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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Thing from the Lake, by Eleanor M. Ingram
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Thing from the Lake
+
+
+Author: Eleanor M. Ingram
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2007  [eBook #23738]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THING FROM THE LAKE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Nick Wall, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE THING FROM THE LAKE
+
+by
+
+ELEANOR M. INGRAM
+
+Author of "From the Car Behind", "The Unafraid", etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1921, by J. B. Lippincott Company
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
+at the Washington Square Press
+Philadelphia, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     "As well give up the Bible at once, as our belief in
+     apparitions."--WESLEY.
+
+
+The house cried out to me for help.
+
+In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there, that
+impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of
+the place. Let me at once set down that this is not the story of a
+haunted house. It is, or was, a beleaguered house; strangely besieged as
+was Prague in the old legend, when a midnight army of spectres unfurled
+pale banners and encamped around the city walls.
+
+Of course, I did not know all this, the day that my real-estate agent
+brought his little car to a stop before the dilapidated farm. I believed
+the house only appealed to be lived in; for deliverance from the
+destroying work of neglect and time. A spring rain was whispering down
+from a gray sky, dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter
+like timid footsteps hurrying by, yet even in the storm the house did
+not look dreary.
+
+"There, Mr. Locke, is a bargain," the agent called back to me, where I
+sat in my car. "Finest bit in Connecticut for a city man's summer home!
+Woodland, farm land, lake and a house that only needs a few repairs to
+be up-to-date. Look at that double row of maples, sir. Shade all summer!
+Fine old orchard, too; with a trifle of attention."
+
+I nodded, surveying the house with an eagerness of interest that
+surprised myself. A box-like, fairly large structure of commonplace New
+England ugliness, it coaxed my liking as had no other place I had ever
+seen; it wooed me like a determined woman. And as one would long to
+clothe beautifully a beloved woman, I looked at the house and foresaw
+what an architect could do for it; how creamy stucco; broad white
+porches and a gay scarlet roof would transform it.
+
+"Come inside," my agent urged, hope in his voice as he observed my face;
+"let me show you the interior. I brought the keys along. Of course, the
+rooms may seem a bit musty. No one has lived in it for--some time. It's
+the old Michell property; been in the family for a couple of hundred
+years. Last Michell is dead, now, and it's being sold for the benefit of
+some religious institute the old gentleman left it to. Trifle wet to
+walk over the land today! But I've a plan and measurements in my
+portfolio."
+
+I said that we would go in. If he had but known the fact, the place was
+already sold to me; before I left my car, before I entered the house,
+before I had seen the hundred-odd acres that make up the estate.
+
+There was a narrow, flagged path to the veranda, where the planking
+moved and creaked under our weight while my companion unlocked the front
+door. Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed place was neither
+musty nor damp, when we stepped in. Instead, there was a faint, resinous
+odor, very pleasant and clean; perhaps from the cedar of which the
+woodwork largely consisted.
+
+The house was partially furnished. Not, of course, with much that I
+would care to retain, but a few good antiques stood out among their
+commonplace associates. A large bedroom on the north side, which I
+appointed as my own at first sight, held an old rosewood set including a
+four-posted, pineapple-carved bed. I threw open the shutters in this
+room and looked out.
+
+I received the first jar to my satisfaction. On this side of the place,
+the grounds ran down a slight slope for perhaps half a block to the
+five-acre hollow of shallow water and lush growth which the agent called
+a lake. From it flowed a considerable creek, winding behind the house
+and away on its journey to the Sound. For that under-water marsh I felt
+a shock of violent dislike.
+
+"You don't care for the lake?" my companion deprecated, at my elbow.
+"Fine trout in that stream, though! I'd like you to see it in the
+sunshine."
+
+"I should care more for it if it was a lake, not a swamp," I answered.
+
+"Oh, but that is only because the old dam is down," he exclaimed
+eagerly. "That lets all the water out, you see. Why, if the dam were put
+back, you'd have as pretty a lake for a canoe as there is in the State!
+Its natural depth is four or five feet all over, and about eight or ten
+where the stream flows through to the dam. Even yet, a few wild duck
+stop there spring and fall, and when I was a boy I've seen heron. Put
+back the dam, Mr. Locke, and I'll guarantee you'll never say swamp
+again!"
+
+"We will try it," I said. "Now let us find a lawyer and see how quickly
+I can be put in possession."
+
+We drove back to the little town from which we had that morning started
+out, and where my agent lived; my sleek car following his small one with
+somewhat the effect of a long-limbed panther striding behind an agitated
+mouse.
+
+It appeared that the sale was simply consummated. I do not mean that all
+the formalities were completed in a day. But by nightfall I could feel
+myself the owner of the place.
+
+Perhaps it was the giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time,
+or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that
+inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent
+one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return
+to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several
+contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, to discuss the
+alterations I wanted made. Why not drive out to my new house this
+evening and sleep tonight in the rosewood-furnished bedroom?
+
+The idea gained favor as I contemplated it. I could go over the house
+tonight and sketch more clearly what I wanted done, while I would be on
+the ground when my men arrived next morning. There was an allure of
+camping out about it, too.
+
+In the end I went, of course.
+
+It was dark when I stabled my roadster in the barn that was part of my
+new possessions; where the car seemed to glitter disdain of the
+hay-littered, ragged shelter. Equipped with a flashlight, suitcase and
+bundle, I followed a faint path that wound its way to the house through
+wet blackberry vines whose thorns had outlived the winter. My steps
+broke the blank silence that brooded over the place. At this season
+there was no insect life; nor any other stirring thing within hearing or
+sight. But just as I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound
+from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north. There was no
+wind, yet the water had seemed to move with a sound like the smacking of
+soft, glutinous lips. Or as if some soft body drew itself from a bed of
+clinging mud. I wondered idly if the tide could run this far back from
+Long Island Sound.
+
+The house reiterated the impression of welcoming me. I shut and locked
+the old door behind me, and went up to the room I had chosen as my own.
+There I unshuttered and opened the windows, lighted one of the candles I
+had brought and set it on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes,
+and threw my blankets on the bed. I had moved in!
+
+My pleasant sense of proprietorship continued to grow. Before I thought
+of sleep, I had been through the house several times from cellar to
+attic and accumulated a list of things to be done. Back in my room, an
+hour passed in revising the list, by candle-light.
+
+Near ten o'clock, I rolled myself in a dressing-gown and my blankets,
+spread an automobile robe over the four-posted bed, and fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     "Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
+     All women in the magic of her locks."
+                              --SHELLEY (_Trans._).
+
+
+It trailed suavely through my fingers, slipping across my palm like a
+belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight.
+Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand
+upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I
+may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a
+strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity
+unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a
+bird. In brief, it was--it only could be an opulent braid of hair.
+
+When I grasped it, it ceased to move.
+
+In the dense darkness of my bedroom, I lay still and considered. I was
+alone, or rather, should have been alone in the old house I had bought
+the day before. The agent assured me that it had been unoccupied for
+years. Who, then, was my guest? A passer-by seeking refuge in a
+supposedly deserted house would hardly have moved about with such silent
+caution. A tramp of this genus would be a rarity indeed. I had nothing
+with me of value to attract a thief. The usual limited masculine
+jewelry--a watch, a pair of cuff-links, a modest pin--surely were not
+sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a bird of prey as one wearing
+such plumage as I held. I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a
+generous handful. How did it come to trail across my bed, in any case?
+And why was its owner locked in silence and immobility? Surely startled
+innocence would have cried out, questioned my grasp or struggled against
+it! My captive did neither.
+
+I began to paint a picture against the darkness; the picture of a
+crouching woman, fear-paralyzed; not daring to stir, to sob or pant or
+shiver lest she betray herself. Or, perhaps, a woman who was not hushed
+by panic, but by deliberation. A woman who slowly levelled a weapon,
+assuring her aim in the blank darkness by such guides as my breathing
+and the taut direction of her imprisoned tresses. An ugly woman could
+not have such hair as this. Or, could she? I had a doubtful recollection
+of various long-haired demonstrators glimpsed in drugshop windows, who
+were not beautiful. Yes, but they would never have found themselves in
+such a situation as this one! Only resolve or recklessness could bring a
+woman to such a pass; and with spirit and this hair no woman could be
+ugly.
+
+How quiet she was! I suddenly reflected that she must be thinking the
+same thing of me, since neither of us had moved during a considerable
+space of time. Possibly she fancied me only half-aroused, and hoped that
+I would relapse into sleep without realizing upon what my drowsy grasp
+had closed. No doubt it would have been the course of chivalry for me to
+pretend to do so, but it was not the course of curiosity.
+
+The deadlock could not last indefinitely. Apparently, though, it must be
+I who should break it. As quietly as possible, I brought my left hand
+forward to grope along that silken line which certainly must guide me to
+the intruder herself. My hand slipped along the smooth surface to the
+full reach of my arm; and encountered nothing. Check, for the first
+attempt! The candle and matches I had bought in the village were also
+beyond my reach, unless I released my captive and rolled across the bed
+toward the little bookcase where I had placed them beside the
+flashlight. If I should speak, what would she do? And--a new
+thought!--was she alone in the house?
+
+There came a gentle draw at the braid, instantly ceasing as I
+automatically tightened my hold. The pretense that I slept was ended. I
+spoke, as soothingly and kindly as I could manage.
+
+"If you will let me strike a light, we can explain to each other. Or, if
+you will agree not to escape----?"
+
+In spite of my efforts, my voice boomed startlingly through the dark,
+still room. No reply followed, but the braid quivered and suddenly
+relaxed from its tension. She must have come closer to me. Delighted by
+so much success attained and intrigued by the novelty of the adventure,
+I moved slightly, stretching my free arm in the direction of the
+flashlight.
+
+"I am not a difficult person," I essayed encouragement. "Nor too dull, I
+hope, to understand a mistake or a necessity. Nor am I affiliated with
+the police! Permit me----"
+
+I halted abruptly. A cool edge of metal had been laid across the wrist
+of my groping hand. As the hand came to rest, palm uppermost, I could
+feel, or imagined I could feel my pulse beating steadily against the
+menacing pressure of the blade. The warning was eloquent and sufficient;
+I moved no further toward my flashlight. Of course, if I had lifted my
+right hand from its guard of the braid, I could easily have pinioned the
+arm which poised the knife before I suffered much harm. But I might have
+lost my captive in the attempt; an event for which I was not ready, yet.
+
+"Check," I admitted. "Although, it is rather near a stalemate for us
+both, isn't it?"
+
+The knife pressed closer, suggestively.
+
+"No," I dissented with the mute argument. "I think not. I do not believe
+you could do it; not in cold blood, anyway!"
+
+"You do not know," insisted the closer pressing blade, as if with a
+tongue.
+
+"No, I do not know," I translated aloud. "But I am confident enough to
+chance it. What reason have you for desperate action? I would not harm
+you. Have I not a right to curiosity? This is my house, you know. Or
+perhaps you did not know that?"
+
+A sigh stirred the silence, blending with the ceaseless whisper of the
+rain that had recommenced through the night. The braid did not move in
+my right hand, nor did the blade touching my left.
+
+"Speak!" I begged, with an abrupt urgency that surprised myself. "You
+are the invader. Why? What would you have from me? If I am to let you
+go, at least speak to me, first! This is--uncanny."
+
+"There is magic in the third time of asking," came a breathed, just
+audible whisper. "Yet, be warned; call not to you that which you may
+neither hold nor forbid."
+
+"But I do call--if that will make you speak to me," I returned, my
+pulses tingling triumph. "Although, as to not holding you----"
+
+"You fancy you hold me? It is not you who are master of this moment, but
+I who am its mistress."
+
+Her voice had gained in strength; a soft voice, yet not weak, used with
+a delicate deliberation that gave her speech the effect of being a
+caprice of her own rather than a result of my compulsion. Yet, I
+thought, she must be crouched or kneeling beside me, on the floor, held
+like the Lady of the Beautiful Tresses.
+
+"Still, I doubt if you have the disposition to use your advantage," I
+began.
+
+"You mean, the cruelty," she corrected me.
+
+"I am from New York," I smiled. "Let me say, the nerve. If you pressed
+that knife, I might bleed to death, you know."
+
+"Would you hear a story of a woman of my house, and her anger, before
+you doubt too far?"
+
+"Tell me," I consented; and smiled in the darkness at the transparent
+plan to distract my attention from that imprisoned braid.
+
+She was silent for so long that I fancied the plan abandoned, perhaps
+for lack of a tale to tell. Then her voice leaped suddenly out of the
+blackness that closed us in, speaking always in muted tones, but with a
+strange, impassioned urgency and force that startled like a cry. The
+words hurried upon one another like breaking surf.
+
+"See! See! The fire leaps in the chimney; it breathes sparks like a
+dreadful beast--it is hungry; its red tongues lick for that which they
+may not yet have. Already its breath is hot upon the wax image on the
+hearth. But the image is round of limb and sound. Yes, though it is but
+toy-large, it is perfect and firm! See how it stands in the red shine:
+the image of a man, cunningly made to show his stalwartness and strength
+and bravery of velvet and lace! The image of a great man, surely; one
+high in place and power. One above fear and beyond the reach of hate!
+
+"The woman sits in her low chair, behind the image. The fire-shine is
+bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side her hair flows down
+to the floor; her eyes look on the image and are dreadfully glad. Ha,
+was not Beauty the lure, and shall it not be the vengeance?
+
+"The nine lamps have been lighted! The feathers have been laid in a
+circle! The spell has been spoken; the spell of Hai, son of Set, first
+man to slay man by the Dark Art!
+
+"The man is at the door of the woman's house. Yes, he who came in pride
+to woo, and proved traitor to the love won--he is at her door in
+weakness and pain.
+
+"As the wax wastes, the man wastes! As the mannikin is gone, the man
+dies!
+
+"On her doorstep, he begs for life. He is coward and broken. He suffers
+and is consumed. He calls to her the love-names they both know. And the
+woman laughs, and the door is barred.
+
+"The door is barred, but what shall bar out the Enemy who creeps to the
+nine lamps?
+
+"See, the fire shines through the wax! The image is grown thin and wan.
+Three days, three nights, it has shrunk before the flames. Three days,
+three nights, the woman has watched. As the fire is not weary, she is
+not weary. As the fire is beautiful, she is beautiful.
+
+"The man is borne to her door again. He lifts up his hands and cries to
+her. But now he begs for death. Now he knows anguish stronger than fear.
+And the woman laughs, and the door is barred.
+
+"The fire shines on a lump of wax. The man is dead. From her chair the
+woman has arisen and stands, triumphant.
+
+"_But what crouches behind her, unseen? The lamps are cast down! The
+pentagram is crossed! The Horror takes its own._"
+
+The impassioned speech broke off with the effect of a snapped bar of
+thin metal. In the silence, the steady whisper of rain came to my ears
+again, continuing patiently. I became aware of a rich yet delicate
+fragrance in the air I breathed. It was not any perfume I could
+identify, either as a composition or as a flower scent. If I may hope to
+be understood it sparkled upon the senses. It produced a thirst for
+itself, so that the nostrils expanded for it with an eagerness for the
+new pleasure. I found myself breathing deeply, almost greedily, before
+answering my prisoner's story.
+
+"'Sister Helen,'" I quoted, as lightly as I could.
+
+"And do you think Rossetti had no truth to base his poem upon?" her
+quiet voice flowed out of the darkness, seeming scarcely the same speech
+as the swift, irregular utterance of a moment before. "Do you think that
+all the traditions and learning of the younger world meant--nothing?"
+
+"Are you asking me to believe in witchcraft and sorcery?"
+
+"I ask nothing."
+
+"Not even to believe that you will press the knife if I refuse to free
+you?"
+
+"Not even that; now!"
+
+Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded more faint, as if from fatigue
+or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had
+relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position. I seemed to
+read my lady's weariness in the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was
+really frightened, now that her brave attempt to lull me into incaution
+had failed.
+
+"Listen, please," I spoke earnestly. "I am going to set you free. I
+apologize for keeping you captive so long! But you will admit the
+provocation to my curiosity? You will forgive me?"
+
+A sigh drifted across the darkness.
+
+"I ask no questions," I urged. "But will you not trust me to make a
+light and give what help I can? You are welcome to use the house as you
+please. Or, if you are lost or stormbound, my car is in the old barn and
+I will drive you anywhere that you say. Let us not spoil our adventure
+by suspicion. In good faith----"
+
+I opened my hand, releasing the lovely rope by which I had detained my
+prisoner. Then, with a quickening pulse, I waited. Would she stay? Would
+she spring up and escape? Would she thank me, or would she reply with
+some eccentricity unpredictable as her whim to tell me that tale?
+
+She did none of these things. The braid of hair, freed entirely,
+continued to lie supinely across my open palm. The coolness of the blade
+still lightly touched my wrist. She might be debating her course of
+action, I reflected. Well, I was in no haste to conclude the episode!
+
+When the silence had lasted many moments, however, I began to grow
+restive. Anxiety tinged my speculations. Suppose she had fainted? Or did
+she doubt my intentions, and was her quietness that of one on guard? I
+stirred tentatively.
+
+Two things happened simultaneously with my movement. The braid glided
+away from me, while the knife slipped from its position and tinkled upon
+the floor. I started up, perception of the truth seizing my slow wits,
+and reached for my flashlight.
+
+There was no one in the room except myself. Down my blanket was slipping
+a severed braid of hair, perhaps a foot in length, jaggedly cut across
+at the end farthest from my hand. Leaning over, I saw on the floor
+beside the bed a paper-knife of my own; a sharp, serviceable tool that
+formed part of my writing kit. Before going to bed, I had taken it from
+my suitcase to trim a candle-wick, and had left it upon the bookstand.
+
+Now I understood why her voice had sounded more distant than seemed
+reasonable while I held her beside me. No doubt she had hacked off the
+detaining braid almost as soon as I grasped it. The knife she had
+pressed against my wrist to keep me where I lay while she made ready for
+flight; or amused herself with me. Flight? Say rather that she had
+leisurely withdrawn! Perhaps she had not even heard my magnanimous
+speech offering her the freedom that she already possessed. If she had
+stayed to hear me, probably she had laughed.
+
+Perhaps she was still in the house.
+
+I rose and lighted a candle, under the impulsion of that idea, reserving
+my flashlight for the search. But there was no one in any of the dusty,
+sparsely furnished rooms and halls through which I hunted. The ancient
+locks on doors and windows were fastened as I had left them, although my
+lady certainly had entered and left at her pleasure. Puzzled and amused,
+I finally returned to my bedchamber.
+
+There was some difference in that room. I was conscious of the fact as
+soon as I entered and closed the door behind me. The candle still burned
+where I had left it, flickering slightly in some current of air. There
+was no change that the eye could find, no sound except the rain, yet I
+felt an extreme reluctance to go on even a step from where I stood. What
+I wanted to do was to tear open the door behind me, to rush out into the
+hall and slam the door shut between this room and myself.
+
+Why? I looked around me, sending the beam of the flashlight playing over
+the quiet place. Nothing, of course! I walked over to the bookcase, took
+up the braid I had left there, and sat down in an old armchair to study
+my trophy. On principle and by habit I had no intention of being
+mastered by nerves. It was humiliating to discover that I could be made
+nervous by the mere fact of being in an unoccupied farmhouse after
+midnight.
+
+The braid was magnificent. It was as broad as my palm, yet compressed so
+tightly that it was thick and solid to the touch. If released over
+someone's shoulders, it would have been a sumptuous cloak, indeed! In
+what madness of panic had the girl sacrificed this beauty? How she must
+hate me, now the panic was past! The color, too, was unique, in my
+experience; a gold as vivid as auburn. Or was it tinged with auburn? As
+I leaned forward to catch the candle-light, a drift of that fragrance
+worn by my visitor floated from her braid.
+
+At once I knew what had changed in the room. The air that had been so
+pure when the house was opened, now was heavy with an odor of damp and
+mould that had seeped into the atmosphere as moisture will seep through
+cellar walls. One would have said that the door of some hideous vault
+had been opened into my bedchamber. This stench struggled, as it were,
+with the volatile perfume that clung about the braid; so that my senses
+were thrust back and forth between disgust and delight in the strangest
+wavering of sensation.
+
+I made the strongest effort to put away the effect this wavering had
+upon me. I forced myself to sit still and think of normal things; of the
+men whom I was to see next morning, of the plans I meant to discuss with
+them.
+
+Useless! The stench was making me ill. A wave of giddiness swept over
+me, and passed. My heart was beating slowly and heavily. Something in my
+head pulsed in unison. I felt a frightful depression, that suddenly
+burst into an attack of fear gripping me like hysteria. I wanted to
+shriek aloud like a woman, to cover my eyes and run blindly. But at the
+same time my muscles failed me. Will and strength were arrested like
+frozen water.
+
+As I sat there, facing the door of the room, I became aware of Something
+at the window behind my back. Something that pressed against the open
+window and stared at me with a hideous covetousness beside which the
+greed of a beast for its prey is a natural, innocent appetite. I felt
+that Thing's hungry malignance like a soft, dreadful mouth sucking
+toward me, yet held away from me by some force vaguely based on my own
+resistance. And I understood how a man may die of horror.
+
+Yet, presently, I turned around. Weak and sick, with dragging effort I
+turned in my chair and faced the black, uncurtained window where I felt
+It to be.
+
+Nothing was there, to sight or hearing. I sat still, and combated that
+which I knew _was_ there. In the profound stillness, I heard the wind
+stir the naked branches of the trees, the flowing water through the
+fragments of the one-time dam, the sputtering of my candle which needed
+trimming. Sweat ran down my face and body, drenching me with cold. It
+crouched against the empty window, staring at me.
+
+After a time, the presence seemed not so close. At last, I seemed to
+know It was gone. In the gush of that enormous relief my remaining
+strength was swept away like a swimmer in a torrent and I collapsed
+half-fainting in my chair.
+
+When I was able, I rose and walked through the house again. Again the
+rooms showed nothing to my flashlight except dull furniture, walls
+peeling here and there from long neglect, pictures of no merit and
+dreary subject. I had expected nothing, and I found nothing.
+
+It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom that a sentence from the
+invisible lady's story came back to my mind.
+
+"What crouches behind her, unseen? The Horror takes Its own----"
+
+The bedroom door opened quietly under my hand. The rain had ceased and a
+freshening breeze came from the west, filling the room with sweet
+country air. The candle had burned down. While I stood there, the flame
+flickered out.
+
+After a brief indecision, I made my way to the bed, rolled myself in the
+blankets, and laid down between the four pineapple-topped posts. This
+time I kept the flashlight at my hand. But almost at once I slept, and
+slept heavily far into a bright, windy March morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     "Wide is the seat of the man gentle of speech."
+                             --INSTRUCTION OF KE' GEMNI.
+
+
+On the second day after my return to New York, my Aunt Caroline Knox
+called me up on the telephone.
+
+There are reasons why I always feel myself at a disadvantage with Aunt
+Caroline. The first of these brings me to a trifling matter that I
+should have set down before, but which I have made a habit of ignoring
+so far as possible in both thought and speech. As was Lord Byron, I am
+slightly lame. I admit that is the only quality in common; still, I like
+the romantic association. Now, my limp is very slight, and I never have
+found it interfered much with things I cared to do. In fact, I am
+otherwise somewhat above the average in strength and vigor. But from my
+boyhood Aunt Caroline always made a point of alluding to the physical
+fact as often as possible. She considered that course a healthful
+discipline.
+
+"My nephew," she was accustomed to introduce me. "Lame since he was
+seven. Roger, do not scowl! Yes; run over trying to save a pet dog. A
+mongrel of no value whatever!"
+
+Which would have left some doubt as to whether she referred to poor
+Tatters or to me, had it not been for her exceeding pride in our family
+tree.
+
+The second reason for my disadvantage before her, was her utter contempt
+for my profession as a composer of popular music.
+
+Today her voice came thinly to me across the long-distance wire.
+
+"Your Cousin Phillida has failed in her examinations again," she
+announced to me, with a species of tragic repose. "In view of her
+father's intellect and my--er--my family's, her mental status is
+inexplicable. Although, of course, there is your own case!"
+
+"Why, she is the most educated girl I know," I protested hastily.
+
+"I presume you mean best educated, Roger. Pray do not quite lose your
+command of language."
+
+I meant exactly what I had said. Phillida has studied since she was
+three years old, exhaustively and exhaustedly. A vision of her plain,
+pale little face rose before me when I spoke. It is a burden to be the
+only child of a professor, particularly for a meek girl.
+
+"She has studied insufficiently," Aunt Caroline pursued. "She is
+nineteen, and her position at Vassar is deplorable."
+
+"Her health----" I murmured.
+
+"Would not have hampered her had she given proper attention to
+athletics! However, I did not call up to hear you defend Phillida in a
+matter of which you are necessarily ignorant. Her father and I are
+somewhat better judges, I should suppose, than a young man who is not a
+student in any true sense of the word and ignores knowledge as a purpose
+in life. Not that I wish to wound or depreciate you, Roger. There is, I
+may say, a steadiness of moral character beneath your frivolity of mind
+and pursuit. If my poor brother had trained you more wisely; if you had
+been _my_ son----"
+
+"Thank you, Aunt," I acknowledged the benevolent intention, with an
+inward quailing at the clank of fetters suggested. "Was there something
+I can do for you?"
+
+"Will you meet Phillida at the Grand Central and bring her home? I
+cannot have her cross New York alone and take a second train out here.
+Her father has a lecture this afternoon and I have a club meeting at the
+house."
+
+"With pleasure, Aunt! What time does her train get in?"
+
+"Half after four. Thank you, Roger. And, she looks on you as an elder
+brother. I believe an attitude of cool disapproval on your part might
+impress upon her how she has disappointed the family."
+
+"Leave it to me, Aunt. May I take her to tea, between trains, and get
+out to your place on the six o'clock express?"
+
+"If you think best. You might advise her seriously over the tea."
+
+"A dash of lemon, as it were," I reflected. "Certainly, Aunt, I could."
+
+"Very well. I am really obliged!"
+
+"The pleasure is mine, Aunt."
+
+But that it was going to be Phillida's, I had already decided. She would
+need the support of tea and French pastry before facing her home. As for
+treating her with cool disapproval, I would sooner have spent a year at
+Vassar myself. It was my intention to meet her with a box of chocolates
+instead of advice. Phil was not allowed candy, her complexion being
+under cultivation. On the occasions when we were out together it had
+been my custom to provide a box of sweets, upon which she browsed
+luxuriously, bestowing the remnants upon some street child before
+reaching her home.
+
+From the telephone I turned back to that frivolous pursuit of which my
+aunt had spoken with such tactfully veiled contempt. She was not
+softened by the respectable fortune I had made from several successful
+musical comedies and a number of efforts which my publishers advertise
+as "high-class parlor pieces for the home." In fact, she felt it to be a
+grievance that my lightness should be better paid than the Professor's
+learning. In which she was no doubt right!
+
+Ever since my return from my newly purchased farm in Connecticut,
+however, I had not been working for money or popular approval, but for
+my own pleasure. There was a Work upon which I spent only special hours
+of delicious leisure and infinite labor. It held all that was forbidden
+to popular compositions; depth and sorrow and dissonances dearer than
+harmony. I called it a Symphony Polynesian, and I had spent years in
+study of barbaric music, instruments and kindred things that this
+love-child of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone or a fancy.
+Aunt Caroline had interrupted, this morning, at a very point of
+achievement toward which I had been working through the usual
+alternations of enjoyment and exasperation, elevation and dejection that
+attend most workmen. Pausing only to set my alarm-clock, I hurried into
+recording what I had found, in the tangible form of paper and ink.
+
+I always set the alarm-clock when I have an engagement, warned by dire
+experiences.
+
+Aunt Caroline had summoned me about eleven in the morning. When the
+strident voice of the clock again aroused me, I had just time to dress
+and reach the Grand Central by half-past four. I recognized that I was
+hungry, that the vicinity was snowed over with sheets of paper, that the
+piano keys had acquired another inkstain, and my pipe had charred
+another black spot on the desk top. Well, it had been a good day; and
+Phillida's tea would have to be my belated luncheon or early dinner.
+Even so, it was necessary to make haste.
