WHEN her husband went to Buenos Aires, Mrs. Harrison invited his three assistants to luncheon. She was pleased to see them again, as her husband had not been away for a month and she could not ask them to her house when he was there. He was too concerned with his dignity as chief engineer to mix with his assistants, and was not affected by the monotony of his life. He was interested in building railways and in nothing else.

      In Christiano Muerto, his headquarters, there were a half-finished railway station, a store, and a dozen huts where the engineers lived who were building the new line to Tres Arbres. Mrs. Harrison sometimes rode away from it, only to see it from a distance and break the even lines of the horizon. East and West the railway ran straight out of sight across the pampa, and bisected the circle that contained nothing but brown grass and cattle. Once a day, a train passed slowly from horizon to horizon.

      The unbroken circle of which Christiano Muerto was the centre, reflected itself in her mind which brooded and closed over its own emptiness. Nothing new came in or out.

      Most of the engineers lived in wagons up and down the line, but her three guests were always in Christiano Muerto. They interested without entertaining her. She looked at them each in turn, detachedly as though she had never seen them before. O'Hara, the second engineer, was the most striking. His hair was curly and untidy, and his huge head over-balanced his Dublin barman's face. Burgoyne's hair stood up in bristles. He was like a brown hedgehog nibbling its food. She looked sideways at Field's blunt profile. His heavy jaw and melancholy blue eye made her think of a dog who had never found a master. He had been a cavalry officer and was the only one with whom she could have flirted. He danced with her when new gramophone records came from Buenos Aires and taught her bridge; but she felt that he was less interested in her than Burgoyne, who read his verses to her, when he was drunk. O'Hara came because he liked her food.

      Burgoyne stopped nibbling and looked up:

      "If this goes on we shall turn into idiots," he said. Round the rim of her empty circle a thought ran like an escaping lizard.

      Field screwed up his eyes:

      "I agree with you," he said. "This life is a looking-glass that reflects our own emptiness."

      O'Hara grinned spitefully:

      "You ought to cultivate a hobby if you've time to get bored. My work is enough for me."

      Mrs. Harrison got up and turned on the gramophone. A voice began to scream imbecility in jerks like a stomach dance. Through it all, the needle made a thin whine: a taut wire in her ears. She looked out of the window at the empty pampa, harsh and yellow in the sun. There were circles everywhere; the records, the sun and the edge of the plain. "Thank God the room's oblong," she thought.

      Burgoyne came over to her.

      "Turn it off, it's too hot for that noise," he said.

      "No, no, I like it."

      Burgoyne's face twitched.

      "Have you ever thought it would be better if things were squarer," he said.

      "Yes. I never like to talk about it; it sounds too silly."

      "You are right, but all the same one should always think of form as fluid, otherwise you can conceive of and see nothing but arbitrary shapes and you go mad."

      The gramophone wound itself out. Burgoyne shut it off. O'Hara's mincing voice cut between them:

      "You are wrong, Burgoyne. Shape is the only thing that has a real existence. If the universe dissolved, a triangle would still be a triangle."

      "A woman I knew said that wasn't true," said Field.

      "She asserted that the human will could change anything. You could break the atmosphere," she said, "and bring in another world with different arrangements. She used to raise spirits. All rot, I think."

      Burgoyne and Mrs. Harrison spoke together: "Do you know — I beg your pardon."

      She went on:

      "Do you know what she did?"

      "Things out of old books on black magic. A thoroughly bad egg. I think she killed animals and used their blood to evoke the devil. I've got one of her books somewhere."

      She became excited:

      "Oh do let's try. Please bring the book over."

      "I don't mind," said O'Hara. "I've always wanted to know what made a man like Lodge lose his sense of scientific probility. Go and fetch your sorcerer's vade mecum, Field."

      Field went out and returned with the book.

      "It will be rather difficult to carry out this Johnie's directions. Vervaine and virgin goats aren't exactly plentiful," he said.

      Mrs. Harrison took the book and turned over the pages. Burgoyne looked over her shoulder.

      "I should think we could do without some of these things. Blood and aromatic herbs seem to be the essentials," he said.

      "And a hysterical frame of mind," said Field. "If you think anything will do, let's ride down a partridge, Dolly."

      Mrs. Harrison wondered why he was the only one of them who called her by her first name. She would have liked it better from Burgoyne. She thought that some day Field would find them making faces and pulling straws out of one another's hair, saying:

      "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harrison; excuse me, Mr. Burgoyne." When the oblong room became oval, perhaps. She ran her fingers over the book and felt the dirty cover as a reassurance.

      "Very well. Tell Ortega to saddle the chiquito, while I change my clothes," she said.

      She put on riding breeches and walked out of the house into yellow heat. The chiquito, a clever little horse with an ugly head, danced round while she tried to mount. Field spoke to him and he stopped. Mrs. Harrison swung herself into the saddle. They walked out of the courtyard and cantered across the plain.

