrepit, debauched. With dribbling curses she hobbled from the room. As Frater P. left the house, for some time he turned over in his mind these strange happenings, and was not long in coming to the opinion that Mrs. M. was not working alone, and that behind her probably were forces far greater than she. She was but the puppet of others, the slave that would catch the kids and the lambs that were to be served upon her master’s table. Could P. prove this? could he discover who the masters were? The task was a difficult one; it either meant months of work, which P. could not afford to give, or the mere chance of a lucky stroke, which P. set aside as unworthy the attempt. That evening whilst relating the story to his friend H. L. he asked him if he knew of any reliable clairvoyant. H. L. replied that he did, and that there was such a person at that very time in Paris known as The Sibyl, his own “ belle amie.” That night they called on her; and from her P. discovered, for he led her in the spirit, the following remarkable facts. The vision at first was of little importance, then by degrees the seer was led to a house which P. at once recognised as that in which D.D.C.F. lived. He entered one of the rooms, which he also at once recognised but curious to say, instead of finding D.D.C.F. and V.N.R. there he found Theo and Mrs. Horos. Mr. Horos (M.S.R.) incarnated in the body of V.N.R. and Mrs. Horos (S.V.A.) in that of D.D.C.F. Their 176