+
+It was in that haste of making ready that I uncovered the braid of
+glittering hair which I had brought from Connecticut. I use no
+exaggeration when I say it glittered. It did; each hair was lustrous
+with a peculiar, shining vitality, and crinkled slightly along its full
+length. With a renewed self-reproach at sight of its humbled exile and
+captivity, I took up the trophy of my one adventure. While I am without
+much experience, such a quantity seemed unusual. Also, I had not known
+such a mass of hair could be so soft and supple in the hand. My mother
+and little sister died before I can remember; and while I have many good
+friends, I have none intimate enough to educate me in such matters.
+Perhaps a consciousness of that trifling physical disadvantage of mine
+has made me prefer a good deal of solitude in my hours at home.
+
+The faint, tenacious yet volatile perfume drifted to my nostrils, as I
+held the braid. Who could the woman be who brought that costly fragrance
+into a deserted farmhouse? For so exquisite and unique a fragrance could
+only be the work of a master perfumer. There was youth in that vigorous
+hair, coquetry in the individual perfume, panic in her useless sacrifice
+of the braid I held; yet strangest self-possession in the telling of
+that fanciful tale of sorcery to me.
+
+On that tale, told dramatically in the dark, I had next morning blamed
+the weird waking nightmare that I had suffered after her visit. The
+horror of the night could not endure the strong sun and wind of the
+March morning that followed. Like _Scrooge_, I analyzed my ghost as a
+bit of undigested beef or a blot of mustard. Certainly the thing had
+been actual enough while it lasted, but my reason had thrust it away.
+That was over, I reflected, as I laid the braid back in the drawer. But
+surely the lady was not vanished like the nightmare? Surely I should
+find her in some neighbor's daughter, when my house was finished and I
+went there for the summer? She could not hide from me, with that bright
+web about her head whose twin web I held.
+
+It had grown so late that I had to take a taxicab to the Terminal, just
+halting at a shop long enough to buy a box of the chocolates my cousin
+preferred. But when I reached the great station and found my way through
+the swirl of travelers to the track where Phil's train should come in, I
+was told the express had been delayed.
+
+"Probably half an hour late," the gateman informed me. "Maybe more! Of
+course, though, she may pull in any time."
+
+Which meant no tea for Phillida; instead, a rush across town to the
+Pennsylvania station to catch the train for her home. As I could not
+leave my post lest she arrive in my absence, it also meant nothing to
+eat for me until we reached Aunt Caroline's hospitality; which was cool
+and restrained rather than festive.
+
+I foresaw the heavy atmosphere that would brood over all like a cold
+fog, this evening of Phil's disgraceful return from the scholastic
+arena. Ascertaining from the gateman that the erring train was certain
+not to pull in during the next ten minutes, I sought a telephone booth.
+
+"Aunt Caroline, Phil's train is going to be very late, possibly an hour
+late," I misinformed my kinswoman, when her voice answered me. "I have
+had nothing to eat since breakfast, and she will be hungry long before
+we reach your house. May I not take her to dinner here in town?"
+
+"Please do not call your cousin 'Phil'," she rebuked me, and paused to
+deliberate. "You had no luncheon, you say?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Why not? Were you ill?"
+
+"No; just busy. I forgot lunch. I am beginning to feel it, now. Still,
+if you wish us to come straight home, do not consider me!"
+
+I knew of old how submission mollified Aunt Caroline. She relented, now.
+
+"Well----! You are very good, Roger, to save your uncle a trip into the
+city to meet her. I must not impose upon you. But, a quiet hotel!"
+
+"Certainly, Aunt."
+
+"Phillida does not deserve pampering enjoyment. I am consenting for your
+sake."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt. I wonder, then, if you would mind if we stopped to see
+a show that I especially want to look over, for business reasons? We
+could come out on the theatre express; as we have done before, you
+remember?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"Thank you. I'll take good care of her. Good-bye."
+
+The receiver was still talking when I hung up. There is no other form of
+conversation so incomparably convenient.
+
+The train arrived within the half-hour. With the inrush of travelers, I
+sighted Phillida's sober young figure moving along the cement platform.
+She walked with dejection. Her gray suit represented a compromise
+between fashion and her mother's opinion of decorum, thus attaining a
+length and fulness not enough for grace yet too much for jauntiness. Her
+solemn gray hat was set too squarely upon the pale-brown hair, brushed
+back from her forehead. Her nice, young-girl's eyes looked out through a
+pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. She was too thin and too pale to
+content me.
+
+When she saw me coming toward her, her face brightened and colored quite
+warmly. She waved her bag with actual abandon and her lagging step
+quickened to a run.
+
+"Cousin Roger!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh, how good of you to
+come!"
+
+She gripped my hands in a candid fervor of relief and pleasure.
+
+"I am so glad it is you," she insisted. "I was sorry the train could not
+be later; I wished, almost, it would never get in--and all the time it
+was you who were waiting for me!"
+
+"It was, and now you are about to share an orgy," I told her. "I have
+your mother's permission to take you to dinner, Miss Knox."
+
+"Here? In town? Just us?"
+
+"Yes. And afterward we will take in any show you fancy. How does that
+strike you?"
+
+She gazed up at me, absorbing the idea and my seriousness. To my dismay,
+she grew pale again.
+
+"I--I really believe it will keep me from just dying."
+
+I pretended to think that a joke. But I recognized that my little cousin
+was on the sloping way toward a nervous breakdown.
+
+"No baggage?" I observed. "Good! I hope you did not eat too much
+luncheon. This will be an early dinner."
+
+She waited to take off the spectacles and put them in her little bag.
+
+"I do not need them except to study, but I didn't dare meet Mother
+without them," she explained. "No; I could not eat lunch, or breakfast
+either, Cousin Roger. Nor much dinner last night! Oh, if you knew how I
+dread--the grind! I should rather run away."
+
+"So we will; for this evening."
+
+"Yes. Where--where were you going to take me?"
+
+We had crossed the great white hall to street level, and a taxicab was
+rolling up to halt before us. Surprised by the anxiety in the eyes she
+lifted to mine, I named the staid, quietly fastidious hotel where I
+usually took her when we were permitted an excursion together.
+
+"Unless you have a choice?" I finished.
+
+"I have." She breathed resolution. "I want to go to a restaurant with a
+cabaret, instead of going to the theatre. May I? Please, may I? Will you
+take me where I say, this one time?"
+
+Her earnestness amazed me. I knew what her mother would say. I also
+knew, or thought I knew that Phillida needed the mental relaxation which
+comes from having one's own way. In her mood, no one else's way,
+however, wise or agreeable, will do it all.
+
+"All right," I yielded. "If you will promise me, faith of a gentlewoman,
+to tell Aunt Caroline that I took you there and you did not know where
+you were going. My shoulders are broader than yours and have borne the
+buffeting of thirty-two years instead of nineteen. Had you chosen the
+place, or shall I?"
+
+To my second surprise, she answered with the name of an uptown place
+where I never had been, and where I would have decidedly preferred not
+to take her.
+
+"They have a skating ballet," she urged, as I hesitated. "I know it is
+wonderful! Please, please----?"
+
+I gave the direction to the chauffeur and followed my cousin into the
+cab. It seemed a proper moment to present the chocolates from my
+overcoat pocket. When she proved too languid to unwrap the box, I was
+seriously uneasy.
+
+"You cannot possibly know how dreadful it is to be the only child of two
+intellectual people who expect one to be a credit," she excused her lack
+of appetite, nervously twitching the gilt cord about the package. "And
+to be stupid and a disappointment! Yes, as long as I can remember, I
+have been a disappointment. If only there had been another to divide all
+those expectations. If only you had been my brother!"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" I exclaimed hastily. "That is----"
+
+"Don't bother about explaining," she smiled wanly, "I understand. But
+you are distinguished, and you look it. I never will be, and I am ugly.
+Mother expects me to be an astronomer like Father and work with him, or
+to go in for club life and serious writing as she does. I never can do
+either."
+
+"Neither could I, Phil."
+
+"You are clever, successful. Everybody knows your name. When we are out,
+and people or an orchestra play your music, Mother always says: 'A
+trifle of my nephew's, Roger Locke. Very original, is it not? Of course,
+I do not understand music, but I hear that his last light opera----' And
+then she leans back and just _eats up_ all the nice things said about
+your work. She would never let you know it, but she does. And that is
+the sort of thing she wants from me. I--I want to make cookies, and I
+love fancywork."
+
+The taxicab drew up with a jerk before the gaudy entrance to Silver
+Aisles.
+
+I imagine Phillida had the vaguest ideas of what such places were like.
+When we were settled at a table in a general blaze of pink lights,
+beside a fountain that ran colored water, I regarded her humorously. But
+she seemed quite contented with her surroundings, looking about her with
+an air I can best describe as grave excitement. At this hour, the room
+was not half filled, and the jazz orchestra had withdrawn to prepare for
+a hard night's work.
+
+After I had ordered our dinner, I glanced up to see her fingers busied
+loosening the severe lines of her brushed back hair.
+
+"Everyone here looks so nice," she said wistfully. "I wish my hair did
+shine and cuddle around my face like those women's does. Do--do I look
+queer, Cousin? You are looking at me so----?"
+
+"I was thinking what pretty eyes you have."
+
+Her pale face flushed.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Most truthfully. As for the hair, isn't that a matter of bottled polish
+and hairdressers? But you remind me of a question for you. Isn't a braid
+of hair this wide," I laid off the dimensions on the table, "this long,
+and thick, a good deal for a woman to own?"
+
+"Show me again."
+
+I obeyed, while she leaned forward to observe.
+
+"Not one girl in a hundred has so much," she pronounced judgment. "Who
+is she? Probably it isn't all her own, anyhow!"
+
+"It is not now, but it was," I said remorsefully.
+
+"How could you tell? Did you measure it?"--with sarcasm. "Do you
+remember the maxim we used to write in copybooks? 'Measure a thousand
+times, and cut once?' One has to be cautious!"
+
+"I cut it first, and then measured."
+
+"What? Tell me."
+
+At last she was interested and amused. There was no reason why I should
+not tell her of my midnight adventure. We never repeated one another's
+little confidences.
+
+She listened, with many comments and exclamations, to the story of the
+unseen lady, the legend of the fair witch, the dagger that was a
+paper-knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the
+singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my second visitor. My
+reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other
+part of myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning sense of
+horror sometimes left by a morbid dream.
+
+The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate and talked. A burst of
+applause aroused me to this fact and the commencement of the first show
+of the evening. The orchestra had taken their places.
+
+"They will hardly begin with their best act," I remarked, surprised by
+Phillida's convulsive start and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice
+that formed the exhibition floor. "Your ballet on skates probably will
+come later."
+
+"I did not come to see the ballet," she answered, her voice low.
+
+"No? What, then?"
+
+"A--man I know?"
+
+Once when I was a little fellow, I raced headlong into the low-swinging
+branch of a tree, the bough striking me across the forehead so that I
+was bowled over backward amid a shower of apples. I felt a twin
+sensation, now.
+
+"Here, Phillida?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Someone from your home town or your college town?" I essayed a casual
+tone.
+
+"Neither. He belongs here, and they call him Flying Vere. He--Look!
+Look, Cousin!"
+
+I turned, and saw that the first performer was upon the ice floor.
+
+He came down the center like a silver-shod Mercury. In the silence, for
+the orchestra did not accompany his entrance, the faint musical ringing
+of his skates ran softly with him. My first unwilling recognition of his
+good looks and athletic grace was followed by an equally reluctant
+admission of his skill. Reluctant, because my anger and bewilderment
+were hot against the man. My little cousin, my pathetic, unworldly
+Phillida--and this cabaret entertainer! At the mere joining of their
+names my senses revolted. What could they have in common? How had she
+seen him? Having seen him, it was easy to understand how he had
+fascinated her inexperience. Only, what was his object?
+
+He had seen us, where we sat. I saw his dark eyes fix upon her and flash
+some message. Her plain little face irradiated, her fingers
+unconsciously twisting and wringing her napkin, she leaned forward to
+watch and answer glance for glance.
+
+I would rather not put into words my thoughts. Yet, I watched his
+performance. In spite of myself, he held me with his swift, certain
+skill, his vitality and youth.
+
+He was gone, with the swooping suddenness of his appearance. The jazz
+music clattered out. Phillida turned back to me and began to speak with
+a hushed rapture that baffled and infuriated me.
+
+"You understand, Cousin Roger? Now that you have seen him, you do
+understand? No! Let me talk, please. Let me tell you, if I can. It began
+last summer, at the school where I was cramming for college work. Oh,
+how tired I was of study! How tired of it I am, and always shall be! I
+think that side of me never will get rested. Then, in the woods, I met
+him. He was stopping at a hotel not far away. I--we----"
+
+I waited for her to go on. Instead, she abruptly spread wide her hands
+in a gesture of helplessness.
+
+"After all, I cannot tell you. Not even you, Cousin! He--he liked me. He
+treated me just as a really, truly girl who would have partners at
+dances and wear fluffy frocks and curl her hair. He thought I was
+pretty!"
+
+The naïve wonder and triumph of her cry, the challenge in her brown
+eyes, to my belief, were moving things. I registered some ugly mental
+comments on the rearing of Phil and the kind of humility that is _not_
+good for the soul.
+
+"Why not?" I demanded. "Of course!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No. Thank you, but--no! Not pretty, except to him. Only to him, because
+he loves me."
+
+I do not know what impatience I exclaimed. She checked me, leaning
+across the table to grasp my hand in both hers.
+
+"Hush! Oh, hush, dear Cousin Roger! For it is quite too late. We were
+married six months ago; last autumn."
+
+When I could, I asked:
+
+"Married legally, beyond mistake? Were you not under eighteen years
+old?"
+
+"I was eighteen years and a half. There is no mistake at all. We walked
+over to the city hall in the nearest town, and took out our license, and
+were married."
+
+"Very well. I will take you home to your father and mother, now; then
+see this man, myself. If there is indeed no flaw in the marriage and it
+cannot be annulled, a divorce must be arranged. Any money I have or
+expect to have would be a small price to set you free from the miserable
+business. But the first thing is to get you home. We will start now."
+
+She detained my hand when I would have signalled our waiter. Her eyes,
+shining and solemn as a small child's, met mine.
+
+"No, Cousin, please! I am not going home any more. At least, not alone.
+I asked you to bring me here where he is, because I am going to stay
+with my husband."
+
+"Never," I stated firmly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not if I have to send for your father and take you home by force."
+
+"You cannot. I am of age."
+
+"Phillida, I am responsible for you to your parents tonight. Let me take
+you home, explain things to them, and then decide your course."
+
+"But that is what I most do not want to do!" she naïvely exclaimed.
+
+"You will not?"
+
+"I'm sorry. No."
+
+"Then I must see the man."
+
+"Not--hurt----?"
+
+I recalled the man we had just seen on the skating floor, with a qualm
+of quite unreasonable bitterness. That anxiety of Phillida's had a
+flavor of irony for me.
+
+"Hardly," I returned. "There are fortunately other means of persuasion
+than physical force."
+
+"Oh! But you cannot persuade him to give me up."
+
+I was silent. At which, being a woman, she grew troubled.
+
+"How could you?" she urged.
+
+"You have had no opportunity of judging what influence money has on some
+people, Phil."
+
+She laughed out in relief.
+
+"Is that all? Try, Cousin."
+
+"You trust him so much?"
+
+"In everything, forever!"
+
+"Then if I succeed in buying him off, promise me that you will come home
+with me."
+
+"If he takes money to leave me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should die. But I will promise if you want me to, because I know it
+never will happen. Just as I might promise to do anything, when I knew
+that I never would have to carry it out."
+
+"Very well," I accepted the best I could get. "I will go find him."
+
+"There is no need. He is coming here to our table as soon as he is
+free."
+
+"I will not have you seen with him in this place."
+
+"But I am going to stay here with him," she said.
+
+Her eyes, the meek eyes of Phillida, defied me. My faint authority was a
+sham. What could be done, I recognized, must be done through the man.
+
+We sat in silence, after that. Presently, her gaze fixed aslant on me as
+if to dare my interference, she drew up a thin gold chain that hung
+about her neck and ended beneath her blouse. From it she unfastened a
+wedding ring and gravely put the thing on her third finger, the
+school-girl romanticism of the gesture blended with an air of
+little-girl naughtiness. She looked more fit for a nursery than for this
+business.
+
+I could tell from the change in her expression when the man was
+approaching. I rose, meaning to meet him and turn him aside from our
+table. But Phillida halted me with one deftly planted question.
+
+"You would not leave me alone in this place, Cousin?"
+
+Certainly I would not leave her alone at a table here; not even alone in
+appearance while I had my interview with the man close at hand. Yet it
+seemed impossible to speak before her. She calmly answered my
+perplexity.
+
+"You must talk to him here, of course. I--want to listen to you both.
+Indeed, I shall not interfere at all, or be angry or hurt! I know how
+good you mean to be, dear; only, you do not understand."
+
+I sat down again, perforce. When the man's shadow presently fell across
+our table, it did not soothe me to see Phil thrust her hand in his, her
+small face enraptured, her fingers locking about his with a caress plain
+as a kiss. She said proudly, if tremulously:
+
+"Cousin Roger, this is my husband. Mr. Locke, Ethan dear."
+
+He said nothing. His hesitating movement to offer his hand I chose to
+ignore. I admit that my spirit rose against him to the point of loathing
+as he stood there, tall, correct in attire--the focus of admiring
+glances from other diners--in every way the antithesis of my poor
+Phillida.
+
+"Sit down," I bade curtly, when he did not speak. "Miss Knox insists
+that we have our interview here. I should have preferred otherwise, but
+her presence must not prevent what has to be said."
+
+"It won't prevent anything I want to say, Mr. Locke," he answered.
+
+He spoke with a drawl. Not the drawl of affectation, nor the drawl of
+South or West so cherished by the romantic, but the slow, deliberate
+speech of New England's upper coasts. It had the oddest effect, that
+honest, homely accent on the lips of a performer in this place. Phil
+drew him down to the third chair at the table. After which, she folded
+her hands on the edge of the cloth as if to signify to me how she kept
+her promise of neutrality, and looked fixedly at her glass of water
+instead of at either of us. Plainly, all action was supposed to proceed
+from me.
+
+"My cousin has just told me of her marriage," I opened, as dryly concise
+as I could manage explanation. "It is of course impossible that she
+should adopt your way of living, as she seems to have in mind. You may
+not understand, yet, that it also is impossible for you to adopt hers.
+No doubt you have supposed her to be the daughter of wealthy people, or
+at least people of whom money could be obtained. You were wrong.
+Professor Knox has nothing but his modest salary. Her parents are of the
+scholarly, not of the moneyed class. She has no kin who could or would
+support her husband or pay largely to be rid of him. Of all her people,
+I happen to be the best off, financially. It happens also that I am not
+sentimental, nor alarmed at the idea of newspaper exploitation for
+either of us. It is necessary that all this be plainly set forth before
+we go further.
+
+"Now, for your side: you have involved Miss Knox to the extent of
+marriage. To free her from this trap into which her inexperience has
+walked is worth a reasonable price. I will pay it. I shall take her home
+to her father and mother tonight, and consult my lawyer tomorrow. He
+will conduct negotiations with you. The day Miss Knox is divorced from
+you without useless scandal or trouble-making, I will pay to you the sum
+agreed upon with my lawyer. If you prefer to make yourself
+objectionable, you will get nothing, now or later."
+
+He took it all without a flicker of the eyelids, not interrupting or
+displaying any affectation of being insulted. I acknowledge, now, that
+it was an outrageous speech to make to a man of whom I knew nothing. But
+it was so intended; summing up what I considered an outrageous situation
+brought about by his playing upon a young girl's ignorance of such
+fellows as himself. Phillida's usually pale cheeks were burning. Several
+times she would have broken in upon me with protests, if Vere had not
+silenced her by the merest glances of warning. A proof of his influence
+over her which had not inclined me toward gentleness with him!
+
+When I finished there was a pause before he turned his dark eyes to
+mine, and held them there.
+
+"Honest enough!" he drawled, with that incongruous coast-of-Maine tang
+to his leisureliness. "I'll match you there, Mr. Locke. I don't care
+whether you make fifty thousand a year with your music writing, or
+whether you grind a street-piano with a tin-cup on top. It's nothing to
+me. I guess we can do without your lawyer, too. Because, you see, I
+married Mrs. Vere because I wanted her; and I figure on supporting her.
+If her folks are too cultivated to stand me, I'm sorry. But they won't
+have to see me. So that's settled!"
+
+He was honest. His glance drove that fact home to me with a fist-like
+impact. There was nothing I was so poorly prepared to meet.
+
+Phillida's hands went out to him in an impulsive movement. He covered
+them both with one of his for a moment before gently putting them in her
+lap with a gesture of reminder toward the revellers all about us. The
+delicacy of that thought for her was another disclosure of character,
+unconsciously made. Worthy or unworthy, he did love Phil.
+
+I am not too dully obstinate to recognize a mistake of my own. Whatever
+my bitterness against the man, I had to accord him some respect. I sat
+for a while striving to align my forces to attack this new front.
+
+"I don't blame you for thinking what you said, Mr. Locke," his voice
+presently spoke across my perplexity. "I can see the way things came to
+you; finding me here, and all! I'm glad to have had this chance to talk
+it out with one of my wife's relations. I'd like them to know she'll be
+taken care of. Outside of that, I guess there is nothing we have to say
+to each other."
+
+"I suppose I owe you both an apology," I said stiffly.
+
+"Oh, that's all right--for both of us! I can see how much store you set
+by her."
+
+"But what are you going to do with her, man?" I burst forth. "Do you
+expect to keep her here; sitting at a table in this place and watching
+you do your turn, making your fellow performers her friends, seeing and
+learning----?" I checked my outpouring of disgust. "Or do you propose to
+shut her up in some third-class boarding house day and night while you
+hang around here? Good heavens, Vere, do you realize what either life
+would be for an nineteen-year-old girl brought up as she has been?"
+
+He colored.
+
+"As for bringing up," he retorted, "I guess she couldn't be a lot more
+miserable than her folks worried her into being. But--you're right about
+the rest. That's why I was going to leave her with her folks yet a
+while, until I had a place for her. I mean, while I saved up enough to
+get the place."
+
+"But I wrote to him when I failed in my exams, Cousin Roger," Phillida
+broke in. "I told him that I would not go home. I could not bear it. I
+was coming to him, and he would just have to keep me with him or I
+should _die_. Indeed, I do not care about places. I think it will be
+lovely fun to sit here and watch him, or go behind the scenes with him
+and make friends with the other people. I--I am surprised that you are
+so narrow, Cousin Roger, when all your own best friends are theatrical
+people and artists and you think so highly of them."
+
+I answered nothing to that. The distance between the stage and this
+class of cabaret show was not to be traversed in a few seven-league
+words. I looked at Vere, who returned my look squarely and soberly.
+
+"You needn't worry about her being here, Mr. Locke," he said. "I know
+better than that! But she has to come to me; it's her right, don't you
+think? I'll promise you to take her to a better place as soon as I can
+manage."
+
+"What kind of a place?"
+
+"I'm saving to get a place in the country," he answered diffidently.
+"I'm a countryman, and Phillida thinks she'd like it."
+
+"You?" I exclaimed, unable to smother my derision and unbelief. My
+glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his
+curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his little finger.
+
+He reddened through his clear, dark skin, but his eyes were not those of
+a man taken in a lie.
+
+"Did you take notice of what I do here?" He asked me, with the first
+touch of humility I had seen in him. "I couldn't dance or sing or do
+parlor tricks. I wasn't bred to parlors or indoors. But I learned to
+skate pretty fancy from a boy up. My folks' farm was on one side of a
+lake and the schoolhouse on the other. About November that lake used to
+freeze solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to school, and
+back again, before we were six years old. We lived on skates about half
+the year, I guess. Well--you don't care about the rest; how the farm was
+just about big enough to support my elder brother and his family, and I
+came to New York. Nor how I found New York pretty well filled up with
+folks who knew considerably more than I did. It was the manager of this
+place who advertised for expert skaters, who dressed me up like this,
+and paid me the first living wages I'd had in the city. All the same, I
+was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it. Always have! You're a
+man, Mr. Locke, and I'd hate you to think I was a shimmy dancer on ice
+and nothing else, or I wouldn't mention it. My father would have taken
+the buggy-whip to me, I guess, if he'd lived to see me in this rig. Soon
+as I've enough put by, I'll shed this perfumed suit and the cheap
+jewelry and take my wife where she can have a chance to forget I ever
+wore them."
+
+"But I _like_ them," put in Phillida ardently. "Please do not fuss so,
+Ethan; because I really do."
+
+"Do you?" I turned upon her. "Are you sure, then, that it is not all
+this cabaret glamour you really are in love with? Would you care for him
+as an ordinary, hard-working fellow in a pair of overalls and a flannel
+shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage?"
+
+She laughed up at me.
+
+"You have forgotten that I met Ethan while he was on a vacation from his
+work here, and roughing it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in
+anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby trousers, and funny
+blunt-toed shoes."
+
+"You served in the war?" I asked him.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Yes. On a submarine chaser. Got pneumonia from exposure and was
+invalided home just before the Armistice."
+
+"And you came back here?"
+
+"I came here," he corrected me. "I enlisted from Maine. I was discharged
+in New York. That was when I couldn't find anything I could do, until
+this skating trick came along."
+
+I sat thinking for a time; as long thoughts as I could command. The
+obvious course was to send for Phillida's father. Yet what could that
+vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the
+Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his
+eye-glasses by their silk ribbon and peering at Vere in helpless
+distaste and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would
+refuse to go home with him.
+
+What if she did go home? I could picture the scene there, when the truth
+came out. The mortification of her people, the gossip in the little
+town, her outcast position among the girls and boys with whom she had
+grown up--what a martyrdom for a sensitive spirit! Of course, the only
+possible thing considered by Aunt Caroline would be a prompt divorce.
+
+If Phillida refused to consent to a divorce, how could she live at home
+as the wife of a man her parents had pronounced unfit to receive? If she
+yielded and gave up Vere, would she be much better off? An embarrassment
+to her family, the heroine of a stolen marriage and Reno freedom, what
+chance of happiness would she have in her conventional circle?
+Especially as she neither was a beauty nor the dashing type of girl who
+might make capital of such a reputation. Probably she would bury herself
+in nunlike seclusion, stay in her room when callers came, and wear a
+veil when she went out to walk.
+
+Meanwhile, she would break her heart for Vere.
+
+Could matters be any worse if she tried life with him, even if the
+experiment eventually proved a failure and ended in a divorce instead of
+beginning there? Might not her parents be spared much they most dreaded,
+if their friends could be told simply that Phillida had made a love
+match and was with her husband?
+
+Finally, Phillida was a human creature with the right to manage her own
+life. Had any of us the right to lay hands upon her existence and mould
+it to our fancy?
+
+I looked up from my revery to find the eyes of both of them fixed on me
+as if I held their doom balanced upon my palm. Perhaps, in a sense, I
+did.
+
+"Phil, will you come home to your father and mother, and consider all
+this a bit more before you decide?" I asked her.
+
+I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did.
+
+"No, Cousin Roger," she refused firmly. "Please forgive me. I know how
+kind you mean to be, but--no! I shall stay with Ethan. If ever you love
+anyone, you will understand."
+
+I accepted the decision. There was no reason why I should think of the
+woman who had spoken to me across the darkness in a voice of melody and
+power, or why I should seem to feel again the exquisite, live softness
+of her braid within my hand. But it was so.
+
+"Very well," I said. "Vere, it is to you, then, as Phillida's husband,
+that I must address any plans. I do not pretend to like the course she
+has taken. I do not know what action her parents may take, although I
+believe they will listen to my advice. Putting all that aside, she
+refuses to come with me and you agree that she cannot stay here.
+
+"I have just bought a farm in Connecticut, intending to use it as a
+summer home. There are some alterations and repairs being made, but
+little is to be changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable
+shape. Here is my offer. Take Phillida there, and I will make you
+manager of the place. I will pay all reasonable expenses of putting the
+land into proper condition and getting such stock and equipment as you
+judge best; all expenses and up-keep of the house and whatever salary
+usually is drawn by such managers of small estates. I shall be there, on
+and off, but you and Phillida must take charge of everything. I am
+neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not wish to be either. I
+bought the place only because New York is too hot to work in during
+three months of the year, and I hate summer resorts. Keep my room ready,
+and you will find I disturb you little. Of course, hire what servants
+are necessary.