      She looked at the horizon, smooth as a ring and inwards at the empty circle, round which thoughts crawled like snails. Circles within circles. Everything was in the centre of a ring and could never get out. Stick spurs into the chiquito, make him jump into the air and gallop and always the circle went with you. In a town the houses hid it.

      At home there was the magic book; perhaps the woman had been right, and under the edge of the rim a new shape was waiting. It would stab through the circle like a knife and let them all out, or perhaps she would be able to walk to the edge and look over, or if not, at least a little way towards it.

      Field shouted and swung his whip. A partridge rose and flew into the sun. The chiquito bucked and flung himself forward. The sun blinded her. She could hear nothing but the horses' thumping hoofs and the frantic whir of the bird's wings; a long wire of sound that drew her behind it in a series of broken ellipses. The chiquito jerked himself to a standstill. Field dismounted and picked up the exhausted partridge.

      "We'll do him in to-night," he said, "and good luck to the devil."

II

MRS. HARRISON did not know why she was sure that an attempt to raise the devil would free her from the circle. The Grimoire said nothing about it, the whole thing was childish, a game to break the monotony of their lives, but they were all convinced that something would happen.

      She prepared herself ritually for the evening: rouged her face, scented herself, dressed her hair as though she were going to meet a lover and put a bright green scarf over her shoulders. To avoid the servants they had agreed to make the experiment in O'Hara's wagon, left in a siding to be hitched to the morning train. She opened the door.

      Out of his open window yellow light wavered and splashed itself over a pile of steel rails. She heard Field's harsh voice ask for a drink. O'Hara opened the door for her and helped her down the steps. Burgoyne, in black trousers and a white dinner jacket, was pouring whisky into a glass.

      "Hullo, you've dressed yourself up, too," he said and smiled. O'Hara still wore dirty flannels; Field well cut and patched breeches.

      "Yes, of course," she said.

      Field shrugged his shoulders:

      "I don't know why you pay such compliments to the devil. I wouldn't as much as change my necktie for all the ghosts in America."

      "Who's going to kill the partridge?" said Burgoyne.

      "I will," answered O'Hara. "I think you're wrong about dressing. This is a scientific experiment and we shouldn't try to work up an atmosphere. What do you think of my circle?"

      He pointed at the floor at the end of the wagon. He had copied the circle out of the Grimoire. East, West, North and South the line was cut by neat drawings of skulls and bats heads. Outside he had drawn broken triangles and twisted lines, supposed to be the signatures of demons. Inside there was a pile of eucalyptus leaves and a brazier used to burn coal in the watchmen's huts.

      The partridge was tied to it by the leg and fluttered desperately when they came near it.

      "One could almost imagine it as a square," said Burgoyne. "If one drew a line from the bat's ears to the top of the skull there would be two triangles breaking through."

      His face twitched. Excitement, like pain, ran back and forth between Mrs. Harrison and Burgoyne. Her consciousness closed round the empty circle in her head.

      They turned out the light, seated themselves on the floor, back to back, inside the circle and lit the brazier. Thin sharp smelling smoke rose to the roof, spread and drifted out of the windows.

      O'Hara held the partridge between his knees. Mrs. Harrison lit a candle and read the evocation in a chanting voice:

      "Hemen Etan, Hemen Etan, Hemen Etan, El, Ati, Titeip impero tibi per clavem Salomonis et nomen magnum SEMHAMPHORAS."

      She felt Field's shoulder shake. Burgoyne's long hand closed over hers. Outside black heat pressed round the wagon, and in the brazier with slow hisses and sudden cracks, the pointed leaves twisted into ash. Field threw a fresh handful on the fire. A flame curled along a dead leaf and went out. She read on:

      "Mehaton On Mathon . . . daemonia Coeli Gad, Almousin, Gibor . . . veni, veni, veni . . ."

      "Come, come, come." Her voice rose to a whine. She thought of it as the point of a line making an arc, that must be cut before it could describe a half circle. That was the purpose of the sacrifice. Before it could achieve the inevitable shape, O'Hara would kill the partridge and the point would be lost . . . Chavajoth, Chavajoth, CHAVAJOTH. She had reached the highest point of the curve. O'Hara stood up, cut off the bird's head and threw the body into the brazier. Mrs. Harrison stopped reading. In her mind and in the room silence began.

      Underneath them something commenced to throb weakly and far away a sound began. Round the rim of her circle a gramophone needle whined and changed into a whir, like wings beating. She listened, holding her breath, afraid that she was imagining the sound. The wings grew larger and larger and roared as they whirled the air.

      "Something's coming," said Field. "Oh, my God, let's pray."

      "Shut up," she whispered.

      Burgoyne's nails dug into her hand. O'Hara got up.

      "It's the special. Holy Virgin, I forgot the switch," he shouted and jumped out of the window.

      Something round and hissing burst through the wall and the wagon fell to pieces. Out of the darkness a revolving wheel came and crushed in her skull.