Free The Nightmare Had Triplets by Branch Cabell

gentlewoman into whose life I have brought romance who did not display afterward, more or less volubly, this quaint hallucination. You do not display it: and I deduce, as a sound logician, that you are not female.”
        The princess stared at him, smiling a little oddly. You saw that the large pearl she wore upon her forehead had altered in its coloring: for it glowed now like a ruby.
        And Smirt continued to speak with extreme and careful politeness:
        “No, I do not remember you. I can but suggest that during the prolonged career of a Peripatetic Episcopalian one necessarily forgets much. There need be no personal side to such forgetfulness. I do not remember you: that is all. Nor do I quite understand, my dear sir, why you should have enkindled in every part of your body to this fiery red color, and have sprouted two horns and a very long forked tail—Why, but what the devil!”
        “Formerly,” agreed the so remarkably transformed princess, “I was called that. But what with the progress of science and of scepticism, and the need to cut down our operating expenses, and the great popularity of mergers, affairs have been altered.”

XII. —& COMPANY
     
        As the junior partner,” the appalling fiend continued, “it is a part of my duties to relieve the old gentleman of all these routine affairs in the way of temptation and carnality and so on. Yes, Smirt, we have conducted business for a long while now as All-Highest & Company.”
        The speaker and Smirt were at this instant sitting astride upon a flash of lightning, confronting each other, so that Smirt journeyed face forward, and the scarlet devil courteously rode backwards, as these two travelled with a great and yet almost unremarkable rapidity through space. They encountered no wind, since between the stars there is no atmosphere. Smirt had thus no actual feeling of movement; and it seemed to him a rather odd thing, this sensation of sitting quite still on a flash of lightning.
        Yet he saw that above and below, and on every side of Company and Smirt, glittered various constellations, and all these appeared constantly to shift in position and to pass away, so quickly travelled the flash of lightning through endless space. And Smirt noted yet another odd thing: the right foot of Company was human, but the left foot was shaped like the hoof of a goat.
        “Let us distinguish,” said Smirt, when he had wholly got his bearings: “for I was not tempted in the least.”
        Red Company shrugged. “And why should you be, Smirt, with so many plump and juicy young women about, as alike as peas in a pod to begin with, and to end with, as alike as wives in a bed? I flushed, I assure you, to be tempting anybody of your wide experience and savoir faire with such trumpery bait; but the old gentleman has in these matters His own notions. Unprogressive, I fear. And even these notions I bungled. So you saw through me, of course. You caught at once my slight slip in feminine psychology, because you understand women better than I do.”
        “Oh, that, Company, that is a mere matter of experience. You should see more of them, that only is needed. Indeed it occurs to me that, with a little more experience of women, you might find women of a decided usefulness in your own province, of stirring up disquiet and wickedness among men.”
        “I shall make a note of that, Smirt,” said the fiend gratefully; and he produced a small red note-book with a red pencil. “Meanwhile I am flustered. Your acumen has quite dumbfounded me at the moment I was going on to offer you strange sins and infamous pleasures and all the subtler refinements of abominable love. Oh, just the usual routine! There is no need to go into it now. To the contrary, it is a relief to me to be spared such uncongenial nonsense. The old gentleman writes all those speeches, I must tell you. He reads Oscar Wilde a great deal.”
        “Why,