+
+"Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside of five years, I will
+deed the whole thing to you two. To put it better, if you succeed in
+making the farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to you
+and withdraw. If you fail--well, I suppose you will be no worse off than
+you are now!"
+
+They were stricken speechless. Perhaps my attitude had not pointed to
+such a conclusion of our interview. Phillida told me long afterward that
+she expected me to bid them good-evening and abandon them forever, as my
+mildest course; with alternative possibilities such as summoning a
+policeman and having Vere haled to prison. Seeing their condition, I
+rose.
+
+"I will stroll about and leave you a chance to talk it over," I
+declared; although there are few ordeals I dislike more than displaying
+my limp about such public rooms.
+
+Vere stopped me, rising as I rose.
+
+"No need of that, for us," he answered, facing me across the little
+table. "About giving us your farm, Mr. Locke, that's for the future!
+Just now, the manager's job is plenty big enough to thank you for. I
+wish I could say it better. If you'll stay here with Phillida for ten
+minutes, until I can get back, I'll be obliged."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To resign here, and get my outfit into a suitcase."
+
+He had taken up my challenge like a man, at least. There were none of
+the hesitations and excuses to stay in town that I had half expected. It
+pleased me that he decided for Phil as well as himself. Some of my ideas
+about marriage are antiquated, I admit. I nodded to him, and sat down
+again.
+
+It is unnecessary to record the childish things Phillida tried to say to
+me, while he was gone.
+
+"I am so happy," was her apology for threatened tears. "I never knew
+anyone--except Ethan--could be so kind. And--and, will you tell Father
+and Mother?"
+
+"Yes." I winced, though, at that prospect. "Give me that little bag you
+carry on your wrist."
+
+She obeyed, wide-eyed.
+
+"You do tote a powder-puff. I did not know whether Aunt Caroline
+permitted it. Rub it on your nose," I advised, passing the bit of fluff
+to her.
+
+While she complied, almost like a normally frivolous girl, I used the
+moment to transfer a few banknotes to the bag, so some need might not
+find her penniless.
+
+Vere came back in not much more than the promised ten minutes. He had
+changed to gray street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the
+diamond had disappeared from his finger and his curly head looked as if
+it had been held under a water-faucet and vigorously toweled to lessen
+the brilliantine gloss.
+
+"If you'll tell us where your farm is, Mr. Locke, we'll start," he
+volunteered.
+
+Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust.
+
+"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase to be called for. We
+shall have to get it, dear."
+
+In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing promptitude. There was
+both reassurance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness
+pressing forward--where? They did not know, nor I. Certainly we did not
+dream how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird,
+desolate path that traveler's foot was already set.
+
+"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight," I modified their plan.
+"Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has
+had enough excitement for one day. I will write full directions for the
+trip, Vere, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must
+take."
+
+They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed, they were in a state
+of mind to have assented if I advised them to sit out on a park bench
+until morning.
+
+Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage into a taxicab, I
+suffered a bad pang of misgiving. What responsibility was I assuming in
+letting my little-girl cousin go like this? What did I know of this man,
+or where he would take her? I think Phillida divined something of my
+trouble, for she leaned out the door to me and held up her face like a
+child's to be kissed.
+
+"I am so _happy_," she whispered.
+
+I turned to Vere; who had a long envelope in readiness to put in my
+hand.
+
+"I guess you might like to have these for a while, Mr. Locke," he said,
+with one of his slow, straightforward glances.
+
+With which farewells I had to be content, and watch their taxi swing out
+into the bright-dark flow of traffic where it was lost from my sight.
+After which, I entered another taxicab by my unromantic self and was
+driven to that railroad station where I would find a train bound to the
+college town that was the home of Aunt Caroline and her husband. One
+always thought of Phil's parents in that order, although the Professor
+was a moderately distinguished scientist and his spouse merely masterful
+in her own limited circle.
+
+The envelope Vere had given me contained their marriage certificate, his
+release from the Navy, and his membership card in the American Legion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     "Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave maidens
+     on the pebbles."--PTAH-HOTEP.
+
+
+At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned from my sleep by the bell
+of the telephone beside my bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I
+had not returned to my apartment until dawn. Nightmare doubts galloped
+ruthless hoofs over any repose.
+
+Phillida's voice came over the wire to me like the morning song of a
+bird.
+
+"Good-morning, Cousin Roger. We are going to take the train in a few
+moments. But I could not leave New York without telling you how happy I
+am. Are you--did I wake you up? I was afraid that I might, but Ethan
+said you would like me to call, even so."
+
+"My dear, it was the kindest thought you ever had," I told her
+fervently.
+
+"Was it?" she hesitated. "Then--were they pretty dreadful to you at
+home?"
+
+"Quite!"
+
+"Do you suppose they will _do_ anything dreadful about us?"
+
+"No. Nothing."
+
+It did not seem necessary to tell her that Aunt Caroline did not know
+where the runaways had gone, and was thereby debarred from hasty action.
+Phillida's father had privately agreed with me in this.
+
+"I am so very happy, Cousin Roger!"
+
+"I am glad, Phil."
+
+"And you will come to the farm soon?"
+
+"Soon," I promised.
+
+So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her galloped themselves away,
+routed for that time. Like my gold-fish when their bowl has been unduly
+shaken, I sank down again into the quieted waters of my little world and
+absorption in my own affairs. There have been hours when I wondered if I
+was of more importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact.
+
+A month passed before I kept my promise to go to the farm in
+Connecticut.
+
+As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young couple alone for a period
+of adjustment. Also, I was curious to see how they would handle the
+business left to them. I held telephone conversations with Phillida, and
+with various contractors now and then. I sent out the furnishings for my
+own room. Everything else I purposely left to the experimenters.
+
+There was a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while
+the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the
+dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic
+age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I
+relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite ready to
+find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought
+shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house and probably
+mistaken me for a tramp.
+
+Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adventure
+was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no
+thought of return.
+
+With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in
+town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my
+luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house
+by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend
+it to be over long. To be a constraint upon the household I had
+established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned.
+It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to
+stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too
+long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time.
+
+So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my
+life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which
+there was no turning back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     "The very room, coz she was in,
+     Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."
+                         --THE COURTIN'.
+
+
+I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with
+motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even
+the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with
+yellow sparkles.
+
+The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely
+walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow
+affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been--all
+united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel
+drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochère, inviting the wheels of my
+car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The
+new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If
+the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its
+arms to me and laughed an invitation.
+
+As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around
+the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly
+realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house!
+After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
+
+She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little
+mouth turned up instead of down and developed--I looked twice--yes,
+developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly
+back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead
+and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired
+in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite
+daringly, for Phillida.
+
+"Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired.
+
+She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I
+noticed she wore above her wedding ring that "diamond" which once had
+adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the
+sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her
+hand for me to see.
+
+"Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we have not very much money
+yet, and I do not care about all the engagement rings that ever were
+thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might notice that I had
+none and think slightingly of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a
+jeweler, who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you
+know. It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the biggest
+diamond."
+
+"Then you are still happy?"
+
+"Forever and ever, world without end," she answered solemnly.
+
+We went in.
+
+Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house.
+Quaint furniture, no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness
+and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful
+tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness
+everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the
+atmosphere of home and cheer was established.
+
+"Come see your rooms," Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration.
+"They are so pretty!"
+
+She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room
+of graceful adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the
+threshold.
+
+I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this
+side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached,
+occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious
+room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs'
+smoke-blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and
+writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar
+comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had
+slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The
+windows were opened, and white curtains with their over-draperies of
+blue silk were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the Horror of
+my dream had seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly,
+I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night!
+
+"See how nice?" Phillida was urging appreciation at my side. "We swung
+those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the
+bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why you
+_should_ like, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came
+safely, and all your darling lamps. And--and I hope you like it so well,
+Cousin Roger, that you will stay here always!"
+
+When she left me alone, I walked to the different windows, contemplating
+the stretches of lawn dotted with budding apple trees and the lake that
+lay beyond shining in the sun. Was Phillida's charming wish to become a
+fact, I wondered? Could this rest and calm hold me content here, where I
+had meant merely to pause and pass on? I looked at the yellow country
+road meandering past the lake into unseen distance. Should I ever see my
+Lady of the Beautiful Tresses come that way, or travel that road to
+where she lived? If I did meet her, would she forgive me the loss of her
+braid? There would be a test for the sweetness of her disposition!
+
+When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me downstairs, I found Vere awaiting
+me beside Phillida. We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant
+speech about their having expected me sooner. If pale, timid Phil had
+become a surprising butterfly, Vere had taken the reverse progress
+toward the sober grub. I like him better in outing clothes, although he
+showed even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably prejudiced
+me against him. If he felt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil
+trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did as well! It was then
+I discovered that his wife's pet name for him fitted like a glove. She
+called him "Drawls."
+
+The luncheon was good; cooked and served by a middle-aged Swedish woman
+named Cristina. Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the lady
+of the house, to view the new fittings and improvements. Most odd and
+pretty it was to see Phillida in that rôle of housewife, and to watch
+her pride in Vere and deference to him. Let me record that I never saw
+the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail in this settled course toward her
+husband. Whether it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring
+domestic methods, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate Vere
+below his wife in station and education, so her respect for him must
+forbid their slight, I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or
+speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose they may have had the
+usual conjugal differings, neither of them being angelic. If so, no
+outsider ever glimpsed the fact.
+
+We spoke of nothing serious on that first day. They both showed me the
+various improvements finished or progressing, indoors or out.
+
+We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite early, afterward, I
+excused myself, and left together the two who were still on their
+honeymoon.
+
+At the door of my room, I pushed a wall-switch that lighted
+simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used
+by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light
+somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not indulging it. There
+flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall
+floor-lamp beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my bed
+at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and
+rose-color effect that long since had caught my fancy for night work;
+the shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones, rough-cut things
+of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and baroque pearl.
+
+I lay emphasis upon this, to make clear how normal, serene and even
+familiar in effect was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the
+door behind me and stood in that softly brilliant radiance, a shudder
+shook me from head to foot with the violence of an electric shock. A
+sense of suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand.
+
+Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn breath, leaving only
+astonishment in their wake. Presently I went on with the purpose that
+had brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the table and beginning
+to unpack the work which I had been doing in New York. As I laid out the
+first sheets of music, there drifted to my ears that vague sound from
+the lake I had heard on my first night visit here, while I stood on the
+tumble-down porch. The sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips,
+or some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime. As before, I
+wondered what movement of the shallow waters could produce that result.
+Not the tide, now, for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from Long
+Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of
+that fact.
+
+The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside the windows offered nothing
+unusual to be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at my
+writing-table.
+
+I am not accustomed to heed time. There never has been anyone to care
+what hours I kept, and I work best at night. Midnight was long past when
+I thought of rest.
+
+I declare that I thought of nothing more; not even recalling the vague
+unease felt on entering the room. A day spent in the fresh air, followed
+by an evening of hard work and journeyings between the piano and table,
+had left me utterly weary. When I lay down, it was to sleep at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     "I have made a story that hath not been heard;
+     A great feat of arms that hath not been seen!"
+                                        --AMENEMHE'ET.
+
+
+I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to wakefulness as a spent
+swimmer struggles toward shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep I
+dragged myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity. Peril had stolen
+upon me in my unconsciousness, a stalking beast. I knew that with
+nightmare certainty. It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my
+brain, wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against the
+menace. And my brain answered, but with infinite difficulty; like a
+drugged warrior who hears the clang of battle and forces numbed limbs to
+stir, arise and grasp the sword.
+
+I was awake. Suddenly; the swimmer reaching the surface!
+
+How shall I describe Fear incarnate? The Horror was at the open window
+opposite the foot of my bed, staring in upon me with slavering
+covetousness of the prey It watched. I lay there, and felt It seek for
+me across the darkness with tentacles of evil that groped for some part
+of me upon which It might lay hold.
+
+The room was still. Between the draperies, the window showed nothing to
+the eye except a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance of
+the sky. There was nothing to see; nothing to hear. But gradually I
+became aware of a hideous odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp
+decay that loaded the air with disgust.
+
+I lay there, and opposed the approach of the Thing with all the will of
+resistance in me. The sweat poured from my whole body, so that I lay as
+in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping-suit clung coldly to me.
+
+It could not pass the defense of my will. I felt the malevolent fury of
+Its striving. Like the antennæ of some monstrous insect brushing about
+my body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about my mental self,
+examining, searching where It might seize. It had not yet found the
+weakness It sought. If It did----?
+
+The sickening, vault-like air I must breathe fought for It. So did the
+darkness. All this time, or the time that seemed so long, I had no more
+command of my body than a cataleptic patient. Every ounce of force in me
+had rushed to support the two warriors of the battle: the brain and will
+that opposed the clutching menace. But now, as I grew more and more
+fully awake, out of very loathing and danger I drew determination.
+Slowly, painfully, I began to free my right arm and hand from this
+paralysis.
+
+As I advanced in resolution, the Thing seemed to recoil. Inch by inch, I
+moved my hand across the bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand beside
+me. In proportion as I moved, the dreadful tentacles drew back and away.
+A last effort, and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.
+
+Rosy light from the lamp flashed over the room. All the quiet comfort of
+the place sprang into view as if to reassure me; the piano open as I had
+left it, the table strewn with my evening's work, each bit of furniture,
+each drapery or trinket undisturbed.
+
+The Thing was gone. In the hush I heard my panting breath and the tick
+of my watch on the stand. It was two o'clock in the morning. As I
+mechanically read the hour, a cock somewhere shrilled its second call
+before dawn. The Horror had been true to the legendary time of
+apparitions.
+
+Weak and chilled, I presently made an attempt to rise. But at the
+movement, a wave of sickness swept through me. The room seemed to rock
+and swing. I had just time to recognize the grip of faintness before I
+fell back on the pillow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils, which expanded avidly for this
+new air. Perfume that was a tonic, a subtle elixir; that sparkled upon
+the senses, sank suavely and healingly through me, so that I seemed to
+draw refreshment with each breath. Reluctantly, I aroused more and more
+in response to this unusual stimulant; which somehow gave delicious rest
+yet drew me from it into life.
+
+I could have sworn someone had touched me. With some exclamation on my
+lips, I started up; to find myself in darkness. The lamps I had left
+lighted burned no longer.
+
+This time there was no terror in my awakening. No Thing of nightmare
+pressed against my window-space. The fragrance persisted; the ghastly
+smell of mould and corruption was gone. But I wanted light for all that!
+Reaching for the lamp beside me on its stand, I found the little chain.
+I felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have
+meant light; but no answering brightness sprang up.
+
+Instead, across the dark came a voice; a voice low-pitched, soft without
+weakness, keen with exultation:
+
+"Victory! Victory! You have no need of light--who conquered in darkness!
+The Enemy has fled. It has covered the Unspeakable Eyes from the eyes of
+a man. By the will of a man Its will has been forbidden. It has dragged
+Itself back to the Barrier and cowers there for this time. Oh, soldier
+on the dreadful Frontier, be proud, putting off your armor tonight! Be
+proud, and rest."
+
+Those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible, may
+gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first
+experience, and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess to a
+moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed
+her braid of hair into my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how
+did she know of the Thing's visit to me? I had not spoken nor uttered a
+cry throughout Its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that
+silent struggle between It and me, or of my escape so narrowly won. How,
+unless she too----?
+
+I groped for a glass of water left on my stand. I drank, and felt my dry
+throat relax.
+
+"Who are you?" I asked.
+
+A sigh trembled toward me.
+
+"I am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world, as a
+traveler stands outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not
+enter, and feeling the winter about her."
+
+"Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool," I said bruskly. "You are
+a woman. The woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not
+long ago, to save herself from capture!"
+
+"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than the One which came for
+you a while since."
+
+"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever
+mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it?"
+
+The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool
+melancholy.
+
+"Real? What is real?" she challenged me. "Turn to the sciences that you
+should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a
+million years men have vowed you touch empty air. They saw and felt it
+empty. But now a child knows air swarms with life. In that thin
+nothingness, crowd and move the distributors of death, disease, health,
+vigor--existence itself. The water you have just tasted is pure and
+clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop is an ocean of inhabitants clean and
+unclean. I speak commonplaces. But is there no knowledge not yet
+commonplace? Oh man, with all the unfathomed universe about us, _dare_
+you pronounce what is real?"
+
+"What is natural," I began.
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+"Doubtless what is not natural cannot and does not exist. Have you,
+then, measured Nature? He was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge,
+who compared Man to a child wandering on the shore of a vast ocean and
+picking up a pebble here and there."
+
+"Of what would you convince me? And, why?"
+
+"Of what? Danger! Why? Would you watch a man enter a jungle where some
+hideous beast crouched in ambush, while you neither warned nor armed
+him? I am here to turn you back. I am the native of that country who
+runs to cry warning to a stranger; to put into his hand the weapon of
+understanding."
+
+So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was in her voice, that again chill
+touched me. The clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as a
+reminder of the Thing, real or unreal, that twice had made Its presence
+felt beyond denial. Wild as her words might be, their incredible
+suggestion was matched by my experience. I sought with my eyes for her,
+before answering. The room was dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture
+loomed out enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible, even
+traced by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any movement to
+seek her would mean her flight.
+
+"Do you mean that you want me to go away from this place?" I questioned.
+
+The sigh came again, just audibly.
+
+"Yes. Why should you die?"
+
+Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful? Did I not hear a wistful
+reluctance in her tone? Excitement ran along my veins like burning oil
+on flowing water. The woman hidden in the dark, the association of her
+voice with the strange, exquisite fragrance I breathed, the thought of
+beauty in her born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized--all
+blended in a spell of human magic. I have said I was a man much alone,
+and a lame man who craved adventure.
+
+"Just now," I said, "you spoke of some victory. You called me--soldier."
+
+"Is it not victory to have driven back the Dark One? Is he not a soldier
+who, aroused in the night to meet dreadful assault, sets his face to the
+enemy and battles front to front? Before the Eyes men and women have
+died or lost reason, or fled across half the world, broken by fear. What
+are the wars of man with man, compared with a man's battle against the
+Unknown? I honor you! I salute you! But--soldier alone on the forbidden
+Frontier, go! Join your fellows in the world alloted to you; live, nor
+seek to tread where mankind is not sent."
+
+"How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause?"
+
+"There is no wrong. There is danger."
+
+"What danger?" I persisted.
+
+"Can you ask me?" she retorted with a hint of impatience. "You who have
+felt Its grope toward your inner spirit?"
+
+I shuddered, remembering the brush of those antennæ, exploring,
+examining! But I persisted, beyond my every-day nature. Her speech was
+for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norsemen
+to war fury.
+
+"You say I came off victor," I reminded her.
+
+"Yes. But can you conquer again, and again, and again? Will you not feel
+strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn
+down by the Thing that knows no weariness and fall its prey at last?"
+
+"It will come--often?"
+
+"Until one conquers, It will come."
+
+I forced away a qualm of panic.
+
+"How can you know?" I demanded.
+
+"Ask me not. I do know."
+
+"But, look here!" I argued. "If as you say, this creature was not meant
+to meet mankind, how can It come after me this way?"
+
+She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance:
+
+"Because, two centuries ago one of the race of man here broke through
+the awful Barrier that rears a wall between human kind and those dark
+forms of life to which It belongs. For know that a human will to evil
+can force a breach in that Barrier, which those on the other side never
+could pass without such aid."
+
+I neither understood nor believed. At least, I told myself that I did
+not believe her wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare Thing that
+visited me. I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to offend her
+by saying so!
+
+"You will go," she presently mistook my silence for surrender. "You are
+wise as well as brave. Good go with you! Good walk beside you in that
+happy world where you live!"
+
+"Wait!" I cried sharply. Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a
+retreating whisper at the last word. "No! I will not go. I must--I will
+know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where--when can I see
+you in daylight?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given."
+
+"But you will come again?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"
+
+"What have I to do with It, who am more helpless before It than you? Go;
+and give thanks that you may."
+
+"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from
+this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to
+me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me
+half-convinced of what I should do."
+
+"I can stay no longer."
+
+"Why can you not come again?"
+
+"You plan to trap me," she reproached.
+
+"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make
+a movement toward you."
+
+"Not try--to see me, even?" she hesitated.
+
+"Not even that, if you forbid."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Perhaps----" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had
+begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.
+
+She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike
+me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no
+reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise.
+Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric
+switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her
+entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp,
+and this time light flashed over the room.
+
+I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was
+disappointed.
+
+As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four.
+Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of
+coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and
+bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in
+my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath
+the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking
+foulness of mould and decay.
+
+I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of
+sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     "For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon
+     sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate
+     perfumes."--ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.
+
+
+The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily
+summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms
+of the night.
+
+My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and
+blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat
+opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the
+rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in a shining content
+that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation.
+At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere rose while
+Phillida welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's
+pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs.
+
+The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of
+enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big
+brindle cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; no dainty Persian
+or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail
+proved him a battling cat of ring experience.
+
+"I planned to have a wee white kitten," Phil explained, while putting a
+saucer of milk before the feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon,
+you know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother always forbade pets
+because she believed animals carry germs? I meant to have a puss, if
+ever I had a home of my own. This one just walked into the kitchen on
+the first day we came here. Ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat
+came to a new home. He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we
+had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided to keep it instead of
+a kitten. It really is more cat!"
+
+What footing was here for dreary terrors? In a mirror across the room I
+glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual. No over-night white
+hairs appeared; no upstanding look such as the legend gave to Sir
+Sintram after he met the Little Master.
+
+After the meal, Vere asked me to walk over to the lake with him.
+
+We strolled through the old orchard toward the dam. This was my side of
+the house. In passing, I looked up at the window against which the Thing
+had seemed to press Itself with sickening lust for me. Phillida was
+framed in the open square, and shook a dustcloth at us by way of
+greeting and evidence of her busyness.
+
+The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head
+of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an
+amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a
+winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed.
+
+"We must put our lake in order, Vere," I observed, as we stood on a
+knoll at the head of the dam. "All this growth of rank vegetation ought
+to be pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the bottom cleaned
+up. Water-lilies would look better than cat-tails."
+
+To my surprise, he did not assent. Instead, he set his foot on a boulder
+and rested his arm upon his knee; looking into the clear water.
+
+"Mr. Locke, I just about hate saying what I have to," he told me in his
+sober, leisurely fashion. "I expect you won't like it; not at all.
+Well--best said before you get deeper in. I can't see my way to make
+farming this place pay."
+
+I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst estimate of Vere, I had
+imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor
+Phillida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few
+weeks. But the call of New York, of the "lounge lizard's" ease and
+unhealthy excitement had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all.
+The blow was too sore.
+
+"There are too few acres of arable land, and they're used up," Vere was
+continuing. "I've seen plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New
+England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these
+five years to come, before it began to pay you back. And then your money
+might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit! I saw that, the
+first week here. Since then I've been looking around for something
+better to do."
+
+"And have found it, of course," I said bitingly. "Or else you would be
+drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this!
+Well, where does poor Phil go, and when?"
+
+He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise.
+
+"I didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere, Mr. Locke."
+
+"What? You do not mean to leave the farm?"
+
+"Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've been calculating how to
+make it pay. That won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a
+wagon-load into town! If you think I'm wrong, call in any practical man
+who knows this sort of business. We've got to think closer to win here.
+That's why I'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying it
+up."
+
+"The lake, Vere? There isn't enough water-power over the dam to do any
+more than run a toy, is there?"
+
+He motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down.
+
+"Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke? Brown like forest water,
+sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf; neither mud nor
+sand, but a kind of under-water moss? You see? It's pure and clean, with
+a little fishy smell about it. Matter of fact, it is forest water! Comes
+from way off yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out into our
+lake, here. I borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got
+too shallow for me. Boys have caught trout here three times since I've
+been watching."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My father was fish-warden in our district. I learned the business. If
+you're willing, I can start some trout-raising that ought to pay well.
+You know, the State is glad to help game preserving, free."
+
+He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject, in his quiet,
+unpretentious manner; producing notes and diagrams from his pockets. He
+had written to various authorities and exhibited their replies. He knew
+exactly what the State would do, what he himself must do, and what
+investment of money would be required. I listened to him in admiration
+and astonishment.
+
+From fish raising, he went on to discuss each acre of the farm; its best
+use in view of its situation, condition, and our needs. We could afford
+so much labor, it appeared, and no more. We must have certain apparatus;
+methodically listed with prices. If we used a certain sheltered south
+field for a peach orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and
+have giant-powder blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon
+bear fruit.
+
+When at last he ended his deceptive speech that sounded so lazy while
+implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on
+his knee to my face, I had been routed long since.
+
+"Vere," I said abruptly, "did you know that I thought you were going to
+desert the farm, when you began to speak?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me; haven't had any occasion
+to! You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would
+anyone else, yet!"
+
+He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them
+while he finished his answer:
+
+"There will be plenty of time before that 'yet' runs out. Mighty
+pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke! Phillida and I expect to enjoy
+building things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all built.
+Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more because I know how you
+feel. Now, if you'd be interested to look over these plans or submit
+them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, I'll just turn
+them over to you."
+
+He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite
+true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him
+still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt
+ungenerous, but I would not lie to him.
+
+"I am a queer fellow, Vere," I said. "Leave that to time, as you say! As
+for the plans, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my
+way to 'phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what
+I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans
+seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate in cost. Keep them,
+and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not
+I."
+
+We walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early
+spring morning. As we neared the house Phillida's voice hailed us. She
+was at my window again, leaning out with her hair wind-ruffled about her
+face.
+
+"Cousin Roger," she summoned me, "I have found out what makes your room
+as sweet as a garden of spices. See what it is to be a composer
+completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents
+to lay on one's pillow! And all enclosed in antique gold!"
+
+She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "Throw it
+down," I begged, startled into excitement.
+
+She complied, laughing. Vere sprang forward, but I made a quicker step
+and caught the thing.
+
+It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought into openwork, about
+the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain
+or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence
+supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to
+overwhelm her; as ladies did in past centuries and do no longer.
+
+Whose gentle pity had brought this pomander to my pillow, to help me
+from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the Thing? Whose
+was the exquisite, individual fragrance contained in the ball I held? I
+had a vision of a figure, surely light and soft of movement, haloed with
+such matchless hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by timid
+step across my room; within my reach while I lay inert. Perhaps her face
+had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death; hidden eyes had
+studied me in the scanty starlight.
+
+Oh, for Ethan Vere's good looks and athlete's grace, to lure my lady
+from her masquerade!
+
+"Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? 'Fess up!" Phillida's merry voice
+coaxed me.
+
+"It was given to me," I slowly answered. "I cannot offer it to you,
+Phil. But I will buy any other pretty thing you fancy, instead, next
+time I go to town."
+
+She made a gesture of disclaim.
+
+"I did not mean _that_! Only, do tell me what the perfume is?"
+
+"I was going to ask if you knew."
+
+"No. Something very expensive and imported, I suppose. Perhaps whoever
+gave it to you had it made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do.
+It is the most clinging, yet delicately refreshing scent I ever met."
+
+"Tuberose," suggested Vere.
+
+"Drawls, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned funeral!" she cried.
+
+"Tuberose didn't always go to funerals," he corrected her teasingly, as
+she made a face at him. "I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's
+garden. Creamy looking posies, kind of kin to a gardenia, seems to me!
+Thick-petalled, like white plush, and holding their sweet smell
+everlastingly. But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either. There
+was something else grew in that garden--I can't call to mind what I
+mean. Basil, maybe?"
+
+"The basil plant, that feeds on dead men's brains," quoted Phil with a
+mock shiver. "You _are_ happy in your ideals, Drawls!"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up
+in the sun, mornings--and so does this little gilt ball! I'll guess Mr.
+Locke's lady never got it from France. Smells like old New England."
+
+There was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me, or the
+sunshine seem to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the
+surrounding brightness. Let me say again that no place could have been
+more unlike the traditional haunted house. There hung about it no sense
+of morbidity or depression. Yet, what was I to think? I was not sick or
+mad; and the Thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married
+lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to
+consider the pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence
+walking beside me.
