The Pale Horse

Leaving the luncheon at Venables’s home, the group arrives at the Pale Horse and is greeted by Thyrza Grey joined in short order by Sybil and Bella. After a few brief pleasantries, Mark and Thyrza breach the nature of their visit. Thyrza addresses Mark’s skepticism: “You can’t explain away everything as superstition, or fear, or religious bigotry” (77). Mark agrees that there are things that cannot be explained but fails to believe Thyrza’s assertion that the three women possess particular powers.

During the group’s conversation, they agree that there are generally only two reasons people resort to magic and the supernatural: “The love potion or the cup of poison” (79). Thyrza asserts that there is a death drive in each person and that the “death wish that exists in all of us must be stimulated” to cause death in another (81). She claims that she, Bella, and Sybil have harnessed the means by which to do this. She lets slip that she is convinced Mark sought them out for his own reasons.