+
+Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in
+peacock chintz and marked especially mine by laying my favorite
+magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a
+satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real enough, resting in my
+palm.
+
+Yes; but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind! As I picked out the
+design of the gold-work, that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was
+no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere
+was belted with the signs of the Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection.
+All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one
+group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what
+the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange,
+outcast academies of astrology, alchemy--magic, in short. It contained
+what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled
+round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the
+gold.
+
+Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom?
+What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why
+muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of
+language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from
+even the college-bred Phillida's?
+
+She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her
+wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and
+the warning come to others of our household group? Vere, Phillida, the
+Swedish woman, Cristina--all had lived here for weeks without any
+experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the
+house. The danger, then, was only for me?
+
+Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?
+
+The gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On
+impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow
+eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with
+convulsive pleasure, it breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the
+scent so familiar to my own senses.
+
+"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from
+it, either, would you?"
+
+Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed
+toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the
+pomander in my waistcoat pocket.
+
+I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing which had visited me.
+Better confront that fact! It was real. Only, real in what sense? What
+human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so
+hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight,
+without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain?
+
+Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at
+by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and
+magnificent charlatans, these many centuries? Were there other races
+between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose
+destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives
+and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these
+beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its
+victim by methods unknown to us?
+
+Was I a cheated fool, or a pioneer on the borders of a new country?
+
+Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow night? Could I bear the
+agony of Its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was Its
+atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet.
+
+The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Phillida ran down to
+meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me
+while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man to sort
+our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman
+happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope, if he could but
+persuade her to try him.
+
+My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps, with patience----?
+
+Phillida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogues
+and a handful of letters.
+
+"Catalogues for Ethan; letters for you," she called in advance of her
+arrival. "What an important person you are, Cousin Roger! It always
+gives me a quivery thrill to realize _who_ you are as well as how nice
+you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me?"
+
+I took her tanned little hand along with the letters; letters that were
+so many voices summoning me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan.
+
+"It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer, Phil! But does that
+sort of thing matter to you women? What do you love Vere for, at bottom?
+Because he is strong and supple and has curly hair? No?" as she shook
+her head. "Because he has worn the uniform, then; proved his courage in
+war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and
+cabaret glitter? Or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or,
+perhaps, because he is kind and loves you? No! For none of these
+reasons? Why, then, love Ethan Vere?"
+
+She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled
+at me triumphantly.
+
+"Because he _is_ Ethan Vere," she promptly responded. "Oh, Cousin Roger,
+you clever people are so stupid! It would not make any difference at all
+if Drawls were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or could not skate or
+do things, or had not been able to make me happy. It is something very
+much bigger than all that!"
+
+"And all the divorce courts, Phil? The breach of promise suits, and the
+couples who make each other miserable?"
+
+"But they never had anything," she said. "Perhaps they will have it,
+some day. Don't you know, Cousin Roger, that the most important things
+in the world are those most people never know about?"
+
+I was not sure whether I knew that, or not. After last night, I was not
+sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given as she believed, if
+it was merely a question of being Ethan Vere--or Roger Locke----?
+
+But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     "The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not
+     sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not
+     sufficient for it."--HUGO DE ANIMA.
+
+
+That evening Vere and I settled the business details of the developments
+he had planned. Also while we three were quietly together, I launched a
+discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched
+Phillida.
+
+"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I told her. "In fact, you are
+a most moderate pair! I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you
+have furnished the house for so little that I am amazed. And it is all
+so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond
+me. But--one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had
+expected you to need several. Of course, we are not counting Vere's
+outdoor force."
+
+She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and glanced toward the
+window behind her, before replying. I noticed the action, because a
+moment before Vere had turned precisely the same way.
+
+"It is good of you to think of those things, Cousin Roger," she
+declared. "But, I want to be a real wife to Drawls. I do, indeed! And I
+have it all to learn because I was not brought up for that. Look at this
+dish-towel I am hemming. Cristina would laugh at the stitches if she
+dared, yet they are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew fine
+things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I think we should begin as we
+mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for--us. Perhaps if it had
+been for you alone, I should have chosen satin-wood and tapestry instead
+of willow and cretonne. The same way about Cristina. If Ethan and I are
+to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered, we cannot afford
+more than one maid. You understand what I am trying to explain, don't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," I assented. "Surely! What were you looking for, just now, behind
+you?"
+
+"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had passed by the window and
+stared in. I can't imagine what made me fancy that. Unless the cat----"
+She hesitated.
+
+"Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair," Vere observed casually.
+
+"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are living," she resumed. "It is
+very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all
+Father and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want to live this way
+all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan, and make them come
+true together."
+
+Under cover of the table she put her hand into Vere's, and silence held
+us a little while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair
+staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room.
+Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in
+gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now
+the tail twitched with a lashing movement.
+
+Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled
+down, composing himself to sleep.
+
+"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You do not find it lonely
+here, or in any way depressing?"
+
+The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds
+had visited her.
+
+"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"
+
+I passed that question safely, and after a few minutes bade them
+good-night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a
+matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together.
+
+As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing
+excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep
+tryst with me tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each time
+before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure
+of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant
+to pluck it out of the mystery.
+
+The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I
+lighted the lamps and sat down to my work.
+
+The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At
+midnight I lay down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow. Whether I
+put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about
+its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or
+because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I
+should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in
+its sweet odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed
+moments of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope
+uneasy as fear.
+
+The cock crowed for the first hour; and for the second. I slept, at
+last. When I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.
+
+Nothing had happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     "These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade
+     a spade."--PLUTARCH.
+
+
+Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the
+neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance
+where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my
+cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to
+leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition
+of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young
+lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of
+the top or the description.
+
+On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired
+me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my
+question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a
+man who knew everyone and went everywhere!
+
+The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up
+beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside.
+The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded
+to me.
+
+"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let me get the right stuff into
+this here box, an' I'll sort your family's right out for you. There's a
+sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em, for Cliff
+Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know but
+Cliff's poultry'd thank me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"
+
+"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering
+into the sack.
+
+"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to lay or eat it,
+judgin' from the smell that sample's put in my bag."
+
+"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned across to lay the
+pomander in his gnarled hand.
+
+The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his
+face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed
+an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.
+
+"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?" I asked. "A lady with
+bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?"
+
+"Not I!" he denied briefly.
+
+"No one at all like that--with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold
+color, and a lot of it?"
+
+"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been! What do you call this
+perfumery, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed. "No one knows except
+the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at
+all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house
+who might be the one I am looking for?"
+
+He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.
+
+"No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?" I persisted.
+
+A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr.
+Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters.
+
+"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss much of what goes on
+around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband
+hitch up, and she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knows that
+don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere
+gets butter and cheese from her. Might ask her!"
+
+I thanked him and drove on.
+
+Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to
+ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She
+granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called
+that morning; inviting me into her parlor to "set," when she had
+identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.
+
+"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Michell place," she
+observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking
+up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking
+crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as
+that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus 'round in
+that fast automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't
+be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought to get the other fellow to run
+it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer,
+ain't you? Books or newspapers?"
+
+I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack.
+
+"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines
+of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I
+thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano
+upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of
+funny, takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But then it's kind
+of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow! I got a niece ten years
+old next August who can play piano so good there don't seem anythin'
+left to learn her, so----! But there ain't no use of you drivin' 'round
+here lookin' for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in
+the shanties by the post road are about the only light-complected ones
+in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator
+Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boardin' school for
+vacation. How do you like your place?"
+
+"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not know a great deal about it,
+yet. Its history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the
+house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to
+tell our friends when they come to visit us."
+
+She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded
+on her meagre breast.
+
+"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never heard of none. The Michell
+family always owned it--and they were so stiff respectable an' upright
+everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were clergymen in their
+time. The last, Reverend Cotton Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign
+parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years ago; an'
+died there. He never married, so the family's run out. The Michells were
+awful hard on women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of Adam.
+Preached it right out of the pulpit--so I guess no girl in these parts
+could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died
+when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence. After news came of
+his death, the house was shut up 'till you bought it. My, how you've
+changed it, already! I'd admire to go through it."
+
+When I had invited her to call on Phillida and inspect our domicile, and
+paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the
+car.
+
+"All this land 'round here is old and full of Indian relics," she
+remarked. "Over to the Sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots
+of fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was stoned to death where
+the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place. So I
+guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like."
+
+"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. "Do
+they, perhaps, have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as
+convents often do abroad?"
+
+Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed head.
+
+"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled. "They're the strictest
+sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor Clares, I think they're called.
+No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join.
+They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay in their
+cells, an' pray, even in the middle of the night, an' shave their heads
+an' live on a few vegetables an' dry bread."
+
+I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of
+marvelous tresses and magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical
+theories. That thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then,
+was I next to seek?
+
+I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the Senator's
+daughters. They proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped
+after the fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was
+not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I
+had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose
+royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's
+Gothic locks.
+
+I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me. Suppose she never came
+again? Suppose the episode was ended? Not even freedom from the Thing
+could compensate for the baffled adventure.
+
+Think of the lame feller with an Adventure!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     "Plato expresses four kinds of Mania--Firstly, the musical;
+     secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+     fourthly, that which belongs to Love."--PREFACE TO ZANONI.
+
+
+For myself, I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination.
+There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all
+within and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too much calm as
+an ordinary thing! That evening, when I went to my room, lighted my
+lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for awhile breathing the mingled
+sweetness of the country air and the pomander ball. In that interval,
+there came to me, complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the
+melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached
+every ear in America.
+
+As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous
+amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic
+about it. For myself, I cannot hear it--ground on a street-organ, given
+on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an
+orchestra--without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that
+night.
+
+I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing my former work right
+and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I could set
+it down! If the least of those airy cadences should be lost!
+
+At three o'clock in the morning I came back to realization of time and
+place. The composition was finished; it stood up before me like a flower
+raised over-night. Eight hours had passed since I sat down to the work,
+after dinner. I was tired. As I began to draw into a pile the sheets of
+paper I had covered with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand.
+
+Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice that long I could have
+felt no more exhausted. Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body, I
+dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the table. My hot, strained
+eyes closed with relief, my stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content
+flowed over me; my work was done, and good.
+
+Rest passed into sleep, no doubt.
+
+The sleep could not have been long, for not many hours remained before
+dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head, I found the room in
+darkness. A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence scarcely
+more tangible than the perfume. Even in the first dazed moment, I knew
+my lady had come again.
+
+"Do not rise!" her murmuring voice cautioned me. "Unless you wish me to
+go?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I am here because I promised to come. It was not wise of you to ask
+that of me."
+
+"Then I prefer folly to wisdom," I answered, steadying myself to full
+wakefulness. "Or, rather, I am not sure that you can decide for me which
+is which!"
+
+"Why? After all, why? Just--curiosity?"
+
+"You, who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery," I retorted, smiling
+under cover of the darkness, "have you never heard of the white magic
+conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than
+the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so
+easily as a man before these things."
+
+"My hair pleased you?" she questioned naïvely.
+
+"Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration!" I supplemented. "I am
+delighted to prove you human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone fail
+to be pleased with that most magnificent braid? But how can either you
+or I forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner? Why did you cut it
+off?"
+
+"So little of it! And I did not know you, then."
+
+"Little? That braid?"
+
+"It reached below my knee, now it is but little less," she answered with
+indifference. "We all have such hair."
+
+I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of all that shining
+richness enwrapping a slim young body. It was fantastic beyond belief to
+sit there at my desk, beneath my fingers the tools of sober, workaday
+life, and stare into the dark room that held the reality of my vision.
+She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my
+eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her.
+
+"Who are 'we'?" I slowly followed her last sentence.
+
+A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory floated to me of the story
+she had told while I held her prisoner that first night:
+
+"_The woman sits in her low chair. The fire-shine is bright in her eyes
+and in her hair. On either side, her hair flows down to the floor._"
+
+Yes, by legend young witches had such hair; sylphs, undines and all of
+the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a
+quotation to fill the pause:
+
+  "'I met a lady in the meads'
+    'Full beautiful; a faery's child.'
+  'Her hair was long, her foot was light,'
+    'And her eyes were wild.'"
+
+She did not laugh, or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that
+she did not mean to reply, and was seeking my mind for new speech to
+detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation:
+
+"'A spirit--one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither
+departed souls nor angels; concerning whom Josephus and Michael Psellus
+of Constantinople may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is
+no climate or element without one or more.' Have you read the writings
+of the learned Jew or of the Platonist, you who are so very bold?"
+
+"Neither," I meekly admitted. "But neither ancient gentleman could
+convince me that you are unhuman."
+
+Her answer was just audible:
+
+"Not I--but, It!"
+
+Now I was silenced, for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the
+dark to a man who had met here in this room What I had met.
+
+"Tell me more of this Thing without a name," I urged, mastering my
+reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall.
+"Why does It hate me?"
+
+"What can I tell you? Even in your world, does not evil hate good as
+naturally as good recoils from evil? But this One has another cause
+also!" She hesitated. "And you yourself? How have you challenged and
+mocked It this very night? Here, where It glooms, you have dared bring
+the high joy of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave!--he who could
+await alone the visit of the Unspeakable, in the chamber into which the
+Loathsome Eyes have looked, and write the music of hope and beauty!"
+
+I started, with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure. She had heard my
+work. She approved it. More than that, not to her was I the lame fellow
+who ought to get a better man to drive his car!
+
+"Nor should you, who have two worlds of your own," she added in a lower
+tone, "doubt the existence of many both dark and bright. Go, then, out
+of this haunted place where a human madness broke through the Barrier.
+Be satisfied with the victories you have had. Let the visits of the Dark
+One fade into mere nightmare; and know I am no more a living woman than
+Franchina Descartes."
+
+"Who was she?"
+
+"Have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared
+in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a
+beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes
+declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had
+made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery
+compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina,
+his daughter."
+
+"And the truth?"
+
+"I have told you all the record tells. She was soon lost. Descartes took
+her with him upon a journey by sea; when, a storm arising, the
+superstitious captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the
+Mediterranean."
+
+"Thank you. But, are you fairy or automaton?"
+
+"Do not laugh," she exclaimed with sudden passion. "You know I would say
+that I have no part in the world of men and women. Not through me shall
+the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time, now, then the doors
+will close upon me as the sea closed over Franchina. I will not take
+with me the memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come to this
+house after tonight. If you would give me a happiness, promise me you
+will leave, too."
+
+I had known we should come to this point. After a moment, I spoke as
+quietly as I could:
+
+"Tell me your name."
+
+She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the
+answer, given time to reflect. But as it was, she replied docilely as a
+bidden child:
+
+"Desire Michell."
+
+The name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy, with a rustle of early
+New England tradition. Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction
+before I answered her.
+
+"Thank you. Now, I, Roger Locke, do promise you, Desire Michell, that I
+will not leave this house until these matters are plainer to my
+understanding, whether you go or stay. But if you go and come no more,
+then I surely shall stay until I find a way to trace you or until the
+Thing kills me."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a pause. Then, to my utter dismay, I heard her sobbing through
+the dark.
+
+"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is it not hard enough, my duty?
+For me it is such pleasure to be here--to leave for a while the
+loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things,
+free and happy--how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark
+speaks or is silent? Let me go."
+
+Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.
+
+"I can keep you, then?" I asked.
+
+"I am--so weak."
+
+"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be, in my real life. I have
+gone apart from much that occupies men and women; gaining and losing in
+different ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without
+grief or loss to anyone, except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will
+you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with
+you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can, let us
+take what time we may, and the chances be mine."
+
+"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect you I must go."
+
+"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is sorrow in knowing you, I
+accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to
+the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not
+be sent away."
+
+"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."
+
+"Never."
+
+"It could only be like this--that we should speak a few times before the
+gates close upon me."
+
+"What gates?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"Very well," I took what the moment would grant me. "That is a bargain.
+Yet, what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each
+other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no
+more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy
+in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a special
+motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind.
+What is that motive?"
+
+"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.
+
+"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback
+in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves It
+against me?"
+
+The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil,
+her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that
+effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour
+my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my
+hearing:
+
+"Jealousy!"
+
+"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"
+
+"For--me."
+
+The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding; then
+brought me erect, gripping the edge of the table lest I forget restraint
+and move toward her.
+
+"By what right?" I cried. "By what claim? Desire Michell, what has the
+Horror to do with you?"
+
+The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room
+distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement;
+no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With that confession she had
+fled.
+
+My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently I heard a door open. Steps
+sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house.
+Someone knocked hesitatingly.
+
+"Are you all right, Mr. Locke?" Vere's voice came through the panels.
+
+I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold, an
+electric torch in his hand.
+
+"We thought you called," he apologized. "I thought maybe you were sick,
+or wanted something; and no light showed around your door."
+
+I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps. As on the last
+occasion, she had switched the lights off there, beyond my reach unless
+I broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my
+guest.
+
+"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to you and Phillida for looking
+me up! I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a
+nightmare as the result."
+
+It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and
+pajamas, in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the
+music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes
+smilingly.
+
+"We heard some of that work," he admitted. "Phil and I--well, I guess we
+were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never
+listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd
+certainly prize hearing all of it together, sometime, if you didn't
+mind."
+
+The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to
+assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those
+expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward
+vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me
+back to the reality of my own world.
+
+Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script
+quaint as the pomander, was written a quotation strange to me:
+
+"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level thrown, and pant like
+climbers."
+
+I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vere answered them.
+
+"So we do! I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real
+mountain-climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most
+roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a
+fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Michell's meaning
+in leaving this to me.
+
+He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.
+
+"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote
+that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not
+amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be
+anxious."
+
+Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed
+some quality of courage----?
+
+That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money
+and popularity went to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of
+Hills." Of course no one connected the allusion. The general
+interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first
+printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe
+containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.
+
+But--in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose
+shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain
+itself?
+
+I did not know. I do not know, now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+     "If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the
+     country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be
+     understood of the Other World."--ONEIROCRITICA ACHMETIS.
+
+
+In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding
+attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work
+into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the
+manuscript out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had
+awakened with that instinct strong within me.
+
+The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the
+friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment
+of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening I turned
+toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would
+not stay away from the house for a night, risking that Desire Michell
+might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by
+cowardice and deserted. She might never return.
+
+I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of
+accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to
+snatch her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome
+sunlight where Phillida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates
+of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was
+plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened away, how could she be
+found? Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing
+her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried, and failed. Of her
+connection with the Dark Thing I refused to think too deeply. Her
+connection with me must come first.
+
+It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely
+in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm, that I
+recalled our talk in her "best room."
+
+"_The Michell family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Michell
+went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died
+there----_"
+
+My lady of the night was Desire Michell. A clue?
+
+"_He never married, so the family's run out._"
+
+It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran
+coldly over me.
+
+Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble-down barn,
+I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I
+passed through the last village, and our household was asleep. Moving
+without unnecessary noise, I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat,
+padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs
+while I stooped to put the latch-key in the lock.
+
+As the key slid in place, I heard the waterfall over the dam abruptly
+change the sound of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust
+of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the brink. But there was
+no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken
+to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the suck of
+a thick body drawing itself from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself
+violently between my feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a
+whimpering mew of urgency. Startled, I looked in the direction of the
+lake.
+
+At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of darkness, only the
+reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What
+else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them; and turned
+the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough
+to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind
+us both.
+
+Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Phillida
+allow him in the house, or not? After an instant's consideration, I bent
+and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the
+night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the
+curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part.
+Until we reached my room! On its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his
+yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I
+reflected, amused, as I switched on the lights.
+
+"All right, Bagheera," I spoke soothingly, and put him upon the rug.
+
+He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from side to side after
+the fashion of a miniature panther. When I stooped to stroke him, he
+eluded my hand. In a gliding run, body crouched, ears flattened, he sped
+toward the doorway, was through it and gone.
+
+Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all through the house. It would
+be easier to explain him to Phillida next morning. I was tired;
+pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm and
+congratulations of my associates, with conferences and plans for
+launching the new music via theatres and advertising. It ought to "go
+big," they assured me. In my optimism of mood, I wondered if I had not
+already driven off the Dark Thing, since the girl had come to me the
+night past without It appearing before or afterward. Perhaps,
+woman-timid, she exaggerated the danger and It had retreated after the
+second failure to overpower me.
+
+I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my
+rest this night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate. Silence contained me. Yet
+the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning
+communication of intelligence.
+
+"Man," It commanded, "I am here. Fear!"
+
+And I knew that which was my body did fear to the point of death, but
+that which was myself stood up in revolt.
+
+"Crouch," It bade. "Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear! The blood crawls in
+the veins, the heart checks, the nerves shrink and wither--man, your
+life wanes thin and faint. Down--shall your race affront mine?"
+
+My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But
+there was another force that stiffened to resistance, and gathered
+itself to compact strength within me.
+
+"No," my thought refused the dark intelligence. "I am not yours. Command
+your own, not me."
+
+"Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. Into my path you have
+dared step. Back--for in my breath you die!"
+
+The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous. With more and more
+difficulty my heart labored. Confused memories came to me of men found
+dead in their beds in haunted rooms. Would morning find me so? Better
+that way than to yield to the Thing! Better----
+
+I struggled erect; or fancied so.
+
+Now I saw myself as one who stood with folded arms fronting a breach in
+a colossal wall. Huge, immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond
+the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown distances, dully
+glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand
+on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall.
+Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing
+mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the
+fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the
+common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when
+he draws near the supernatural; the ancient fear.
+
+I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my
+enemy who pressed me hard.
+
+The Thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the
+Barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate
+beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an
+iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold.
+
+"Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace breathed, "what keeps you
+from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the
+pentagram fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass is death.
+Die, then."
+
+Only my will held It from me, and I felt that will reel in sickened
+bewilderment. I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct
+to oppose.
+
+The Thing did not pass. There in the breach It ravened for me, thrust
+Itself toward me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between
+us. I saw nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself, gigantic in
+formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its whispered threats broke
+against me like an evil surf.
+
+"Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the
+pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape."
+
+The woman? Startled wonder filled me. Was I then fighting for Desire
+Michell?
+
+Out of the air I was answered as if her voice had spoken; certainty came
+to grip me as if with her small hands. She had no help but in me. If I
+fell, she fell. If I stood firm----? Exultant resolve flared strong and
+high within me. My will to protect leaped forward.
+
+The Thing shrank. It dwindled back through the gap in the Barrier. But
+as It fled, a last venomous message drifted to me:
+
+"Again! And again! Tire but once, pygmy----!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my fingers clutching the
+chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond
+my window? Or was I still dreaming?
+
+I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water so that my relaxing
+hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have
+been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had nightmares like these?
+
+When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments and wrapped myself in a
+heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room kept for
+occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee
+now and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood
+again moved warmly in my veins.
+
+Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled
+body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike
+a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure
+water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body. In this
+atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring with the
+homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pomander beneath my
+pillow.
+
+I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown
+than by either of my former experiences. A fact which drove home the
+grim farewell of my enemy! _Tire but once, pygmy----!_ Desire herself
+had foretold that the dark Thing would wear me down.
+
+Well, perhaps! But not without fighting for Its victory. At least I
+would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way--where? Where was
+that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank coldly through me at
+memory of that colossal land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human
+intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stalked and
+watched beyond that titanic wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope
+to win against Them?
+
+I would not consider escape by flight, even if the end had been certain
+destruction. But my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of a
+profound depression and discouragement.
+
+It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour
+superstition sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest.
+At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature, and bayed
+monotonously.
+
+There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for
+the sake of Desire Michell. _But what was she to whom the Thing laid
+claim by the pact of centuries?_
+
+Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk
+with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the
+house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin
+smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose
+and walked to the nearest window.
+
+Something was moving up the slope from the lake; a dim shape about which
+the fog clung in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly.
+What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall?
+
+A moment later the figure was near enough to be distinguished as Ethan
+Vere, bearing several long fishing-rods over his shoulder.
+
+"Vere!" I hailed him, with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself.
+"Anything going on so early?"
+
+He looked up at me--I never saw Vere startled--and came on to stop
+beneath the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his
+black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the
+mists painted him with a spectral pallor.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted me. "Just as I've been thinking,
+there are some big snapping-turtles about the lake and creek. I guessed
+there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe for
+use! One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it and started
+feeding right before my eyes, just now."
+
+"We will have to get a canoe."
+
+He nodded placid assent.
+
+"That'll look pretty on the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess
+I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight around some
+corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like
+mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle, now. I'd
+admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off."
+
+"I will get into some clothes and be right with you," I invited myself
+to the hunt.
+
+"I'd like to have you," he replied with his quaint politeness. There
+were times when I could visualize Vere's New England mother as if I had
+known her.
+
+The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the
+night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the
+copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its
+crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought; young, too, were its
+luxuriance and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness
+here or the passing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this
+tress! A flood of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the Thing might
+be, I would trust the girl Desire Michell. Yes, and for her I would
+stand fast at that Barrier until victory declared for the enemy or for
+me. Until It passed me, It should not reach her.
+
+I went downstairs to join Vere. The brightening mist was cool and fresh.
+There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     "In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.
+     We were but seated at the festival
+     Of many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"
+                           --ROSE GARDEN OF SA'ADI.
+
+
+Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet
+interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose
+strands are of violently contrasted colors. The rope would be
+inharmonious, startling to the eye, but strong to bind and hold. As I
+was bound and held!
+
+All day I lived in the wholesome household atmosphere evoked by Vere and
+Phillida. It is impossible to describe the sunny charm they created
+about the commonplace. Our gay, simple breakfasts where Phillida
+presided in crisp middy blouse or flowered smock; where the gray cat sat
+on the arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his
+master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food
+with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood
+events--how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our
+breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare
+that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my
+little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked
+in her sunbeams gratefully.
+
+Afterward, we each had our work. Of the three, Vere was the most
+industrious; slow, steady and unsparing of himself to a degree that
+accomplished surprising results. Phillida flitted over the place indoors
+and out, managing the house, following Vere about, driving to village or
+town with me on purchasing trips for our supplies. I did rather more of
+my own work than usual, that summer, and consequently had more of the
+commercial side to employ me.
+
+A healthy, normal life? Yes--until the hours between midnight and dawn.
+
+I never knew when I laid down at night whether I should sleep until sun
+and morning overlay the countryside; whether the whispering call of
+Desire Michell would summon me to an hour more exquisite than reality,
+less satisfying than a dream, or whether I should leap into
+consciousness of the Loathsome Eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while
+my enemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the darkness Its
+presence fouled.
+
+For my two guests kept their promises.
+
+If I speak briefly of the coming of the Thing during this time, I do so
+because the mind shrinks from past pain. It came again, and again. It
+craftily used the torture of irregularity in Its coming. For days there
+might be a respite, then It would haunt me nights in succession until my
+physical endurance was almost spent.
+
+I have stood before the breach in that Barrier, fighting that nightmare
+duel, until the place of colossal desolation, last frontier the human
+race might hope to keep, became as well known to me as a landscape on
+earth. Yet the effect of the Thing's assaults upon me never lessened. On
+the contrary, the horror gained in strength. A dreadful familiarity grew
+between It and me. Communication flowed more readily between us with
+use. I will not set down, perhaps I dare not set down the intolerable
+wickedness of Its alternate menaces and offered bribes. Contact with Its
+intelligence poisoned.
+
+There were nights when It was dumb, when all Its monstrous power
+concentrated and bore upon me, Its will to destroy locked with my will.
+My victory was that I lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the shadow, Desire Michell and I drew closer to one another.
+
+How can I tell of a love that grew without sight? So much of the love of
+romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions,
+heart-consuming eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make
+beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew strong and passionately
+demanding, knew delicate coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of
+minds like the meeting of eyes in understanding--all in the dark? The
+blind might comprehend. But the blind have a physical communication we
+had not; touch has enchantments of its own.
+
+Every night, near midnight, I switched off the lights and waited in the
+chair at my writing-table, where I was accustomed to work. If she had
+not come by two o'clock, I learned to know she would not visit me that
+night. I might sleep in that certainty. A strange tryst I kept there in
+the dark; listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake, loud in
+that dead hour's stillness, or hearing the soft, incessant sounds of
+insect life awake in trees and fields. If she came--a drift of perfume,
+a movement slight as a curtain stirred by the wind, then an hour with
+such a companion as the ancient magician might have drawn out of the air
+to his nine mystic lamps.
+
+Strange, fantastic tales she told me, spun of fancies luminous and frail
+as threads of glass. She could not speak without betraying her deep
+learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world.
+Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank
+to my ignorance; which she most gently and politely enlightened when I
+confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus was not a beast,
+but a recipe for making gold; that Salamandar's Feather was better known
+today as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no means an article
+of furniture. I give these examples merely by way of illustration.
+
+On the other side of the shield held between us, I soon discovered that
+she knew no more of modern city life than a well-taught child who has
+never left home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theatres and
+restaurants. The history of Phillida and Ethan Vere seemed to her more
+moving and wonderful than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and
+humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art
+among the occult sciences.
+
+Of the evil Thing that haunted me, we came to say little. To press her
+with questions meant to end her visit, I found by experience. When I
+spoke of that strand between the Barrier and the gray mist-hidden sea,
+her passion of distress closed all intercourse with the plea that I go
+away at once, while escape was possible, while life remained mine. So
+for the most part I curbed my tongue and my consuming curiosity; not
+from consideration, but of necessity.
+
+One night I asked her how the dark Thing spoke to me, by what medium of
+communication.
+
+"Spirits of all orders can speak to man in every language, so long as
+they are face to face," she answered, with a faint surprise at my lack
+of knowledge. "'_When they turn to man, they come into use of his
+language and no longer remember their own, but as soon as they turn from
+man they resume their own language, and forget his._'
+
+"But they themselves are unaware of this fact, for they utter thought to
+thought by direct intelligence. So if angel or demon turns his back to
+you, Roger, you may not make him hear you though you call with great
+force."
+
+"How do you know that, Desire?"
+
+"But by simple reading! Do not Ennemoser and many writers record it?"
+
+"Have you spoken to such beings, Desire?"
+
+The question was rash, but it escaped me before I could check the
+impulse. To my relief, she answered without resentment:
+
+"No."
+
+"No? The Thing--the enemy that comes to me has never spoken to you?"
+
+"No."
+
+I was silent in amazement and incredulity. The dark creature claimed
+her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into
+normal life, and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me, a
+stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who was familiar with Its
+existence and the lore which linked humanity to Its fearful kind?
+
+"You do not believe me," her voice came quietly across my thoughts.
+
+"I believe you, of course," I stammered. "I was only--astonished. You
+have described It, and the Barrier, so often; from the first night----!
+I supposed you had seen all I have, and more."
+
+"All you have seen? Now tell me with what eyes you have seen the Barrier
+and the Far Frontier? The eyes of the body, or that vision by which man
+sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech of spirits is to
+the hearing?"
+
+"I suppose--with the inner sight."
+
+"Then understand me when I say that I have seen with the eyes of
+another, by a sight not mine and yet my own."
+
+"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human
+associations of which I knew nothing. "You mean--hypnotism?"
+
+She laughed with half-sad raillery.
+
+"How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a time, the jewel called beryl
+was thought unrivaled as a mirror into which a magician might look to
+see reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections of the
+future. But by and by magicians grew wiser. They found any crystal would
+serve as well as a beryl. Later still, they found a little water poured
+in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a fantasm.
+So one wrote: '_There is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the
+magick is in the Seer himself._'"
+
+"Well, Desire?"
+
+"Well, Roger--if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism, then
+every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every
+historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer."
+
+"You read of the Thing----?"
+
+"No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew It through sympathy with
+one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I
+shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no
+more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a
+pomander into the fire----"
+
+"I will never do that!"
+
+"No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with
+ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit
+characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with
+the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits."
+
+"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds
+the powerful spell."
+
+"You--value the braid so much?"
+
+"I value only one other beauty as highly."
+
+"Yes, Roger?"
+
+"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid."
+
+Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a
+movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing. The
+fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But
+when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone.
+
+I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness
+than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out
+orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest
+roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too,
+with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust
+overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust
+was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair.
+
+A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily
+cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd
+size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an
+outline.
+
+I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But
+I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Michell's reality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+     "For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being
+     dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts
+     whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"--KING JAMES' "DEMONOLOGY."
+
+
+Now I have to record how I walked into the oldest snare in the world.
+
+Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her
+hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was
+her speech of presently leaving me to return no more. Or perhaps both
+these joined in urging on my determination to learn more of Desire
+Michell before some unknown bar fell between us. I only know that I
+passed into a mood of trapped exasperation at my helplessness and lack
+of knowledge. It seemed imperative that I should act to save us both,
+act soon and surely; yet inaction was bound upon me by my ignorance. Who
+was she? Where did she live? What bond held her subject to the Thing
+from the Barrier? What gates were to close between us? Why could she not
+put her hand in mine, any night, and let me take her away from this
+haunted place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light, and let me
+see her face to face? I was a man groping in a labyrinth while outside
+something precious to him is being stolen.
+
+For the first time I found myself unable to work, unable to share our
+household life with Phillida and Vere, or to find relaxation in driving
+about the countryside. Anger against Desire herself stirred at the
+bottom of my mind; Desire, who hampered me by the word of honor in which
+she had netted me so securely.
+
+It was then that my enemy from the unknown places began to whisper of
+the book.
+
+I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We did not meet at the breach in
+the mighty wall, confronted in death conflict between Its will and mine.
+Instead, night after night It crept to my window as at our first
+meeting. I started awake to find Its awful presence blackening the
+starlight where It crouched opposite me, Its intelligence breathing
+against mine. As always, my human organism shrank from Its unhuman
+neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body, while that part of me
+which was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But
+now It did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful
+suavity I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes
+who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and
+figures melting from change to change in the Hunger Dance of Kaa.
+
+There was a book that held all I longed to know, It whispered to me. A
+book telling of the woman! She did not wish me to read, for fear I
+should grow overwise and make her mine. The book was here, in my house.
+I might arise and find--if I would be guided by It----!
+
+I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust my enemy? If such a book
+existed, which seemed improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to
+Desire in the thought of reading without her knowledge.
+
+The Thing was not turned away. How could I do harm by learning what she
+was, unless she had evil to conceal? Did I fear to know the truth? As
+for the book's existence, I had only to accept guidance from It----?
+
+I persisted in refusal. But the idea of the book followed me through my
+days like a wizard's familiar dogging me. Where could such a volume be
+hidden, in what secret nook in wall or floor? How came a book to be
+written about the girl I supposed young, unknown and set apart from the
+world? Was I letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions of
+delicacy?
+
+Indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond rest. Phillida and Vere
+began to consider me with puzzled eyes. Cristina developed a habit of
+cooking individual dishes of especial succulence and triumphantly
+setting them before me as a "surprise"; a kindness which of course
+obliged me to eat whether I was hungry or not. I suspect my little
+cousin abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the heat as an
+excuse for all. We were in late August now. Cicadas sang their dry chant
+in the fields, where the sun glared down upon Vere's crops and painted
+him the fine bronze of an Indian. Our lake scarcely stirred under the
+hot, still air.
+
+It was after a day of such heat, succeeded by a night hardly more cool,
+that the lights in my room quietly went out. I was sitting at my table,
+some letters which required answers spread before me while I brooded,
+pen between my fingers, upon the mystery which had become my life. For
+the moment I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident at
+the powerhouse.
+
+Not for long! The hateful cold that crept like freezing vapor into the
+room, the foul air of damp and corruption pouring into the scented
+country atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves--before I
+turned my eyes to the window I knew the monster from the Frontier
+crouched there.
+
+"Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By
+your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand
+the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it fall unused, the end
+comes."
+
+"The book?" I gasped, against my better judgment.
+
+"The book was the weapon."
+
+"No, or you would not have offered it to me."
+
+"Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you may. The offer is past."
+
+Past? A madness of bafflement and frustrated curiosity gripped and shook
+me.
+
+"I take the offer," I cried in passion and defiance. "If there is such a
+book, show it to me!"
+
+The Thing was gone. Light quietly filled the lamps--or was it that I had
+opened my eyes? I gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what? I did
+not know. Only, all the horror I ever had felt in the presence of the
+Thing was slight compared to the fear that presently began to flow upon
+me as an icy current. There in the pleasantly lighted room, alone, I
+sank through depths of dread, down into an abyss of despair, down----
+
+A long sigh of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath
+of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with
+a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute
+stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at my
+feet was struck.
+
+I fled from the terror for the first time. Yes, coward at last, deserter
+from that unseen Frontier's defense, I found myself in the hall outside
+my room, leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me the door
+shut violently, yet I felt no current of air to move it.
+
+From the other side of the house there sounded the click of latch, then
+a patter of soft-shod feet. Phillida came hurrying down the hall toward
+me. She was wrapped in some silky pink-flowered garment. Her short hair
+stood out around her head like a little girl's well-brushed crop. She
+presented as endearingly natural a figure, I thought, as any man could
+seek or imagine. The wisdom of Ethan Vere who had garnered his love
+here!
+
+"Cousin?" she exclaimed. "The hall light is so dim! You almost
+frightened me when I glimpsed you standing there. Did the wind wake you,
+too? I think we are going to have a thunder storm, it is so hot and
+gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and scratching at the door, so I was
+just going down to let him in before the rain comes."
+
+"Yes," I achieved. Then, finding my voice secure: "I will let in the
+cat. Where is Vere?"
+
+"He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?"
+
+"I do not like to have you going about the house alone at this hour."
+
+Her eyes widened and she laughed outright.
+
+"Why, Cousin Roger! What a funny idea to have about our very own house!
+I have one of the electric flashlights you bought for us all; see?"
+
+What could I tell her of my vision of her womanly softness and timidity
+brought to bay by the Thing of horror, down in those empty lower rooms?
+How did I know It stalked no prey but me? Its clutch was upon Desire
+Michell. These were Its hours, between midnight and dawn.
+
+"Tramps," I explained evasively. "Give me the light."
+
+But she pattered down the stairs beside me, kimono lifted well above her
+pink-flowered slippers, one hand on the balustrade. The light glinted in
+the white topaz that guarded her wedding ring, a richer jewel than any
+diamond in the sight of one who knew the tender thought with which she
+had set it there. No! The horror was not for her, clothed in her
+wholesome goodness as in armor of proof. Surely for such as she the
+Barrier stood unbreached and strong.
+
+When I opened the front door, Bagheera darted in like a hunted cat. A
+drift of mist entered with him. Looking out, I saw the night was heavy
+with a low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree tops; a
+ground-mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray where our light fell
+upon it. Such mists were common here, yet I shivered and shut it out
+with relief. While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around my
+ankles, pressing caressingly against me as if thanking me after the
+manner of cats. I remembered this was not the first time he had shown
+this anxiety and gratitude for shelter.
+
+"Bagheera does love you," Phillida commented, stooping to pat him.
+"Isn't it funny, though, that he never will go into your room? He is
+always petting around you downstairs. When Cristina or I are doing up
+your quarters, he will follow us right up to the door-sill, but we can't
+coax him inside. Perhaps he doesn't like that perfume you always have
+about."
+
+A qualm ran through me, recalling the night I had taken the cat there by
+force and its frantic escape. But I snapped the key fast and
+straightened myself with sharp self-contempt. Had I fallen so low as to
+heed the caprices of a pet cat? Was it not enough that I had fled from
+my enemy after accepting the knowledge It had striven so long to force
+upon me?
+
+For I had that knowledge. When I had halted in the passage outside my
+room, in the moment before Phillida had joined me, there had been
+squarely set before my mental sight the place to seek the book.
+
+"Phillida, there was a bookcase in this house when it was bought," I
+said. "I believe it stood in my room before the place was altered. A
+small stand; I remember putting my candle on its top the first night I
+slept here. Have you seen it?"
+
+Some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with surprise as
+she lifted her eyes to mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for the
+inquiry.
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed you had noticed it long
+ago; I mean, where it stands. The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And
+holding the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe they may
+be valuable, out-of-print, early editions. If," her voice faltered
+wistfully, "if Father ever forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and
+comes to visit us, he would love every musty old volume. Do you think
+Mother and he ever will, Cousin Roger?"
+
+"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic parents are out of date.
+They must adjust themselves gradually when they realize Vere
+is--himself. Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where to
+find that bookcase?"
+
+"Now? Why, of course!"
+
+She led me across the hall to her sewing room. I cannot say that she
+sewed there very much, but she had chosen that title in preference to
+boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife. She had assembled here a
+spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers, a Hepplewhite sewing-table
+and chairs discovered about the house. Her canaries' cage hung above a
+great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which she kept gold-fish. A pipe of
+Vere's balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was
+not excluded.
+
+In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled the chain of a lamp
+bright under a shade of peacock chintz, and watched me stoop to look at
+the faded bindings.
+
+"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some time to find the book I
+want. You had better hurry back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a
+missing wife."
+
+"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book tonight, then?"
+
+"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your canaries?"
+
+She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked my sleeve with a
+caressing doubt and remonstrance.
+
+"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon it will be morning! Do
+you have to write your lovely music at night, Cousin Roger? You have
+been growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite well? You are so
+good that you should be happy, but--are you?"
+
+"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why, how did your lazy,
+tune-spinning, frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of
+the family?"
+
+"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan says so. You know, Cousin
+Roger, that I was over-educated in my childhood; my brain choked with
+little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all. We went to
+church Sundays because that was the correct thing to do. But I was
+almost a heathen when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about church.
+He doesn't trouble about the past, or life after death, or punishment
+for sin. He believes if one tries to be kind and straight, the big
+Kindness and Straightness takes care of everything. So I have learned to
+feel that way, too. It is a--a calm sort of feeling all the time, if you
+know what I mean. And that is the way you are good, although perhaps you
+never thought of it."
+
+"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and walked with her to the foot
+of the stairs.
+
+When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door, I went
+back to the sewing room and drew up a chair before the case of books.
+
+Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy. They were a
+sober collection. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of
+the Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin Luther loaded the first
+shelf. I looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound
+sermons of a divine of whom I had never heard.
+
+The lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above.
+Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and
+demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my
+humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus,
+Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I
+judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of the row stood a thin,
+dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility. I took it out and
+opened the covers.
+
+Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman.
+Beneath in old long-s type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the
+legend:
+
+"_Desire Michell, ye foule witch._"
+
+Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that
+panic should not drive me again nor my defense fall from within its
+walls. Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my own inner
+kingdom I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of
+upstairs while I read; glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and
+of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the
+disturbing lamp.
+
+The date stamped into the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a
+year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Michell
+have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify
+me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman
+branded witch by a bigoted generation.
+
+Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was
+young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart; eyes that even
+in this wretched picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The
+inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls clustered about the
+brow and two massive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed
+bronze-colored braid up in my drawer----?
+
+The volume was entitled "Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in
+Ye Colonies," by Abimelech Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic
+manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to "Ye
+Foule Witch, Desire Michell."
+
+As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed through the house,
+sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound, instantly
+ended, that is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a flash of
+lightning whipped across my eyes. But when I glanced toward the windows
+I saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     "Beauty is a witch--"
+             --MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+
+I will tear the core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced
+with smug moral reflections.
+
+Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent;
+no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of
+Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her
+father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter
+from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country."
+There he found a congregation, and they lived much respected. Their
+culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working
+neighbors. Young Mistress Michell was reputed learned in the use of
+simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a beauty exceeding the
+custom among godly women, to so great degree that sorcery should have
+been suspected of her."
+
+However, sorcery was not suspected; not even when her fame spread among
+near-dwelling Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying _Water on
+which the Sun is Shining_. Admiration was her portion, then, with all
+the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she
+refused every proposal made to her father for her. She walked aloof and
+alone, until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's
+house.
+
+This man's full name was not given, apparently through the writer's
+cautious respect for place and influence. He was vaguely described as
+goodly in appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied with
+riches. However he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not
+stated. He did come, saw Desire Michell, and fell as abjectly prostrate
+before her as any youth who never had left the village.
+
+He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at
+the minister's house. But a day came when Master Michell forbade him to
+cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit
+had not been honorable to the maid.
+
+Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the
+torment of not seeing Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public,
+and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in the spring.
+
+Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled slowly across snowbound
+distances. With spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his
+affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was
+rich in gold and grants of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a
+man of weight and influence, it seemed.
+
+Sir Austin had married her.
+
+Desire Michell shut herself in her father's house. The clergyman did not
+live many months after the humiliation. Alone, the girl lived.
+"Student," wrote Abimelech Fetherstone, "of black and bitter arts. Or as
+some say, having, like Bombastus de Hohenheim, a devil's bird enchained
+to do her will."
+
+In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened. He burned with fever, anguish
+consumed him. Physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man.
+They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water.
+When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He
+raved of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity,
+he begged and commanded his wife and servants to send for the girl. In
+her pardon he saw his sole hope of life.
+
+Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers were sent to the village. They were
+not even admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress
+Michell.
+
+"Your master came himself to woo; let him come himself to plead."
+
+That was the answer they received to carry back to the sick man.
+
+Sir Austin heard, and submitted with trembling hope. Writhing in the
+anguish wasting him by day and night, he made the journey by coach and
+litter to Desire Michell's house. At her door-sill he implored entrance
+and pity. The door did not open.
+
+It never opened for him. For three days in succession he was borne to
+her threshold, calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants and
+physician clustered about staring at the house which stood locked and
+blank of response. At night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some
+declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.
+
+On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went
+to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and
+open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Michell
+seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair
+"flowing down in grate bewty."
+
+"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with me?" she calmly asked the
+men who gaped upon her. "How should I have harmed him, who came not near
+him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."
+
+If she had been aged and ugly, she might have been hung. Gossip ran rife
+through the countryside. But indignation was strong against the man who
+had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and
+the matter slept for a time.
+
+New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen
+flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her
+voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in
+unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her windows in the deep night.
+The old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a
+palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the
+blood of superstitious hearers.
+
+There was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for Mistress
+Michell had been long and constant. One morning he was found dead on her
+doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his hand four words were
+scrawled in the snow: "_Sara daughter of Ruel----_"
+
+There were those who could finish that quotation. Next Sabbath the new
+minister took as his text: "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." And he
+spoke of Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each
+of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved by an evil
+spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last
+against Desire Michell. But when the officers came to arrest her, she
+was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.
+
+"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a perfume she herself
+distilled of her learning in such matters; which was said to contain a
+rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with
+vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which she steeped her hair so
+that wherever she abode were sweet odours. So did she escape Justice,
+but shall not escape Hell's Damnation and Heaven's casting out."
+
+I closed the book and laid it down.
+
+Reading those dim, closely printed pages had taken time. I was
+astonished to find the window spaces gray with dawn, when I glanced that
+way. The night was past. Neither from Desire nor from the Thing without
+a name which had sent me to this book could I find out what I was
+expected to glean from the narration.
+
+My enemy had made no conditions on directing me to the book. It had
+asked no price, uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a
+certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached. I had come to an
+end; a corner had been turned. I had opened a door that could not be
+closed. How did I know this? Why?
+
+Why was the fog against the windows this morning so like the fog that
+shrouded the unearthly sea opposite the Barrier?
+
+By and by Cristina came downstairs and busied herself in the kitchen.
+Bagheera, who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded out
+to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the voices of
+Phillida and Vere drifted from above.
+
+To have Phillida find me there in her sewing-room, finishing an
+all-night vigil, involved too many explanations. I did an unwise thing.
+From the lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such books as were
+readable by my knowledge, and carried the armful up to my room. After a
+hot bath and breakfast I would look over these companions of the New
+England witch book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+     "Not a drop of her blood was human,
+     But she was made like a soft sweet woman."
+                                           --LILITH.
+
+
+The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of
+a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam
+of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and
+magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.
+
+There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of
+books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my
+belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With
+this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not
+read the books I mean.
+
+Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of
+course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at
+least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were,
+but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to
+the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles.
+
+Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it.
+Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out
+of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of
+guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously
+blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As
+soon as possible, I left them.
+
+Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed
+aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say
+to Desire Michell if she came tonight?
+
+Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its
+claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal
+humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our
+intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man
+with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold
+Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.
+
+Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?
+
+"_Sara the daughter of Ruel--who was beloved by an evil spirit who
+suffered none to come to her_."
+
+"_There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a
+nobleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to
+behold, and for it refused rich marriages.... Until the Gospel of St.
+John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore
+noise_."
+
+I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct
+sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these
+books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Michell herself had
+alleged jealousy as the Thing's reason for attacking me.
+
+What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium?
+Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right?
+Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.
+
+The evening had passed to an hour when I might look for the girl to
+come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.
+
+In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at
+bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.
+
+Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing,
+did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold
+phosphorescence of swamp and marsh?
+
+A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement
+passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.
+
+"I am here," her familiar voice told me.
+
+"Desire, you had to come, tonight."
+
+Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But
+she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might.
+She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a
+step.
+
+"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for
+you; I knew that before I entered this room."
+
+"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and
+women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you
+know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"
+
+"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you
+are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."
+
+"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.
+
+"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."
+
+Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to
+turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me
+anything so near an admission of love until now.
+
+"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings
+where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that
+must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out
+of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with
+my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston.
+I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and
+spectres. I love you."
+
+"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust
+me. Why?"
+
+"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"
+
+"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I
+will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be
+the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the
+heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is
+not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The
+gates soon close, now, upon me."
+
+"What gates?" I demanded.
+
+"Sacrifice and expiation."
+
+"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the
+book of Desire Michell, downstairs."
+
+I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In
+the hush, it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had
+done the night before, a slight shock as from some distant explosion. In
+my intentness upon the woman opposite me the tremor passed unheeded. She
+must answer me now, surely! Now----
+
+She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her words apart:
+
+"How did you--find--the book?"
+
+"It told me--the Thing from out there," I admitted, sullenly defiant of
+her opinion.
+
+She cried out sharply.
+
+"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal madness--and you are here?
+Oh, you are lost, and the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger
+flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow--yet you
+have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it
+means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the Borderland? To brave the
+Loathesome Eyes so long--and fall this way at last! Yet--there may be a
+hope--since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go
+now. By all that man can dread for soul or body, go now."
+
+"Not without you."
+
+"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I shall never come here again.
+Take with you my gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all
+the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust
+a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind
+me. I make no reproach--if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most
+solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have
+gone."
+
+"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean
+what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire----"
+
+I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my
+table lay, as usual, a small electric torch. Every member of our
+household was provided with one for use in emergencies likely to occur
+in a country house, the time of candles being past. Now, rising in
+agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the
+flashlight's button. A beam of light poured across the darkness.
+
+What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman?
+Were those a woman's draperies or part of the night fog that showed mere
+swirl upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed
+a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes dark and almond shaped,
+then a drifting mass of gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering
+gold flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down
+out of vision, as aghast, I lifted my hand and the torch went out.
+
+Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a
+movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows?
+
+"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoarse to my ears.
+
+No answer. I felt myself alone.
+
+I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to
+break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms
+upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.
+
+Well, I had seen her at last--but how? A wan loveliness seemingly
+painted upon the canvas of the dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A
+white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the
+instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my suspicions, my love
+hurled coarsely at her like a command, my promise of security for her
+visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return?
+
+Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books, that I might read,
+fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the
+comradeship that bound me to Desire Michell. How should I find her? How
+free us both?
+
+The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull
+surprise I realized that considerable time had passed while I sat there.
+Still I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.
+
+Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide,
+impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge
+rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my
+whole body. My heart shuddered and staggered in its beating from pure
+shock.
+
+"_Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!_"
+
+The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach.
+Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door
+to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too long. This was
+the new peril. This was what I had fled from, unknowing the source of my
+panic, the night before.
+
+This was death.
+
+A second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from
+some bitter ocean. This time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and
+hissing in its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt my heart
+stop, then reel on like a broken thing. Flecks of crimson spattered like
+foam against my eyelids.
+
+The wave broke. The mass poured down the beach, tugging at me in its
+retreat. With the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding
+current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.
+
+The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing
+normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to
+man.
+
+That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether
+wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my
+self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after
+standing against my enemy so long?
+
+Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame
+feller"?
+
+Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night
+stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds
+indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of
+goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam.
+The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued
+on, dying away down the creek.
+
+As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light
+was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the
+electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its
+progress across the muffling softness of the rug, across the polished
+wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.
+
+As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass
+within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared
+Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the
+Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me,
+poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The
+venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling
+the breath I drew. My lungs labored.
+
+"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous
+Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour
+foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling,
+feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower--plead!"
+
+Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the
+invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's
+saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of
+knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.
+
+"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these
+many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but
+I live. The duel is not lost."
+
+"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might
+spy meanly on the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind
+to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and
+tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks
+your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its
+pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces
+where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."
+
+Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the
+swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away
+down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining
+low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave----
+
+My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn
+filling this room of mine, shining on the figure of a man who had been
+myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden.
+On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay
+near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the
+paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to
+the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind
+the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up
+the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry
+for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I
+had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never
+lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had
+been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif
+Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!
+
+"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing.
+"Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the
+vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are
+alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."
+
+But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me
+like strength.
+
+"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own
+will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for
+with the death of my body your power ends. Back--or else face me, Thing
+of Darkness, while we stand in one place."
+
+At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap.
+Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded,
+fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out
+of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.
+
+This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The
+mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea
+stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a
+horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities
+on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In
+the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself
+against me.
+
+"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by
+the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay,
+crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"
+
+It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering
+menace.
+
+"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the
+world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the
+magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When
+the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am
+the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way must pass me.
+Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."
+
+With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred
+from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide
+began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me
+that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a
+while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should
+overwhelm the defeated.
+
+"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was
+yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do
+with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living
+or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look
+upon you, if you have visible form."
+
+Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing
+seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying,
+hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded
+this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft
+in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning,
+visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting river might
+look by night. And as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and
+heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in
+that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from which the mind
+shrank, appalled. Now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central mass,
+groping out in unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed to stalk
+there, rearing up its monstrous stature until all that Breach was choked
+with it. It fell down into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank
+their loops. But through all change steadily fixed upon me I felt the
+eyes of the Unseen.
+
+I stood my ground. With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance
+there is no need to say. Each instant I anticipated the surge of that
+returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its
+shore. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help
+Desire Michell! If I had sheltered her for one hour----!
+
+The Thing halted, stooped.
+
+"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me. "Fool, evil goes with her.
+For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast."
+
+I looked down. Wavering against my breast, just above my heart glimmered
+a spot of light. The little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the
+bright head of Desire Michell were rested there against me, how I would
+strive to shield her from sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of
+that will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of hovering
+brightness.
+
+I felt her press warm against me. I heard the roar of the death-wave far
+out in that sea. Before me----
+
+Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through the dread Breach. What
+formed there, more inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What Hand
+reached for me--for--us----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+     "I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream
+     it was."--MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+
+"Mr. Locke! Mr. Locke!"
+
+I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan Vere, who bent over me.
+Phillida was there, too, pale of face. But what was That just vanishing
+into the darkness beyond my window-sill? What malignant glare seared
+disappointment and grim promise across my consciousness? Had I brought
+with me or did I hear now a whispered: "_Pygmy, again!_"
+
+"Cousin, Cousin, are you very ill?" Phillida was half sobbing. "Won't
+you drink the brandy, please? Oh, Ethan, how cold he is to touch!"
+
+"Hush, dear," Vere bade, in his slow steadfast way. "Mr. Locke, can you
+swallow some of this?"
+
+I became aware that his arm supported me upright in my chair while he
+held a glass to my lips. Mechanically I drank some of the cordial. Vere
+put down the glass and said a curious thing. He asked me:
+
+"Shall I get you out of this room?"
+
+Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had
+not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied
+brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal.
+Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still
+numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.
+
+Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in
+the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that
+it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he
+reassured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the
+coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.
+
+It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of
+the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see
+it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before
+lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the
+page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.
+
+"_Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city--whose name is
+Hegrin. Thou hast escaped--because thou didst not fear for so terrible a
+Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may
+escape----_"
+
+What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had
+Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars
+because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to
+report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and
+set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?
+
+The fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak. A few hours
+while the sun ran its course once more for me, then night again,
+bringing completion of the menace. I recognized that this delay could
+not affect the end. Perhaps it would have been easier if all had
+finished for me tonight, easier if Vere and Phillida had not found me in
+time to bring me back.
+
+How had they found out my condition? Wonder stirred under my lethargy.
+Had I called or cried out? It did not seem that I could have done so.
+Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor an adventurer as
+that.
+
+Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee, tiptoeing in her
+anxiety and questioning Vere with her eyes. He took the cup, stooping to
+receive my glance of assent to the new medicine.
+
+The brandy had stimulated, but sickened me. The coffee revived me so
+much that I was able to take the second cup without Vere's help. When I
+had walked up and down the room a few times, leaning on his arm, life
+had taken me back, if only for a little while.
+
+The two nurses were so good in their care of me that our first words
+were of my gratitude to them. Then my curiosity found voice.
+
+"How did you happen to come in at this hour?" I asked. "How did you know
+I was--ill?"
+
+"I cannot imagine what made Ethan wake up," said Phillida, with a
+puzzled look toward her husband. "He woke me by rushing out of the room
+and letting the door slam behind him. Of course I knew something must be
+wrong to make Drawls hurry like that. Usually he does such a tremendous
+lot in a day while looking positively lazy. So I came rushing after and
+found him in here, trying to waken you. I--I thought at first that you
+were not living, Cousin Roger. It was horrible! You were all white and
+cold----" she shivered.
+
+Vere poured another cup of coffee. He said nothing on the subject,
+merely observing that the stimulant would hardly hurt me and some might
+be good for Phil. I asked her to bring cups for them both.
+
+"I am not sure I really care about the coffee, but I'll make some more,"
+she nodded, dimpling. "I love to drink from your wee porcelain cups with
+their gold holders. You do have pretty things, you bachelors from town."
+
+When she was across the room, I asked quietly:
+
+"What was it, Vere? What sent you to me?"
+
+He answered in as subdued a tone, looking at the tinted shade of the
+lamp instead of at my face.
+
+"The young lady woke me, Mr. Locke. She came to the bedside, whispering
+that you were dying--would be dead if I didn't get to help you in time.
+She was gone before Phillida roused up so she doesn't know anything
+about it."
+
+My heart, so nearly stopped forever and so lethargic still, leaped in a
+strong beat. Desire, then, had come back to save me. For all my doubt
+and seemingly broken faith, she had brought her slight power to help me
+in my hour of danger. For my sake she had broken through her mysterious
+seclusion to call Vere and send him to my rescue.
+
+Neither he nor I being unsophisticated, I understood what Vere believed,
+and why he looked at the lamp rather than at me. But even that matter
+had to yield precedence to my first eagerness.
+
+"You saw her?" I demanded. "You call her young. You saw her face, then?"
+
+"I could forget it if I had," he said dryly. "As it happened, I didn't.
+She was wrapped in a lot of floating thin stuff; gray, I guess? The room
+was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I don't know why she
+seemed young unless it was the easy, light way she moved. By the time I
+got what she was saying and sat up, she was gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"She went out the door like a puff of smoke. I just saw a gray figure in
+the doorway, where the hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When
+I came into the hall there wasn't a sign of anybody about. Nor
+afterward, either!"
+
+I considered briefly.
+
+"I suppose I know what you are thinking, Vere. It is natural, but wrong.
+The lady----"
+
+"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not--thinking. I guess you're as good a
+judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've
+treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as
+choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all that matters."
+
+"Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning. "Me? I haven't the least idea
+what you are talking about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a
+great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now he is able to tell us
+about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for
+weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he _would_
+drink buttermilk!"
+
+I looked into the candid, affectionate face she turned to me. From her,
+I looked to her husband, whose New England steadiness had been tempered
+by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his
+experience in a city cabaret. A new thought cleaved through my
+perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place.
+
+"How much do you both trust me?" I slowly asked. "I do not mean trust my
+character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my
+sanity and commonsense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to
+you? Or would you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is
+deceiving us, or mad'?"
+
+They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of
+understanding.
+
+"Don't you see yourself one little, little bit, Cousin?" she wondered at
+me.
+
+"Anything you say, goes all the way with us," Vere corroborated.
+
+"Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while I think."
+
+"Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh and hot."
+
+I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands
+and tried to review the situation. They obeyed like well-bred children,
+settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking their coffee as
+prettily as a pair of parakeets. They seemed almost children to me,
+although there was little difference in years between Vere and myself.
+But then, I stood on the brink where years stopped.
+
+With the next night, my triumphant enemy could be put off no longer.
+That I could not doubt. I cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear
+weighed less upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization of
+the few hours left during which I could affect the affairs of life. What
+remained to be done?
+
+On one of my visits to New York, I had called on my lawyer and made my
+will. There were a few pensioners for whom provision should continue
+after my death. The aged music master under whom I developed such
+abilities as I had, who was crippled now by rheumatism and otherwise
+dependent on a hard-faced son-in-law; the three small daughters of a
+dead friend, an actor, whose care and education at a famous school of
+classic dancing I had promised him to finance--a few such obligations
+had been provided for, and the rest was for Phillida.
+
+But now, what of Desire Michell?
+
+She had seemed so apart from common existence that I never had thought
+of her possible needs any more than of the needs of a bird that darted
+in and out of my windows. Until tonight, when I had seen her and she had
+proved herself all woman by her appeal to Ethan Vere. It was not a
+spirit or a seeress or "ye foule witch, Desire Michell" who had fled to
+him for help in rescuing me. It was simply a terrified girl. What was to
+become of this girl? Under what circumstances did she dwell? Had she a
+home, or did she need one? Could I care for this matter while I was
+here?
+
+Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds came in to us along with
+a freshening air. The strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the
+lamps already looked wan and faded in the new light. I switched them out
+before speaking to the pair who watched me.
+
+"I have a story to tell you both," I said. "The beginning of it Phillida
+has already heard. Perhaps----Have you told Vere about the woman who
+visited this room, the first night I spent in the house? Who cut her
+hair and left the braid in my hand to escape from me?"
+
+"Yes," she nodded, wide-eyed.
+
+"Will you go to my chiffonier, there in the alcove, and bring a package
+wrapped in white silk from the top drawer?"
+
+She did as she was asked and laid the square of folded silk before me. I
+put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance
+of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying
+elixir. Phillida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture.
+
+"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some lucky girls have hair like that? If
+it was unbound, my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity to have
+cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles and glitters."
+
+She held it out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from
+touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I
+had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in
+a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him.
+
+"Beautiful," he agreed politely.
+
+No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little
+cousin's plain face and leave her content, I advanced in respect for
+him.
+
+In the beginning, it was even harder to speak than I had anticipated.
+When Phillida laid the braid back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered
+before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my
+listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected to credit the story
+I had to tell? How should I find words to embody it?
+
+Only at first! Whether there clung about me some atmosphere of that land
+between the worlds where I so recently had stood; or the room indeed
+kept, as I fancied, the melancholy chill of the unseen tide that had
+washed through it, I met no scepticism from the two who heard my tale of
+wild experience. They did not interrupt me. Phillida crept close to her
+husband, putting her hand in his, but she did not exclaim or question.
+
+Silence held us all for a while after I had finished. I had a
+discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all, they had received but a
+meagre outline. The color and body of the events escaped speech. How
+could they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive the charm of
+Desire Michell, the white magic of her voice in the dark, the force of
+her personality that could impress her image "sight unseen" beyond all
+time to erase? How convey to a listener that, understanding her so
+little, I yet knew her so well?
+
+"I have told you all this because I need your help," I said presently.
+"Will you give it to me?"
+
+"Go away!" Phillida burst forth. She beat her palms together in her
+earnestness. "Cousin Roger, take your car and go away--far off! Go
+where--nothing--can reach you. You must not spend another single night
+here. Ethan will go with you. I will, too, if you want us. You must not
+be left alone until you are quite safe; perhaps in New York?"
+
+"And, Desire Michell?"
+
+"She is in no danger, I suppose. She is not my cousin, anyhow. And even
+she told you to go away."
+
+"You believe my story, then? You do not think me suffering from
+delusions?"
+
+"Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come here in time to save you, I
+believe you would have died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have
+seen for weeks that something was changing you."
+
+"What does Vere say?" I questioned, studying the absorbed gravity of his
+expression. I wondered what I myself would have said if anyone had
+brought me such a story.
+
+He passed his arm around Phillida and drew her to him with a quieting,
+protective movement. His regard met mine with more significance than he
+chose to voice.
+
+"I'm satisfied to take the thing as you tell it, Mr. Locke," he
+answered. "Phil is right, it seems to me, about you not staying here. I
+don't think the young lady ought to stay, either."
+
+"She refuses to leave, Vere. What can I offer her that I have not
+offered? How can I find her? You have heard how I searched the
+countryside for a hint of such a girl's presence. No one has ever seen
+her; or else someone lies very cleverly."
+
+In the pause, Phillida hesitatingly ventured an idea:
+
+"Perhaps she is not--real. If the monster is a ghost thing, may not she
+be one, too? If we are to believe in such things at all----? She almost
+seems to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the witch girl
+in that old book."
+
+I shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying to explain some
+abstruse knowledge to a child. I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the
+solemn immensities of the place where I had set my human foot. I had
+tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that Borderland where the
+unnamed Thing and I met, each beyond his own law-decreed boundary, and
+locked in combat bitter and strong. Phillida had listened; and talked of
+ghosts the bugbears of grave-yard superstition. Did Vere comprehend me
+better? Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to legends of knight
+and dragon, as prize of which waited Desire Michell; forlornly helpless
+as white Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the Maine
+countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the truths glimpsed by
+Rosicrucians and mystics of lost cults, when the highly bred college
+girl failed?
+
+It seemed so. At least his dark eyes met mine with intelligence; hers
+held only bewilderment and fear.
+
+"They are not ghosts," I said only.
+
+"But how can you be sure?" she persisted.
+
+Beneath the braid and the pomander lay the sheet of paper on which
+Desire had written weeks before; the first page of that composition now
+pouring gold into my hands. This I passed to Phillida.
+
+"Do ghosts write?" I queried.
+
+She read the lines aloud.
+
+"'We walk upon the shadows of hills, across a level thrown, and pant
+like climbers.'"
+
+"They do write, people say, with ouija boards and mediums," she
+murmured.
+
+I looked at Vere with despair of sustaining this argument. He stood up
+as if my appeal had been spoken, drawing her with him.
+
+"Now that it's a decent hour, don't you think Cristina might give us
+some breakfast?" he suggested. "I guess bacon and eggs would be sort of
+restoring. If you feel up to taking my arm as far as the porch, Mr.
+Locke, the fresh air might be good medicine, too."
+
+I have speculated sometimes upon how civilized man would get through
+days not spaced by his recurrent meals into three divisions. Those meals
+are hyphens between his mind and his body, as it were. What sense of
+humor can view too intensely a creature who must feed himself three
+times a day? Are we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into the
+normal by breakfast, luncheon and dinner? Deny it as we will, when we do
+not heed them we are out of touch with nature.
+
+We went downstairs.
+
+After breakfast was over, Vere and I walked across the orchard to a seat
+placed near the lake. There I sat down, while he remained standing in
+his favorite attitude: one foot on a low boulder, his arm resting on his
+knee as he gazed into the shallow, amber-tinted water. Fog still overlay
+the countryside, but without bringing coolness. The damp heat was
+stifling, almost tropical as the sun mounted higher in the hidden sky.
+
+I watched my companion, waiting for him to speak. He appeared intent
+upon the darting movements of a group of tiny fish, but I knew his
+thoughts were afar.
+
+"Mr. Locke, I didn't want to speak before Phillida, because it would not
+do any good for her to hear what I have to say," he finally began. "It
+is properly the answer to what you asked upstairs, about our believing
+you had not imagined that story. Did anything slip out over the
+window-sill when you were waking up?"
+
+Startled, for I had not spoken of this, I met his gaze.
+
+"Yes. Did you see----"
+
+"Nothing, exactly. Something, though! Like--well, like something pouring
+itself along; a big, thick mass. Something sort of smooth and
+glistening; like black, oily molasses slipping over. Only alive,
+somehow; drawing coils of itself out of the dark into the dark. I can't
+put it very plain."
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"The air in the room was bad and close, hard to breathe. I guessed maybe
+I was a little dizzy, jumping out of bed the way I did and finding you
+like dead, almost." He paused, and returned his contemplation to the
+fish darting in the lake.
+
+"That is what I thought," he concluded. "What I felt--well, it was the
+kind of scare I didn't use to know you could feel outside of bad dreams;
+the kind you wake up from all shaking, with your face and hands dripping
+sweat. That isn't all, either!"
+
+This time the pause was so long that I thought he did not mean to
+continue.
+
+"My excuse for speaking of such matters before Phillida is that I may
+need a woman friend for Desire Michell," I reverted to the implied
+rebuke I acknowledged his right to give. "I wanted her help, and yours.
+More than ever, since you have shared my experience so far, I want your
+advice."
+
+"I'll be proud to give it, in a minute. First, it's only fair to say
+I've felt enough wrong around here to be able to understand a lot that
+once I might have laughed at. Nothing compared to you! But--I've been
+working about the lake sometimes after dark or before daylight was
+strong, when a kind of horror would come over me--well, I'd feel I had
+to get away and into the house or go crazy. That morning when you called
+from your window to ask where I'd been so early, and I told you looking
+for turtles--that was one time. I had gone out looking for turtles, but
+that horror drove me in. When you hailed me, I had it so bad that I
+could just about make out not to run for the house like a scared cat,
+yelling all the way. Turning back to the lake with you was a poser. But
+I did; and the feeling was all gone as quick as it came. We had a nice
+morning's shooting. Once in a while I've felt it sort of driving me
+indoors when I stepped off the porch or over to the barn at night.
+That's a funny thing: the fear was always outside, not in the house. I
+thought of that while you were telling us how the Thing at the window
+kept trying to get in at you. We haven't got a haunted house, but a
+haunted place!"
+
+"Why have you not spoken of this before?" I asked, deeply stirred.
+
+He made a gesture, too American to be called a shrug. He said nothing,
+watching a large bubble rise through the pure, brown-green water, float
+an instant on the surface, then vanish with the abrupt completeness of a
+miniature explosion. I watched also, with an always fresh interest in
+the pretty phenomenon. Then I repeated my question, rather impatiently
+as I considered what a relief his companionship in experience would have
+afforded all these weeks.
+
+"Why not, Vere?"
+
+"Mr. Locke, I don't like to keep saying that you never exactly got used
+to me as your cousin's husband," he reluctantly replied. "But I can see
+it's a kind of surprise to you right along that I don't break down or
+break out in some fashion. Of course I haven't known that you were
+meeting queer times, too! If you hadn't been through any of this, what
+would you have thought if I'd come to you with stories of the place
+being haunted by something nobody could see? You would have judged I was
+a liar, trying to fix up an excuse for getting away from the work here
+and shoving off. I don't want to go away. I don't intend to go. I can't
+see any need of it for Phil and me. But--and this is the advice you
+spoke of! I think you ought to leave and leave now. It's little better
+than suicide to stay."
+
+"And abandon Desire Michell?"
+
+He turned his dark observant eyes toward me.
+
+"If I said yes, you wouldn't do it. Phil and I will take care of the
+young lady, if she will let us. Couldn't a note be left for her, telling
+her to come to us?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"She would not come. Now, less than ever----" I broke off, shot with
+sharp self-reproach at the memory of how I had driven her from me last
+night.
+
+"You won't be any help to her if you're dead," he bluntly retorted.
+
+At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast
+pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right,
+self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my
+mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of
+light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the
+Barrier; the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire. To fly
+from my place now, herded like a cowardly sheep by the Thing of the
+Frontier, would that not be to thrust her away to save myself?
+
+No! Not myself, my life!
+
+I had the answer now. I walked back to Vere and took my seat again.
+
+"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both
+by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we
+will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The
+question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls
+herself Desire Michell, if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone
+and friendless?"
+
+"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered. "But I guess there isn't
+any disgrace in your going to New York, running or not, if you take her
+with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago."
+
+"Vere?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You've got me! Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and
+have a show-down. Put her in your car and take her to town."
+
+"I gave her my word not----"
+
+"People can't stand bowing to each other when the ship's afire. If she
+is worth dying for, she doesn't want you to die for her."
+
+The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation!
+
+What harm could I do Desire by this plan of Vere's? What good might I
+not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule
+her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case.
+A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely.
+Whether flight could save us I did not know. I did know absolutely that
+my enemy had crossed the Barrier last night, and I was prey merely
+withheld from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.
+
+Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup of pictures flitted across
+the screen of my fancy. Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in
+those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay as a garden of tulips,
+where I might buy for her frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous
+frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman's
+arm--everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her,
+where she might dine in silken ease and perhaps hear played the music
+she had named----
+
+I aroused myself and looked at Vere.
+
+"You'll do it?" he translated my expression.
+
+"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."
+
+"Do you judge she will?"
+
+"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to
+send help to me when I was in danger, I believe she will come to my room
+tonight if I wait there----"
+
+He looked at me silently. The consternation and protest in his face were
+speech enough.
+
+"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly. "If she comes in
+time, we will try the plan. Have the car ready. You and Phillida will be
+prepared, of course. We will waste no time in getting away as far as
+possible."
+
+"And if that Thing comes before she does, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"Is there any other way?"
+
+"I guess you haven't considered that you're inviting me to stand by
+while you get yourself killed," he said stiffly. "I'm not an educated
+man. I never heard the names you mentioned this morning of people who
+used to study out things like this. I never heard of any worlds except
+earth and heaven and hell. But then I couldn't explain how an electric
+car runs. I know the car does run; and I know you nearly died last
+night. If you go back and stay alone in that room, we both know what you
+are going to meet."
+
+I turned away from him because I sickened at the prospect he evoked. The
+memory of that death-tide was too near and rolled too coldly across the
+future. If the trial had been hard when mercifully unanticipated, what
+would it be to meet my enemy now that I knew myself conquered? Would It
+not deliberately forestall Desire's coming, tonight?
+
+"Mightn't you help the lady more if you went away now, and came back?"
+he urged.
+
+The deserter's argument, time without end! Was I to fall as low as that?
+
+Phillida's voice called to Vere from the veranda, summoning him to some
+need of farm or household.
+
+"In a moment, Pretty," he called assent.
+
+But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped much from my silence and
+would not disturb me lest my decision be hindered or changed.
+
+By and by I stood up.
+
+"Vere, in your varied experiences in peace and war, did you ever chance
+to meet a coward?"
+
+"Once," he answered briefly.
+
+"And, did you like the sight?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then," I said, "let us not invite one another to that display. Shall we
+go in to Phillida?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+     "They say--
+     What say they?
+     Let thame say!"
+              --OLD SCOTTISH INSCRIPTION.
+
+
+After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Phillida, who had some
+housewifely orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I
+had agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight.
+We had satisfied her by the assurance that I meant to start for New York
+before the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she regained her
+usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I
+gathered her secret belief was that no "ghost" would dare face Ethan.
+
+Which may have been quite true!
+
+On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our
+supply of eggs, Phillida's hens having unaccountably failed to supply
+their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car.
+
+No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to
+the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.
+
+"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named Desire Michell?" I asked.
+
+She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled
+face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness.
+
+"Now, Mr. Locke! I'd like to know where a young city feller like you got
+that old story from?"
+
+"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch?"
+
+"She was a hussy," said Mrs. Hill severely. "I was a little girl when
+she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago.
+The disgrace killed him, being a clergyman. An' the gossip that came
+back, later, an' pictures of her in such dresses! Dear! Dear! The wicked
+certainly have opportunities."
+
+"Fifty years ago!" I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third Desire
+Michell.
+
+"Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive today; which she ain't.
+Why, she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk
+of? She was----"
+
+The name she gave me I shall not set down. It is enough to say it was
+that of a super-woman whose beauty, genius and absolute lack of
+conscience set Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood, quenched
+at the highest-burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death.
+
+"There was an older house once, on your place," she added pensively.
+"Did you know that? It stood in the hollow where your lake is now.
+Two--three hundred years old, folks say it was. One night it burned down
+in a big thunderstorm. The Michells then living had your house built
+over by the orchard, then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up
+the old site with water. All the Michells lived there till the last one
+went missionary abroad an' died in foreign parts. I mean the hussy's
+brother. He took up his father's work, feelin' a strong call. He was
+only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt it dreadful. He
+was a hard man on the sinner. Preached hell and damnation all his days,
+he did. Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire an' his
+tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can tell you!"
+
+"He left children?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir! Rev'rund never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much
+snarin' with what farm women get to wear around here! I've kind of
+thought of one of those blue foulard silks with white spots into it
+since before I married Hill, but never came any nearer than pricin' it
+an' bringin' home a sample. He was death on sweet odors an' soft
+raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are the ten-cent bottles Hill makes
+the pedlar throw in when we trade. I do fancy _Jockey Club_ for special
+times, an' I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I notice your
+cousin, Mrs. Vere, has scent on her handkerchief week days as well as
+when she's goin' somewhere, so I guess you don't hold with the Rev'rund
+Michell in New York?"
+
+I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs.
+
+"Did the runaway sister leave any children?" I queried.
+
+"Not a Michell alive anywhere," she asserted positively. "Dead, all
+dead! The Rev'rund was buried at his mission in some outlandish place.
+An' if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the movin' picture
+palace in the village, I don't know how he makes out to rest with them
+flauntin' past his grave!"
+
+I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed, I drove home in such
+abstraction that Phillida reproved me.
+
+"'The cat has stolen your tongue,'" she teased. "Or did Mrs. Hill vamp
+you and make roast meat of your heart with her eyes?"
+
+"Phil, do you put scent on your handkerchief week days as well as
+Sundays?" I shook off thought to inquire.
+
+"No; I keep sachet in my handkerchief box. Why?"
+
+"Next time you are in town, will you buy a blue silk foulard dress with
+white spots in it and the largest bottle of Jockey Club Extract on sale,
+and give them to Mrs. Hill for a Christmas present? I'll give you a
+blank check."
+
+"Cousin Roger? Why?"
+
+So I told her why. But I did not tell her the story of the second Desire
+Michell; nor of the original house that stood in the hollow now filled
+by our lake.
+
+Why had a peculiar horror crept through me when Mrs. Hill told me what
+ruins that water covered? Why had I remembered the inexplicable,
+repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded the coming of the
+Monster; a sound like the smack of huge lips, or some body withdrawn
+from thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to the alien Thing
+only through the ruins of the house where It had first been called by
+the sorceress of long ago?
+
+We were walking across from the garage, after putting away the car, when
+a recollection flashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York,
+held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty
+whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Michell,
+daughter and sister of New England clergymen. I had seen the portrait.
+And piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs and coils about
+the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-bronze hair; the color
+of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.
+
+I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech
+Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coarse woodcut
+and the French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their expression of
+blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped
+either record. Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory and
+dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch, all clouded and
+surrounded by swirls of gray vapor shot with gold.
+
+Who and what was the girl Desire Michell whom I had come to love through
+a more profound darkness than that of the sight?
+
+It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted my
+music. There was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that
+it could be sent to those who waited for it. Vere would attend to that,
+if tonight made it necessary. I reflected with disappointment that the
+first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had looked
+forward to this production with especial interest. There was the
+symphony, still unfinished, that I had hoped might be more enduring than
+popular music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we must go
+glimmering on our ways. If I snatched Desire out of her path into mine,
+she and I would see all those things together.
+
+I finished at last, and set my room in order. There was a fire laid
+ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such
+weather. I kindled it, and put in the flames three of the volumes from
+the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those
+three were vile and poisonous. No doubt other copies exist, but at least
+I refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in
+Phillida's household. They burned quietly enough, and meekly fell to
+ashes under my poker.
+
+Our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual, with yellow-shaded candles
+flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its
+mistress suffering from a nervous headache.
+
+"It is only the fog," she answered our sympathy. "It came on with the
+evening, somehow. Never mind me. Cristina has made a cream-of-lettuce
+bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do not eat every bit. Yes,
+Ethan; of course I'll take mine. I only wish every bush and tree would
+not drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking; and the foghorns
+over at the lighthouses _moo_ regularly every half minute. And I never
+heard the waterfall over the dam so loud!"
+
+"We've had a wet summer," Vere observed, soothingly tranquil as ever.
+"The lake and creek are full. There is more water going over to make a
+noise."
+
+"Please do not be so frightfully sensible, Drawls. You know I mean a
+different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over one, then
+dies away."
+
+"Even a fountain will seem to do that if a wind shifts the spray," I
+suggested.
+
+"Yes, Cousin Roger. But there is no wind tonight."
+
+A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied Vere was
+similarly affected. If something moved under the water----?
+
+We changed the conversation to a pergola planned for building next
+spring, that was to be overrun by grapevines and honeysuckle.
+
+"The grapes shall hang through like an Italian picture," Phillida
+anticipated, headache forgotten in her enthusiasm. She shook her hair
+about her pink cheeks, leaning over to outline a pergola with four
+spoons. "Here in the middle we must have a birdbath. Or no! The birds
+might peck the grapes. We could have one of those big silver-colored
+looking-balls on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden and lake
+and sky, with people moving no bigger than dolls. Imagine a reflection
+of Ethan like a Lilliputian _so_ high!"
+
+So I was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues of garden
+ornaments in her sewing-room, when the time came for me to keep my
+rendezvous with Death or the lady. In spite of my warning gesture, Vere
+followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious.
+
+"Let me go with you," he urged.
+
+"No, thanks. Stay with Phil, and keep her too busy to suspect where I
+am."
+
+"If I'm doing wrong to let you go," he began.
+
+"You cannot stop me. It is still too early for danger, I think. If you
+like, you can stroll out on the lawn from time to time and look up at my
+windows. As long as the lamps are lighted in the room, I am all right.
+Nothing is happening."
+
+"Your lamps were all three lighted when I found you last night," he
+said.
+
+The darkness had been only for my eyes, then? Certainly I had seemed to
+see light withdrawn from the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves,
+and covered it by stroking Bagheera, who sat on a hall chair making an
+after-dinner toilet with tongue and paw.
+
+"Well, take care of Phil," I repeated, evading argument.
+
+He detained me.
+
+"The young lady might not come if there were two people, Mr. Locke. I
+can see that! But I'll go instead. I guess I'd be safer than you, with
+the--the----You know what I mean! It would be the first time for me. And
+if I sat waiting in the dark, the lady couldn't tell you were not there.
+Of course I'd bring her right to you."
+
+No one could appreciate the courage of that offer so well as we who had
+both felt the intolerable horror of the nearness of the Thing whose
+nature was beyond our nature to endure.
+
+"She would come to no one except me," I refused. "But, thank you. And
+Vere, if what you have said about my feeling toward Phillida's husband
+was true once, it is true no longer."
+
+His clasp was still warm on my hand when I went into my room and
+switched on the lights. Soft and colorful, the haunted room sprang into
+view. The writing-table and piano gleamed bare without their usual
+burdens of scattered papers and music, removed that afternoon. For lack
+of familiar occupation, when I sat down in my favorite place, I took up
+the gold pomander and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in
+the metal.
+
+"_Containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling
+spikenard, with vervain, and cedar, and secret simples----_"
+
+"_Vervain, which is powerful against evil spirits----_"
+
+The strange fragrance, heady as the bouquet of rich wine, never cloying,
+exquisite, might well have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused.
+It should stay by me tonight, like a promise of her coming.
+
+After I had sat there a while, I turned out the lights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     "An excellent way to get a fayrie--and when you have her, bind
+     her!"--ANCIENT ALCHEMIST'S RECIPE.
+
+
+In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving,
+hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes,
+likened by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board for
+furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The
+thought of Phillida and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted me
+almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the
+room; to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength
+failed and gasoline gave out.
+
+Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake, under
+which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first Desire
+Michell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride
+through!
+
+Was it too late for my Desire to come, and time for the coming of that
+Other?
+
+The step of Vere sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the
+window. He was making a trip of inspection, and would find no light
+shining from the room. I was about to rise and call down a word of
+reassurance to him, when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat
+arrested in hope and expectancy.
+
+"Here, after my warning, after last night?" her soft voice panted across
+the dark. "Will you die, then? Cruel to me, and wicked to come here
+again! Oh, must I wish you were a coward!"
+
+Every vestige of her calmness gone, she was sobbing as she spoke. I
+could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a
+betraying print upon my table's surface.
+
+"I was cruel to you last night, Desire; yet afterward you saved my life
+by sending Ethan Vere to wake me. Would you have had me leave without
+meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness?"
+
+I thought she came nearer.
+
+"For so little, you would brave the Dread One in Its time of triumph? O
+steadfast soldier, who faces the Breach even in the hour of death, in
+all that you have done you have remembered me. Why speak of anger or
+forgiveness? Have I not injured you?"
+
+"Never. I love you."
+
+"Is not that an injury? Even though I hid my ill-omened face from you,
+reared as I was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has
+been done. Weak as water in the test, I kept the letter of my promise
+and broke the intent. Yet go; keep life at least."
+
+"Desire, I do not understand you," I answered. "No matter for that, now!
+I am content to share whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge as
+I asked you last night, but earnestly and with humility I ask you to
+come away with me now. If trouble comes to my wife and me, I do not
+doubt we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the attempt. Come."
+
+"I, to take happiness like that?" she marveled in desolate amazement.
+"No. At least I will go to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to
+me. Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere you are living. Out
+of my sight, out of my knowledge, but living in the same world with me.
+Each moment you stay here is a risk."
+
+In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was time to act, but action
+must be certain. If my groping movements missed her in the dark there
+might be no second chance.
+
+"Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have
+done, you shall let me touch you before I go," I said firmly.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes. Why, would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether
+you were a woman or a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of
+my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly? Here across the
+table I stretch my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may die tonight."
+
+Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve drew obedience, I do
+not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand
+settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed
+my hand hotly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table
+between us, found her, and drew her to me.
+
+What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance, draperies beneath which
+beat life and warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath curled
+against my cheek. So with that guide I turned my head, and set my lips
+on the lips I had never seen.
+
+Did Something uprear Itself out there in the black fog? A cold air
+rushed across the summer heat of the fog; air foul as if issued from the
+opened door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the
+house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling
+sound.
+
+I snatched Desire Michell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow
+I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall.
+With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to
+the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a
+bar against any attempt at escape.
+
+A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never
+again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom.
+So far my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be
+woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted
+her in my arms. She had struggled then, after her defenses had fallen.
+
+She was quiet now, as though the light had quelled her resistance. She
+stood drooped and trembling; not the old-time witch, not the dazzling
+adventuress, only a small fragile girl wound and wrapped in some gray
+stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held
+down and showed no more color than a water-lily.
+
+"I thought," she whispered, just audibly. "I thought you--would say,
+good-bye!"
+
+"I know," I stammered. "But I could not. That way was impossible for
+us."
+
+She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head
+would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my
+heart when I had last stood at the Barrier. One hand gripped the veils
+beneath her chin, and seemed the clenched fist of a child.
+
+The crash of my door had startled the household. I had heard Phillida
+cry out, and Vere's running steps upon the gravel path. Now he came
+springing up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped, staring
+at us.
+
+"Desire," I spoke as naturally as I could manage, "this is Mr. Vere.
+Vere, my fiancée, Miss Michell. Shall we go down to Phillida?"
+
+And Desire Michell did not deny my claim.
+
+I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs. Nor do I
+remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another.
+Presently we were all in the living room, and Phillida had possession of
+Desire Michell while Vere and I looked on stupidly at the proceedings.
+
+Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor-lamp and gently drew
+off the draperies that hooded her. With little murmurs of compassion,
+she unbound and shook free her guest's hair.
+
+"My dear, you are all damp! This awful fog! You must have been out a
+long time? You shall drink some tea before we start. Drawls, will you
+light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table? The kettle is filled."
+
+Now I could understand how Desire had appeared amid a drift of fireshot
+smoke in the beam of my electric torch, the night before. Her hair was a
+garment of flame-bright silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in
+rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all
+that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No
+wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled shrinking away
+from the light had set all that drapery billowing about her.
+
+She was the voice that had been my intimate comrade through weeks of
+strange adventure. She was the woman of the faded, yellow book, and the
+painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all the Desires of whom I
+had ever dreamed; and she was none of them, for she was herself. Her
+long dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by that ancestral
+blending of drowsiness with watchfulness; yet were akin to the eyes of
+youth in all times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the soft
+mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life. But her forehead, the
+noble breadth between the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the
+student whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance.
+
+Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me across the room, all
+self-confidence trickled away from me. What distinguished me from a
+thousand men she might meet on any city street? What had I ever said
+worth note in the hours we had spent together? Now she saw me in the
+light, plainly commonplace; and remembering myself lame, I stood amazed
+at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her.
+
+She was rising from the chair, gently putting aside Phillida's detaining
+hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me,
+upstairs. Neither Vere nor Phillida had heard her voice. She had given
+her hand to each of them and submitted to Phil's care with a docility I
+failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement
+now was more like the Desire Michell I knew. Only, what was she about to
+do? Repudiate my violence and me--perhaps go back to her hiding-place?
+
+She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward
+her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to
+her preoccupation.
+
+"You must go away," she said. "If there is any hope, it is in that.
+Nothing else matters, now; nothing! If you wish, take me with you. It
+would be wiser to leave me. But nothing really matters except that you
+should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go.
+Take your car and drive--drive fast--anywhere!"
+
+It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low
+voice. Phillida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and
+left the room. The front door closed behind him. The gravel crunched
+under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the
+light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He
+obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was given. After the
+briefest indecision, Phillida hurried out into the hall.
+
+For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two
+places where I was not the "lame feller." And if the first place was the
+dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich Land of Promise in
+Desire Michell's eyes.
+
+What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this
+account.
+
+Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little
+murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest
+Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat rather like an
+artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock
+of gray stuff, long of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her
+throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and
+contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day or the figure of my
+cousin could be imagined.
+
+"You must wear the coat because it is always cool motoring at night,"
+Phillida was murmuring. "And of course you will want it at a hotel;
+until you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous,
+scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins
+to put it up without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them
+in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every
+minute, so you must not worry."
+
+"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously. "No one was ever so
+kind! It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he
+will only go from here quickly."
+
+"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband has gone for the car. I hear
+him coming now!"
+
+In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob
+of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him, then
+the knob yielded and he was inside.
+
+"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called, with an accent of
+wonder.
+
+Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was
+pale, and drops of fog moisture pearled his dark face like sweat.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me, ignoring the others. "Perhaps
+you felt that shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake,
+or the kick from a big explosion a long ways off? It didn't seem very
+strong to me. It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though!
+Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that,
+tricky when they get old."
+
+"Ethan, what _are_ you talking about?" cried Phillida, aghast.
+
+He continued to look at me.
+
+"I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door
+upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise
+you made. I was too keen on finding out what was happening up there to
+pay much heed."
+
+"Well, Vere?"
+
+"Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage," he reluctantly gave
+his report. "Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked.
+There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken
+wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage."
+
+So there was to be no going tonight from the house beside the lake. A
+frustrated group, we stood amid our preparations; the two girls wearing
+cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken. Had we ever
+really expected to go? Already the project was fading into the realm of
+fantastic ideas, futile as the pretended journeys of children who are
+kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue
+velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words. Only my
+practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.
+
+"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried protest. "Cousin Roger?
+Ethan? _You_ cannot mean to give up. Why--'phone to the nearest garage
+to send us another car. If we pay them enough they will drive anywhere.
+Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad
+station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we, Drawls?"
+
+"We could," Vere admitted. "I'd admire to try it, anyhow. But the
+telephone wire came across the place right past the garage, you
+know----"
+
+"The tree tore the wire down, too?"
+
+"I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Phil."
+
+"We--we might walk," she essayed.
+
+But even her brave voice trailed into silence as she glanced toward the
+black, dripping night beyond the windows.
+
+"Or if we found a horse and wagon," she murmured a final suggestion.
+
+Vere shook his head.
+
+"Come!" I assumed charge with a cheerfulness not quite sincere. "None of
+us are ready for such desperate efforts to leave our cozy quarters here.
+Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the tremor of an
+approaching thunderstorm. I felt it, myself. Let us light all the lamps
+and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's
+nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason.
+Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until
+daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough. Tomorrow we will do
+all we had planned for tonight. Come in, Vere, and close the door."
+
+He obeyed me at once. Desire Michell passively suffered me to unfasten
+and take off the coat she wore, too heavy for such a night. She had
+uttered no word since Vere announced the destruction of the car. She did
+not speak now, when I put her in the low chair beneath the lamp. I had a
+greed of light for her, as a protection and because darkness had held
+her so long.
+
+"It seems as if we should do something!" Phillida yielded unwillingly.
+
+Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were
+both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree
+through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of
+motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not
+have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical
+escape from that----
+
+The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost as if the vital,
+resilient mass resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of
+satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad
+strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her
+face.
+
+"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly. "I must be sure--quite
+sure! I must think. If you will--wait."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+     "Oh, little booke--how darst thou put thyself in press for
+     drede?"--CHAUCER.
+
+
+We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phillida and
+Vere were together, chairs touching, her right hand curled into his
+left. Bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was
+closed, and lay pressed against his mistress's stout little boot. Our
+small garrison was assembled, surely for as strange a defense as ever
+sober moderns undertook. For my part, it was wonder enough to study that
+captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me.
+
+The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight. Soon after, we
+began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and
+fog that had overlaid the place for three days. The temperature began to
+fall. The fog did not lift. The flowered cretonne curtains hung straight
+from their rods unstirred by any movement of air. But the atmosphere in
+the room steadily grew colder. I saw Phillida shiver in the chill
+dampness and pull closer the collar of her thin blouse. When Desire
+finally spoke, we three started as if her low tones had been the clang
+of a hammer.
+
+"I have tried to judge what is best," she said, not raising her face
+from its shadowing veil of hair. "I am not very wise. But it seems
+better that there should be no ignorance between us. If I had been
+either wise or good, I should never have come down from the convent to
+draw another into danger and horror without purpose or hope of any good
+ending."
+
+"The convent?" I echoed, memory turning to the bleak building far up the
+hillside. "You came from there?"
+
+"There is a path through the woods. I am very strong and vigorous. But I
+had to wait until all there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I
+could not come at all. For this house, I had my father's old key. It was
+only for this little time while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a
+nun's dress and cut my hair, and--and never--never leave there any
+more."
+
+Stupefied, I thought of the black loneliness of the wooded hillside
+behind us. No wonder the fog was wet upon her hair! Her slight feet had
+traversed that path night after night, had brought her to the door her
+key fitted, had come through the dark house to the door of the room
+upstairs. When she left me, she had toiled that desolate way back. For
+what? Humility bent me, and bewilderment.
+
+"But why?" Phillida gasped. "Why? Cousin Roger hunted everywhere to find
+you. He would have gone anywhere you told him to see you. Didn't you
+know that?"
+
+"I never meant him to see me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am Desire Michell, fourth of that name; all women who brought
+misfortune upon those who cared for them," she answered, her voice lower
+still. "How shall I make you understand? I was brought up to know the
+wrath and doom upon me, yet I myself can scarcely understand. My father
+knew all, yet he fell in weakness."
+
+"Your father?" I questioned, recalling Mrs. Hill's positive genealogy of
+the Michells in which there was no place for this daughter of the line.
+
+"He was the last of his family. When he was very young the conviction
+came to him that his duty was never to marry, so our race might cease to
+exist. He lived here and preached against evil. He studied the ancient
+learning that he might be fitted to wrestle with sin. But in the end
+horror of what was here gained upon him so that he closed the house and
+went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a girl; the daughter of
+the clergyman who was leaving the mission. My father--fell in love. He
+forgot all his convictions and married her. He knew it was a sin, but it
+was stronger than he was. She only lived one year. When I was born, she
+died. He prayed that I would die, too. But--I----"
+
+Her voice died into silence. I ventured to lean nearer and take her hand
+into mine.
+
+"Desire," I said, "why should you be a sufferer for the actions of a
+woman who died over two centuries ago? What is the long dead Desire
+Michell to you?"
+
+A strange and solemn hush followed my question. The words seemed to take
+a significance and importance beyond their simple meaning. The hand I
+held trembled in my clasp. She answered at last, just audibly:
+
+"You know. You said that you had read her book."
+
+"But the book tells so little, Desire. Just such a chronicle of
+superstition as may be found in a hundred old records."
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"Not that! Bring me the book."
+
+The book was upstairs in the room from which I had carried her half an
+hour before in something very like a panic flight. Before I could
+release her hand and rise, before I comprehended his intention, Vere was
+out of the living room and upon the stairs. It was too late to overtake
+him. The man who had been a professional skater covered the stairs in a
+few easy, swinging strides. We heard his light tread on the floor
+overhead, heard him stop beside the table where the book lay. Then, he
+was returning. My door closed. His step sounded on the stairs again; in
+a moment he was back among us, and quietly offering the volume to our
+guest. His dark eyes met mine reassuringly, deprecating the thoughts I
+am sure my face expressed.
+
+"Lights burning and all serene up there," he announced.
+
+Desire touched the book with a curious repugnance.
+
+"I was looking for this, the first night I came here," she murmured.
+"That is why I came to America after my father died. I had promised him
+to destroy this record. When I heard that the house was sold to a
+gentleman from New York, I came down from the convent on the hill to
+find the bookcase holding the old history. I did not know anyone was
+here, that night, until you touched my hair."
+
+I remembered the bookcase near the bed, where I stood my candle and
+matches. Unaware, I had prevented her finding the thing she sought, and
+so forced her to return. Afterward, the house had been full of workmen
+making alterations and improvements, until later still Phillida had
+transferred the bookcase and its contents to her sewing room. If I had
+not taken the whim to sleep in the old house on the night of my
+purchase, or if I had chosen another room, the existence of Desire
+Michell might never have been known to me.
+
+Would the creature from the Barrier have appeared to me, if I had not
+known her?
+
+She was drawing something from behind the portrait of the first Desire
+Michell; a thin, small book that had lain concealed between the cover of
+the larger volume and the page bearing the woodcut, where a sort of
+pocket was formed that had escaped our notice. Laid upon the table, the
+little book rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled upon
+itself in the lamplight. The limp morocco cover was spotted with mildew
+and half-revealed pages of close, fine writing blotched in places with
+rusty stains. It gave out an odor of mould and age in an atmosphere made
+sweet by Desire's presence.
+
+Phillida, who had been silent even when Vere left her to go upstairs,
+shrank away from the book on the table. She darted a glance over her
+shoulder at the curtained windows behind her.
+
+"Drawls, I cannot help what everybody thinks of me," she said
+plaintively. "I am cold. The fire is ready laid in the grate. Will you
+put a match to it, please?"
+
+No one smiled at the request. Her husband uttered some soothing phrase
+of compliance. We all looked on while the flame caught and began to
+creep up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed his position to
+one before the hearth. When Vere stood erect, Desire leaned toward him.
+
+"Will you read, aloud, sir?" she asked of him, and made a gesture toward
+the morocco book.
+
+She surprised us all by that choice. I was unreasoning enough to feel
+slighted, although the task was one for which I felt a strong dislike. I
+fancied Vere liked the idea no better, from his expression. However, he
+offered no demur, but sat down at the table and began to flatten the
+warped pages that perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers.
+Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that looked by gift of
+nature as if their long corners had been brushed with kohl. She said
+nothing, yet somehow conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood that
+she did not wish to hear me read those pages; that it was painful to her
+that they should be read at all.
+
+Vere was ready. He glanced around our circle, then began with the simple
+directness that gave him a dignity peculiarly his own.
+
+"'Mistress Desire Michell, her booke, Beginning at the nineteenth year
+of her Age,'" he read, in his leisurely voice.
+
+The living Desire Michell and I were regarding one another. I smiled at
+the quaint wording, but she shuddered, and put her hands across her
+eyes.
+
+Yet there was nothing in those first pages except a girl's chronicle of
+village life. This book evidently carried on a diary kept from early
+childhood; a diary written out of loneliness. Apparently the bare
+colonial life pressed heavily upon the writer; who, having no companions
+of the intellect, turned to this record of her own mind as a prisoner
+might talk to his reflection in a mirror rather than go mad from sheer
+silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the lines like
+fluttering wings. She wrote of her own beauty with a cool appraisal
+oddly removed from vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she
+could not use.
+
+"Like a man who finds treasure in a desert isle, I am rich in coin that
+I may not spend," she wrote. "I stand before my mirror and take a tress
+of my hair in either hand; I spread wide my arms full reach, yet I
+cannot touch the end of those tresses. Nor can my two hands clasp the
+bulk of them. There have been other women who had such hair, who were of
+body straight and white, and had the eyes--but I cannot read that they
+stayed poor and obscure."
+
+There followed some quotations from the classics of which I was able to
+give but vague translations when Vere passed the book to me, both
+because my knowledge was scanty and because of their daring
+unconventionality. There were allusions, too, to ladies of later history
+who had found fairness a broad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the
+writer's learning, there could be no question; a learning amazing in one
+so young and so situated. The source of this became apparent. Her father
+was consumed with the passion of scholarship, and the girl's hungry mind
+fed in the pastures where he led the way.
+
+Here crept into view an anomaly of character. The austere Puritan
+divine, whose life was open and blank, bare and cold as a winter field,
+cherished a secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a book on
+the errors of magic. So laboring, he became snared by the thing he
+denounced. He believed in the hidden lore while he condemned it. Deeper
+and deeper into forbidden knowledge his eagerness for research led him.
+Unsanctioned by any church were the books Dr. Michell starved his body
+to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in unusual wares. The titles
+in his library comprehended the names of more charlatans than bishops.
+He could define the distinctions between necromancy, sorcery, and magic.
+The marvelous calculations of the Pythagoreans engaged him, and the lost
+mysteries of the Cabiri.
+
+From such studies he would arise on the Sabbath to preach sermons that
+held his dull flock agape. Bitter draughts of salvation he poured for
+their spiritual drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might escape
+hell-fire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft and tampering with
+Satan's agents he was eloquent. He rode sixty miles in midwinter to see
+a Quaker whipped and a woman hung who had been convicted as a witch.
+
+Of all this, his daughter wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye
+of youth saw through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to
+reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded his
+doctrine.
+
+"I study with him, but I think alone," she set down her independence.
+
+Without his knowledge, she proceeded to actual experiment with rude
+crucible and alembic in her own chamber. She essayed some age-old
+recipes of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach, handled at
+certain hours of the night and phases of the moon. All were innocent
+enough, it seemed. She cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial
+blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume which she named Rose of
+Jerusalem.
+
+But the experiments were not fortunate, she made obscure complaint. The
+dog, cured, lived only a few weeks. The perfume, in which she revelled
+with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich hair in it and
+her severely dull garments, awoke many whispers in a community where
+sweet odors were unknown and disapproved. She alluded, with a mingling
+of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young men who followed after
+her--"seeking a wife who would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as
+that fair woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great, whose honey
+breath was deadly poison to who so kissed there."
+
+Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from the colonial world of
+fashion who was to fix the fate of Desire Michell and his own.
+
+From this point on, the diary was a record of the same story as the
+"History of Ye foule Witch, Desire Michell."
+
+The love affair that followed Sir Austin's visit to the clergyman's
+house leaped hot and instant as flame from oil and fire brought
+together. The girl was parched with thirst for life, yet despised all
+around her. The man was dazzled by a beauty and mentality foreign as a
+bird of paradise found nested in Connecticut snow. A mad, wild passion
+linked them that was more than half a duel. For Sir Austin was already
+betrothed. Honor might not have chained him for long, but his need of
+his betrothed's fortune proved more enduring. He was a man bred to
+wealth, who did not possess it. He offered Desire Michell his left hand.
+
+He was turned out of her father's house with a red weal struck across
+his face like a brand.
+
+Of course he returned. The arrow was firmly fixed. He asked her to marry
+him, and was refused with savage contempt. He would not take the
+refusal. Her heart and ambition were hidden traitors to his cause. In
+the end she surrendered and the marriage day was set.
+
+Sir Austin rode away to set his house in order, while Desire turned from
+alchemy to make her wedding garments.
+
+The entries during this interval were sweetly gentle and feminine. Her
+Rose of Jerusalem fragrance was all her own, and was kept so, but she
+made less-rare essences and sold them through a pedlar in order to buy
+fine linen and brocade for a trousseau not designed to be worn in a
+Puritan village. She was happy and at rest in expectation.
+
+On her wedding day the destroying news fell. Sir Austin hid a weak
+spirit within a strong and handsome body. Away from Desire's glamour,
+back in New York, he had not broken his engagement to the heiress.
+Instead, he had married her on the day arranged before he met the
+clergyman's daughter.
+
+There was never again a connected record in the diary. Pages were torn
+out in places, entries were broken off, half-made. But the story Vere's
+slow, steady voice conveyed to us was the one we knew; the one my Desire
+had told to me the first night I slept in this house. The half-mad girl
+turned to her father's deadly books. Sir Austin died as his waxen image
+dissolved before the fire, where the girl sat watching with merciless
+hate. He died, raving and frothing, on her door-sill. She never saw him
+after the day he rode away to prepare for their marriage. She set open
+her window that she might hear his progress to that hard death, but
+never deigned to turn her glance upon him.
+
+The clergyman was dead, now; of shame, or perhaps of terror at the child
+he had reared. The girl was alone.
+
+The diary grew wilder, with gaps of weeks where there were no entries.
+More frequently, pages were missing and paragraphs obliterated by the
+reddish blotches like rust or blood. There were accounts of weird,
+half-told experiments ranging through the three degrees of magic set
+forth by Talmud and Cabala. She wrote of legions of kingdoms between
+earth and heaven, and the twelve unearthly worlds of Plato. She alluded
+to a Barrier between men and other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt
+Those whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil and
+incantation.
+
+"Those of whom Vertabied, the Armenian, says: '_Their orders differ from
+one another in situation and degree of glory, just as there are
+different ranks among men, though they are all of one nature._' They
+cannot cross nor overthrow this Wall, nor can man alone; but if they and
+man join together----One there beyond whispers to me of power, splendor,
+victory----"
+
+Days later, there was entered a passage of mad triumph and terror. The
+Barrier was broken through. Out of the breach issued the One whom she
+had invited to her silver lamps; colossal, formless, whose approach
+froze blood and spirit. Eyes of unspeakable meaning glared across the
+dark, whispers unbearable to humanity beat upon her intelligence and
+named her comrade.
+
+Now as Vere read this, I felt again that quiver of the house or air he
+had likened to an earth shock and held responsible for the fall of the
+willow tree that had destroyed our hope of escape by automobile. I
+looked at my companions and saw no evidence of anyone having noticed
+what I had seemed to feel. Vere indeed was pale; while Phillida, who sat
+beside him, was highly flushed with excitement and wonder as she
+listened. Desire had not stirred in her chair, except to bend her head
+so her face was shaded by the loosened richness of her hair. Seeing them
+so undisturbed, I kept silence. A storm might be approaching, but I made
+no pretense to myself of believing that shock either thunder or
+earthquake.
+
+The tone of the diary altered rapidly. At first, the unknown from beyond
+the wall appalled the woman only by its unhuman strangeness, the
+repugnance of flesh and blood for its loathly neighborhood. Fear
+emanated from its presence, seen yet unseen, a blackness moving in the
+black of night when it visited her. Yet she had courage to endure those
+awful colloquies. She listened. She strove by the spell and incantation
+to subdue This to her service, as the demon Orthone served the Lord of
+Corasse, as Paracelsus was served by his Familiar, or Gyges by the
+spirit of his ring.
+
+Alas for the sorceress, misguided by legend and fantasy! She had evoked
+no phantom, but a fact actual as nature always is even if nature is not
+humanly understood. The Thing was real.
+
+The awe of the magician became the stricken panic of the woman. She had
+unloosed what she could not bind. She had called a servant, and gained a
+master. Gone forever were the dreams of power and splendor and triumph.
+Now she learned that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has
+summoned, nor could a murderess attain that lofty art.
+
+We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless
+pentagram traced on the floor for her protection, covering her beauty
+with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between
+the overturned silver lamps.
+
+A deepening horror gathered about the house of Mistress Desire Michell.
+The old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place
+and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the
+garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away where they dropped from
+overripeness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had
+died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous
+battle against her Visitor; using woman's cunning, essaying every
+expedient and art her books suggested to her desperate need.
+
+With each conflict, her strength and resource waned, while That which
+she held at bay knew no weariness. Time was not, for it, nor change of
+purpose.
+
+"I faint, I fail!" she wrote. "The Sea of Dread breaks about my feet. It
+is midnight. The pentagram fades from the floor--the nine lamps die--the
+breath of the One at the casement is upon me----"
+
+Vere stopped.
+
+"A handful of pages have been torn out here," he stated. "The next entry
+that I can read is in the middle of a stained page, and must be
+considerably later on."
+
+Phillida made an odd little noise like a whimper, clutching at his
+sleeve. The third shock for which I had been waiting shuddered through
+the house, this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of wind
+went through the wet trees outside like a gasp.
+
+"Ethan, what was that?" she stammered. "Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin
+Roger----?"
+
+I had no voice to answer her. In my ears was the rush and surge of that
+sea whose waters had gripped me in the past night. I felt the icy
+death-tide hiss around me in its first returning wave, rise to my knee's
+height, then sink away down its unearthly beach. What I had dimly known
+all day, underlying Vere's sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and
+efforts, was the truth. Through those intervening hours of daylight I
+had remained my enemy's prisoner, bound on that shore we both knew well,
+until It pleased or had power to return and finish with me. No doubt It
+was governed by laws, as we are.
+
+As before, the cold struck a paralysis across my senses. Vere's
+reassurance sounded faint and distant.
+
+"The thunder is getting closer," he said. "That was a storm wind, all
+right! Would you rather go upstairs and lie down, and not hear any more
+of this stuff tonight?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! I could not bear to be alone," she refused. "Just, just go
+on, dear. Of course it is the coming storm that makes the room so cold."
+
+He put his left arm around her as she nestled against him. His right
+hand held the diary flattened on the table under the light.
+
+"The next entry is just one line in the middle of a page where
+everything else is blotted out," Vere repeated. "It reads: 'The child is
+a week old today.'"
+
+The wave crashed foaming in tumult up the strand, flowing higher,
+drenching me in cold sharp as fire. The tide rose faster tonight. The
+silence that held the others dumb before the significance of that last
+sentence covered my silence from notice. Desire's face was quite hidden;
+lamplight and firelight wavered and gleamed across her bent head. I
+wanted to arise and go to her, to take her hands and tell her to have
+patience and courage. But when this wave ebbed, my strength drained away
+with the receding water. Moreover, the darkness curdled and moved beyond
+the window opposite me. The curtains hung between were no bar to my
+vision, as the light and presence of my companions were no bar to the
+Thing that kept rendezvous with me. Since last night, we were nearer to
+one another.
+
+A breath of chill foulness crept across the pungent odor of the burning
+apple-log in the fireplace. A whisper spoke to my intelligence.
+
+"Man conquered by me, fall down before me. Beg my forbearance. Beg life
+of me--and take the gift!"
+
+"No," my thought answered Its.
+
+"You die, Man."
+
+"All men die."
+
+"Not as they die who are mine."
+
+"I am not yours. You kill me, as a wild beast might. But I am not yours;
+not dying nor dead am I yours."
+
+"Would you not live, pygmy?"
+
+"Not as your pensioner."
+
+The logs on the hearth crackled and sank down with a soft rustle, burned
+through to a core of glowing red. Phillida spoke with a hushed urgency,
+drawing still closer to her husband, so that her forehead rested against
+his shoulder.
+
+"Go on, Ethan. Finish and let us be done."
+
+Vere bent his head above the book on the table to obey her. Across the
+dark I suddenly saw the Eyes glare in upon him.
+
+"On the next page, the writing begins again," he said. "It says:
+
+"'I am offered the kingdoms of earth. But I crave that kingdom of myself
+which I cast away. The child is sent to England. The circle is drawn.
+The names are traced and the lamps filled. Tonight I make the last
+essay. There remains untried one mighty spell. This Mystery----'"
+
+A clap of thunder right over the house overwhelmed the reader's voice.
+Phillida screamed as a violent wind volleyed through the place with a
+crashing of doors and shutters, upstairs and down. The diary was ripped
+from beneath Vere's hand and hurled straight to the center of that nest
+of fire formed by the settling of the logs. A long tongue of flame
+leaped high in the chimney as the spread leaves of the book caught and
+flared, fanned by wind and draft. Vere sprang up, but Phillida's
+clinging arms delayed him. When he reached the fire-tongs there was
+nothing to rescue except a charring mass half-way toward ashes.
+
+He turned toward me, perhaps at last surprised by my immobility.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he apologized.
+
+Desire had started up with the others when the sudden uproar of the
+storm burst upon them. Now she cried out, breaking Vere's excuse of the
+loss. Her small face blanched, she ran a few steps toward me.
+
+"It has come! He will die--he is dying. Look, look!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+     "Behold! Where are their abodes?
+     Their places are not, even as though they had not been."
+                                     --TOMB OF KING ENTEF.
+
+
+Desire Michell was beside me, and I could not rise or answer her. She
+bent over me, so that the Rose of Jerusalem fragrance inundated me and
+drove back the sickening air that was the breath of our enemy.
+
+"Let me go," she sobbed, her head beside my head. "If you can hear me,
+listen and leave me as It wills. You know now that I belong to It by
+heritage? You know why we can never be together as you planned? Try to
+feel horror of me. Put me away from you. No evil can come to me unless I
+seek evil. But It will not suffer you to take me. Live, dear Roger, and
+let me go."
+
+"Yield to me, Man, what you may not keep," the whisper of the Thing
+followed after her voice. "Would you take the witch-child to your
+hearth? Cast her off; and taste my pardon."
+
+"Can you hear, Roger? Roger, let me go."
+
+With an effort terrible to make as death to meet, I broke from the
+paralysis that chained me. As from the drag of a whirlpool, I tore
+myself from the tide-clutch, from the will of the Thing, from the numb
+weakness upon me. For a moment I thrust back the hand at my throat. I
+stood up and drew Desire up with me in my arms, both of us reeling with
+my unsteadiness.
+
+"I do not give you up," I said, my speech hoarse and difficult. "I claim
+you, now, and after. And my claim is good, because I pay."
+
+Desire exclaimed something. What, I do not know. Her voice was lost in
+the triumphant conviction that I was right. She was free, and the
+freedom was my gift to her. I was not vanquished, but victor. The life I
+paid was not a penalty, but a price.
+
+Her face was uplifted to mine as she clung to me; then my weight glided
+through her arms and I fell back in my chair.
+
+I was alone amid blackness and desolation that poured past me like the
+wind above the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the last time, I opened my eyes on the gray shore at the foot of the
+Barrier. I, pygmy indeed, stood again before the colossal wall whose
+palisades reared up beyond vision and stretched away beyond vision on
+either side.
+
+I was alone here. No whisper of taunt or menace, no presence of horror
+troubled me. Opposite me, the Breach that split the cliff showed as a
+shadowed cañon, empty except of dread. Far out behind me the sea that
+was like no sea of earth gathered itself beneath its eternal mists as a
+tidal wave draws and gathers. With folded arms I stood there, waiting
+for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm me in their flood.
+I waited in awe and solemn expectancy, beyond fear or hope.
+
+But now I became aware of a new doubleness of experience. Here on the
+Frontier, I was between the worlds, yet I also saw the room in the house
+left behind. I saw myself as an unconscious body reclined in a chair
+beside the hearth. Desire Michell knelt on the floor beside me, her
+hands grasping my arms, her gaze fixed on my face, her hair spilling its
+shining lengths across my knees. Phillida was huddled in a chair, crying
+hysterically. Vere apparently had been trying to force some stimulant
+upon the man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while I watched he
+reluctantly rose from bending above the figure and set a glass upon the
+table. I echoed his sigh. Life was good.
+
+The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable distances. The roar
+of the waters' thunderous approach blended with the heat and flash of
+storm all about the house into which I looked.
+
+"He dies," Desire spoke, her voice level and calm. "Has it not been so
+with all who loved the daughters of my race these two centuries past?
+Yet never did one of those die as he dies--not for passion, but for
+protection of the woman--not as a madman or one ignorant, but facing
+that which was not meant for man to face, his eyes beating back the
+intolerable Eyes. Oh, glory and grief of mine to have seen this!"
+
+Phillida cowered lower in her chair, burying her face in the cushions.
+But Vere abruptly stood erect, his fine dark face lifted and set. Just
+so some ancestors of his might have risen in a bleak New England
+meeting-house when moved powerfully to wrestle with evil in prayer. But
+it is doubtful if any Maine deacon ever addressed his Deity as Vere
+appealed to his.
+
+"Almighty, we're in places we don't understand," he spoke simply as to a
+friend within the room, his earnest, drawling speech entirely natural.
+"But You know them as You do us. If things have got to go this way, why,
+we'll make out the best we can. But if they don't, and we're just
+blundering into trouble, please save Roger Locke and this poor girl.
+Because we know You can. Amen."
+
+Now at this strange and beautiful prayer--or so it seemed to me--a ray
+of blinding light cleaved up from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow
+speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then
+the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out of the mist
+upon me.
+
+I went down in a smother of ghastly snarling floods cold as space is
+cold. Something fled past me up the strand, shrieking inhuman passion;
+the Eyes of my enemy glared briefly across my vision.
+
+One last view I glimpsed of that dread Barrier, amid the tumult and
+welter of my passing. The breach was closed! Unbroken, majestic, the
+enormous Wall stood up inviolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+     "Fancy, like the finger of a clock,
+     Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."
+                                              --COWPER.
+
+The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair
+before the hearth in the living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was
+the din of a tempest outside.
+
+Opposite me, Phillida and Desire were clinging together, watching me
+with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed
+before them. Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow
+eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while
+he sleeked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come
+from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth
+drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows, from
+which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the
+panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.
+
+"Drink some of this, Mr. Locke," urged Vere, whose arm was about me.
+"Sit quiet, and I guess you'll be all right in a few moments."
+
+I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me, as inexplicably as it
+had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty
+of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly
+enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never
+doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete,
+and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had been our enemy, the
+horror that had been Its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted
+Desire--all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised, and
+the house purified of fear.
+
+But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest.
+The tumult of rain and wind linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The
+house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train
+is passing. Pulling myself together I turned to Vere.
+
+"What is happening outdoors?" I asked.
+
+"The cloudburst was too much for the dam," he answered regretfully. "It
+went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is
+flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to
+the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is
+dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage, after a bit."
+
+"The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera," Phillida bravely
+tried to summon nonchalance. "Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not
+get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out in that!"
+
+Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave her quota to the shelter
+of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too
+recently felt.
+
+"It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this
+year," she said. "Once, one blew down the mission house."
+
+Vere's weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had
+exhausted itself, or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a
+veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly
+pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds red as
+flamingoes flying against a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.
+
+We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy
+light. Water overlay lawns and paths, so the house stood in a wide,
+shallow lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the
+pillars of the porte-cochère. Phillida's Pekin ducks floated and fed on
+this new waterway as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures.
+Small objects sailed on the flood here and there; Bagheera's milk-pan
+from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the
+orchard, while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk canoe-cushion.
+
+In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the real lake had been
+there now lay some acres of ugly, oozing marsh; its expanse dotted with
+the bodies of dead water-creatures and such of Vere's young trout as had
+not been swept away by the outpouring flood. The dam was a mere pile of
+débris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the
+sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun's rays were drawing a
+rank, unwholesome vapor from the long-submerged surface.
+
+We contemplated the ruin for a while, without words.
+
+"Poor Drawls!" Phillida sighed at length. "All your work just rubbed
+out!"
+
+"Never mind, Vere," I exclaimed impulsively. "We will put it all back in
+the same shape as it was."
+
+But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from
+my own proposition. I did not want the lake to be there again; or to
+hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying
+fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the others share my repugnance? I
+seemed to divine that they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break
+out in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed her sober gray
+dress in some feminine fashion and stood like Marguerite or Melisande
+with a great braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then
+changed her intention. A faint distress troubled her expression.
+
+As usual, Vere himself quietly lifted us out of unrest.
+
+"I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr. Locke," he demurred. "That
+is if you liked, of course! That marsh could be cleaned up and drained
+into pretty rich land, I guess. And down there beyond the barn, on the
+other side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I
+should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake."
+
+"Doesn't it seem to you, Ethan," I said, "that we have progressed rather
+past the _Mr. Locke_ stage?"
+
+A little later, when Desire and I were alone on the porch, we walked to
+the end nearest the vanished lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging
+couch there, and sat down beside her.
+
+"Point out the path down the hill by which you used to come," I asked of
+her.
+
+She shook her head. There are no words to paint how she looked in the
+clear morning, except that she seemed its sister.
+
+"It is only the end of a path that matters," she said. "Look instead at
+the marsh. Do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the
+woods even when trodden by a wilful woman?"
+
+Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long mounds out there in
+the muddy floor not far from the dam. Not high, two or three feet at
+most, the mounds formed an irregular square of considerable area.
+
+"The old house!" I exclaimed.
+
+"It was set on fire by the second Desire Michell one night deep in
+winter. Her father built this house of yours and put in the dam that
+covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror
+upon the place."
+
+"I know so little of your history."
+
+"You can imagine it." She turned her head from me. "The first child came
+back from England when it was a man grown, and claimed the house and
+name of the first Desire. He settled and married here. For two
+generations only sons were born to the Michells. I do not know if the
+Dark One came to them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere men
+who beat off evil. Then, a daughter was born. She looked like the first
+Desire and she was--not good. She was a scandal to the family. She
+listened to It----! The tradition is that she set fire to the house
+after a terrible quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some
+miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after
+that. Not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two
+Desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and
+austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was
+born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew,
+and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness.
+Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is why I--covered myself
+from--you."
+
+I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and feel flutter in mine.
+
+"But what of me, Desire? The darkness covered no beauty in me, but a
+defect. You never saw me until last night and now in the morning. Now
+that you know, can you bear with a man who--limps? You, so perfect?"
+
+She turned toward me. Her kohl-dark eyes, vivid as a summer noon, opened
+to my anxious scrutiny.
+
+"But I have seen you often," she said, the heat of confession bright on
+cheek and lip. "I never meant you to know, but now----! After the first
+time you spoke to me so kindly and gayly--I was so very sorrowfully
+alone--and the convent was so dull! My father's field-glasses were in my
+trunk."
+
+"Desire?"
+
+"I fear I have no vocation for a nun. I--there is a huge rock half-way
+down the hill with a clear view of this place. I have spent hours there,
+watching these lawns and verandas, and the things you all did. It all
+seemed so amusing and, and happy. You see, where I lived there were
+almost no white people except my father and a priest at the Catholic
+mission. So I learned to know Phillida and Mr. Vere and----"
+
+"Then, all this time, Desire----"
+
+"The glasses brought you very close," she whispered. "I knew you by
+night and by day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+     "Life hath its term, the assembly is dispersed,
+      And we have not described Thee from the first."
+                                            --GULISTAN.
+
+
+I have come to the end of this narrative and with the end, I come to
+what people of practical mind may call its explanation. Of the four of
+us who were joined in living through the events of that summer, my wife
+and I and Ethan Vere agree in one belief, while Phillida holds the
+opinion of her father, the Professor. I think Bagheera, the cat, might
+be added to our side also, if his testimony was available.
+
+The press reports of the cloudburst and flood brought the Professor up
+to Connecticut to verify with his own eyes his daughter's safety. Aunt
+Caroline did not come with him, but I may here set down that she did
+come later. They found their son-in-law by no means what their
+forebodings menaced, so reconciled themselves at last to the marriage;
+to Phillida's abiding joy.
+
+But first the little Professor arrived alone, three days after the
+storm. Characteristically, he had sent no warning of his coming, so no
+one met him at the railway station. He arrived in one of those curious
+products of a country livery stable known as a rig, driven by a local
+reprobate whom no prohibition could sober.
+
+I shall never forget the incredulous rapture with which Phillida
+welcomed him, nor the pride with which she presented Vere.
+
+The damages to the place were already being repaired, although weeks of
+work would be needed to restore a condition of order and make the
+changes we planned. The automobile had been disentangled from the
+wreckage of garage and willow tree and towed away to receive expert
+attention. We were awaiting the arrival of the new car I had ordered for
+the honeymoon tour Desire and I were soon to take. Phillida had declared
+two weeks shopping a necessary preliminary to the wedding of a bride who
+was to live in New York "and meet everybody." Nor would I have shortened
+the pretty orgy into which the two girls entered, transforming my
+sorceress into a lady of the hour; happiness seeming to me rather to be
+savored than gulped.
+
+Needless to say, there was no more talk of the convent whose iron gates
+were to have closed between the last Desire Michell and the world. She
+had been directed there by the priest whose island mission was near her
+father's. In her solitude and ignorance of life, the sisterhood seemed
+to offer a refuge in which to keep her promise to her father. But she
+had to learn the principles of the Church she was about to adopt, and
+during that period of delay I had come to the old house.
+
+On the second day of his visit, we told all the story to the Professor.
+We could not have told Aunt Caroline, but we told him.
+
+"It is perfectly simple," he pronounced at the end. "Interesting, even
+unique in points, but simple of explanation."
+
+"And what may be the explanation?" I inquired with scepticism.
+
+"Marsh gas," he replied triumphantly. "Have none of you young people
+ever considered the singular emanations from swamps and marshes where
+rotting vegetation underlies shallow water? Phillida, I am astonished
+that you did not enlighten your companions on this point. You, at least,
+have been carefully educated, not in the light froth of modern music and
+art, but in the rudiments of science. I do not intend to wound your
+feelings, Roger!"
+
+"I am not wounded, sir," I retorted. "Just incredulous!"
+
+"Ah?" said the Professor, with the bland superiority of his tribe.
+"Well, well! Yet even you know something of the evils attending people
+who live in low, swampy areas; malaria, ague, fevers. In the tropics,
+these take the form of virulent maladies that sweep a man from earth in
+a few hours. Your lake _was_ haunted, so was the house that once stood
+in its basin, as some vague instinct strove to warn the generations of
+Michells as well as you. Haunted by emanations of some powerful form of
+marsh gas given forth more plentifully at night, which lowered the heart
+action and impeded the breathing of one drawing the poison into his
+lungs through hours of sleep, producing--nightmare. Science has by no
+means analyzed all the possibilities of such phenomena."
+
+"Nightmare!" I cried. "Do you mean to account by nightmare for the wide
+and repeated experiences that twice brought me to the verge of death?
+And Desire? What of her knowledge of that same nightmare? What of the
+legend of her family so exactly coinciding with all I felt? And why did
+not Phillida and Ethan suffer the nightmare with me?"
+
+He held up a lean hand.
+
+"Gently, gently, Roger! Consider that of all the household you alone
+slept in the side of the house toward the lake. I know that you always
+have your windows open day and night--a habit that used to cause great
+annoyance to your Aunt Caroline when you were a boy. Thus you were
+exposed to the full effect of the water gases. That you did not feel the
+effects every night I attribute to differences in the wind, that from
+some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving
+you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most pronounced
+in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous air was atmospherically held
+down to the earth. You have spoken of miasmic mists that hung below the
+level of the tree-tops. When Mr. Vere experienced a similar unease and
+depression, he was on the shore of the lake at dawn after precisely such
+a close, foggy night as I have described as most dangerous. The symptoms
+confirm this theory. You say you awakened on each occasion with a sense
+of suffocation. Your heart labored, your limbs were cold and mind
+unnaturally depressed, owing to slow circulation of the blood. You were
+a man asphyxiated. After each attack you were more sensitive to the
+next, as a malaria patient grows worse if he remains in the swamp
+districts. It is remarkable that you did not guess the truth from the
+smell of decaying vegetation and stagnant damp which you admit
+accompanied the seizures! However, you did not; and in your condition
+the last three days of continuous fog brought on two attacks that nearly
+proved fatal. Now as to the character of your hallucinations, and their
+agreement with the young lady's ideas. That is a trifle more involved
+discussion, yet simple, simple!"
+
+He put the tips of his fingers together and surveyed us with the benign
+condescension of one instructing a class of small children.
+
+"The first night that you passed in your newly purchased house, Roger,
+you accidentally encountered Miss Michell; or she did you!" He smiled
+humorously. "While your feelings were excited by the unusual episode,
+the strange surroundings and the dark, she related to you a wild legend
+of witchcraft and monsters. Later, when you suffered your first attack
+of marsh-gas poisoning, your consequent hallucination took form from the
+story you had just heard. Later conversations with your mysterious lady
+fixed the idea into an obsession. Recurrent dreams are a common
+phenomenon even in healthy persons. In this case, no doubt the exact
+repetition of the physical sensations of miasmic poisoning tended to
+reproduce in your mind the same sequence of ideas or semi-delirious
+imaginings. These were of course varied or distorted somewhat on each
+occasion, influenced by what you had been hearing or reading in advance
+of them. This mental condition became more and more confirmed as you
+steeped yourself more deeply in legendary lore and also--pardon me--in
+the morbid fancies of the young lady; whose ghostly visits in the dark
+and whose increasing interest for you put a further bias upon your
+thoughts."
+
+"What were the noises I heard from the lake, and the shocks we all
+felt?" I demanded.
+
+He nodded amiably toward Vere.
+
+"Mr. Vere has mentioned the large bubbles which formed and burst on the
+surface of the lake. That is a common manifestation of ordinary marsh
+gas. Possibly the singular and unknown emanation that took place at
+night came to the surface in the form of a bubble or bubbles huge enough
+to produce in bursting the smacking sound of which you speak. But I am
+inclined to another theory, after a walk I took about your place this
+morning. When you put up your cement dam instead of the old log affair
+that held back only a part of the stream, you made a greater depth and
+bulk of water in the swamp basin than it has contained these many years,
+if ever. As a result, I believe the sloping mud basin began to slip
+toward the dam. Oh, very gradually! Probably not stirring for weeks at a
+time. Just a yielding here, a parting there, until the cloudburst
+precipitated the disaster. You had, my dear Roger, a miniature
+landslide, which would account for sounds of shifting mud and water in
+your lake, and for the shocks or trembling of your house when the earth
+movements occurred."
+
+The rest of us regarded one another. I think Vere might have spoken, if
+he had not been unwilling to mar Phillida's contentment by any
+appearance of dispute with her father.
+
+"It is very cleverly worked out, sir," I conceded. "But how do you
+explain that Desire knew what I experienced with the Thing from the
+Barrier, if my experiences were merely delirious dreams?"
+
+"I have not yet understood that she did know," said the Professor dryly.
+"She put the suggestions into your head; innocently, of course. When you
+afterward compared notes and found they agreed, you cried 'miraculous'!
+How is that, Miss Michell? Did you actually know what Roger experienced
+in these excursions before he told you of them?"
+
+Desire gazed at him with her meditative eyes, so darkly lovely, yet
+never quite to lose their individual difference from any other lovely
+eyes I have ever seen. The eyes, I thought then and still think, of one
+who has seen more, or at least seen into farther spaces, than most of
+treadmill-trotting humanity. She wore one of the new frocks for which
+Phillida and she had already made a flying trip to town; a most
+sophisticated frock from Fifth Avenue, with frivolous French shoes to
+correspond. Her hair of a Lorelei was demurely coiled and wound about
+her little head. Yet some indescribable atmosphere closed her delicately
+around, an impalpable wall between her and the commonplace. Even the
+desiccated, material Professor was aware of this influence and took off
+his spectacles uneasily, wiped them and put them on again to contemplate
+her.
+
+"I am not sure," she answered him with careful candor. "I believe that I
+could always tell when the Dark One had been with him. I could feel
+that, here," she touched her breast. "I knew what its visits were like,
+because I was brought up to know by my father and was told the history
+of the three Desire Michells. My father had studied deeply and taught
+me--I shall not tell anyone all he taught me! I do not want to think of
+those things. Some of them I have told to Roger. Some of them are quite
+harmless and pleasant, like the secret formula for making the Rose of
+Jerusalem perfume; which has virtues not common, as Roger can say who
+has felt it revive him from faintness. But there are places into which
+we should not thrust ourselves. It is like--like suicide. One's mind
+must be perverted before certain things can be done. And that is the
+true sin--to debase one's soul. All men discover and learn of science
+and the universe by honest duty and effort is good, is lofty and leads
+up. Nothing is forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low door
+which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we step outside. I am
+unskilful; I do not express myself well."
+
+"Very well, young lady," the Professor condescended. "Unfortunately,
+your theories are wild mysticism. The veritable fiend that has plagued
+the house of Michell is the mischievous habit of rearing each generation
+from childhood to a belief in doom and witchcraft. A child will believe
+anything it is told. Why not, when all things are still equally
+wonderful to it? Let me point out that your theory also contradicts
+itself, since Roger certainly did not enter upon any path of crime, yet
+he met your unearthly monster."
+
+"Because he chose to link his fate with mine, who am linked by heredity
+with the Dweller at the Frontier," she said earnestly. "He was in the
+position of one who enters the lair of a wild beast to bring out a
+victim who is trapped there. It may cost that rescuer his life. Roger
+nearly paid his life. But he mastered It and took me away from It,
+because he was not afraid and not seeking his own good. I never imagined
+anyone so brave and strong and unselfish as Roger. I suppose it is
+because he thinks of others instead of himself, which gives the
+strongest kind of strength."
+
+"The Thing nearly had me, though," I hastily intervened to spare my own
+modesty. "And It did have me worse than afraid!"
+
+"I seem to be arguing against an impenetrable obstinacy," snapped the
+Professor. "Do you, Roger, who were educated under my own eye, in my
+house, have the effrontery to tell me that you believe Miss Michell is
+descended from the union of an evil spirit and a human being; as the
+Eastern legends claim for Saladin the Great?"
+
+"Your own theory, sir, being----?" I evaded.
+
+"There is no theory about the matter," he declared. "Excuse me, Miss
+Michell! The child was undoubtedly Sir Austin's son. Which accounts for
+the madness of the first Desire Michell."
+
+We were all silent for a while. Whatever thoughts each held remained
+unvoiced.
+
+"Come, Phillida, you take my sane point of view, I hope?" the Professor
+finally challenged his daughter, with a glance of scorn and compassion
+at the rest of our group. "You observe that I have explained every point
+raised, Miss Michell's testimony being of the vaguest?"
+
+"Yes, Papa," Phillida agreed hesitatingly. "I do believe you have solved
+the whole problem. Only, if Cousin Roger was suffering from marsh-gas
+poisoning last night when he seemed to be dying, I do not quite see why
+Ethan's prayer should have cured him."
+
+The Professor was momentarily posed. He looked disconcerted, took off
+his glasses and put them on again, and at length muttered something
+about storm-wind dissipating the miasma in the air and events being mere
+coincidence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house was never again visited by the Dark Presence. Phantom or
+fancy, the horror was gone as if it never had brooded about the place.
+Desire Locke is a fatal companion only to my heart.
+
+But whether all this is so because the lake is drained and the Shetland
+pony of a young Vere browses over the green pasture that was once a
+miasmic swamp; or whether it is so for more subtle, wilder reasons, no
+one can say. I, recalling that colossal Barrier I visioned as closed and
+a certain cleaving arrow of light, must at least call the coincidence
+amazing.
+
+As I have said, my wife and I, Ethan Vere and Bagheera the cat have an
+understanding between us.
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Thing from the Lake, by Eleanor M. Ingram</title>
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Thing from the Lake, by Eleanor M. Ingram</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Thing from the Lake</p>
+<p>Author: Eleanor M. Ingram</p>
+<p>Release Date: December 4, 2007  [eBook #23738]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THING FROM THE LAKE***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Nick Wall, Suzanne Shell,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE THING FROM THE LAKE</h1>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>ELEANOR M. INGRAM</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Author of "From the Car Behind", "The Unafraid", etc.</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br />
+AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS<br />
+PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<div class="divtoc">
+<p><span class="ralign">Page</span><br /></p>
+
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a><span class="ralign">007</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a><span class="ralign">014</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a><span class="ralign">032</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a><span class="ralign">074</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a><span class="ralign">078</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a><span class="ralign">087</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b></a><span class="ralign">100</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b></a><span class="ralign">117</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b></a><span class="ralign">122</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b></a><span class="ralign">130</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b></a><span class="ralign">145</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b></a><span class="ralign">158</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b></a><span class="ralign">169</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b></a><span class="ralign">184</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b></a><span class="ralign">192</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b></a><span class="ralign">211</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b></a><span class="ralign">237</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b></a><span class="ralign">249</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b></a><span class="ralign">265</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b></a><span class="ralign">288</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b></a><span class="ralign">293</span></li>
+<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII"><b>CHAPTER XXII</b></a><span class="ralign">302</span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"As well give up the Bible at once, as our belief in apparitions."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Wesley.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>The house cried out to me for help.</p>
+
+<p>In the after-knowledge I now possess of what
+was to happen there, that impression is not more
+clearly definite than it was at my first sight of the
+place. Let me at once set down that this is not the
+story of a haunted house. It is, or was, a beleaguered
+house; strangely besieged as was Prague in
+the old legend, when a midnight army of spectres
+unfurled pale banners and encamped around the
+city walls.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I did not know all this, the day that
+my real-estate agent brought his little car to a stop
+before the dilapidated farm. I believed the house
+only appealed to be lived in; for deliverance from
+the destroying work of neglect and time. A spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+rain was whispering down from a gray sky, dripping
+from broken gutters and eaves with a patter like
+timid footsteps hurrying by, yet even in the storm
+the house did not look dreary.</p>
+
+<p>"There, Mr. Locke, is a bargain," the agent
+called back to me, where I sat in my car. "Finest
+bit in Connecticut for a city man's summer home!
+Woodland, farm land, lake and a house that only
+needs a few repairs to be up-to-date. Look at that
+double row of maples, sir. Shade all summer!
+Fine old orchard, too; with a trifle of attention."</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, surveying the house with an eagerness
+of interest that surprised myself. A box-like, fairly
+large structure of commonplace New England ugliness,
+it coaxed my liking as had no other place I had
+ever seen; it wooed me like a determined woman.
+And as one would long to clothe beautifully a beloved
+woman, I looked at the house and foresaw what
+an architect could do for it; how creamy stucco;
+broad white porches and a gay scarlet roof would
+transform it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come inside," my agent urged, hope in his
+voice as he observed my face; "let me show you the
+interior. I brought the keys along. Of course, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+rooms may seem a bit musty. No one has lived in
+it for&mdash;some time. It's the old Michell property;
+been in the family for a couple of hundred years.
+Last Michell is dead, now, and it's being sold for the
+benefit of some religious institute the old gentleman
+left it to. Trifle wet to walk over the land today!
+But I've a plan and measurements in my portfolio."</p>
+
+<p>I said that we would go in. If he had but known
+the fact, the place was already sold to me; before
+I left my car, before I entered the house, before I
+had seen the hundred-odd acres that make up
+the estate.</p>
+
+<p>There was a narrow, flagged path to the veranda,
+where the planking moved and creaked under our
+weight while my companion unlocked the front door.
+Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed place
+was neither musty nor damp, when we stepped in.
+Instead, there was a faint, resinous odor, very pleasant
+and clean; perhaps from the cedar of which the
+woodwork largely consisted.</p>
+
+<p>The house was partially furnished. Not, of
+course, with much that I would care to retain, but
+a few good antiques stood out among their commonplace
+associates. A large bedroom on the north side,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+which I appointed as my own at first sight, held
+an old rosewood set including a four-posted, pineapple-carved
+bed. I threw open the shutters in this
+room and looked out.</p>
+
+<p>I received the first jar to my satisfaction. On
+this side of the place, the grounds ran down a
+slight slope for perhaps half a block to the five-acre
+hollow of shallow water and lush growth which the
+agent called a lake. From it flowed a considerable
+creek, winding behind the house and away on its
+journey to the Sound. For that under-water marsh
+I felt a shock of violent dislike.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't care for the lake?" my companion
+deprecated, at my elbow. "Fine trout in that stream,
+though! I'd like you to see it in the sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>"I should care more for it if it was a lake, not
+a swamp," I answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but that is only because the old dam is
+down," he exclaimed eagerly. "That lets all the
+water out, you see. Why, if the dam were put back,
+you'd have as pretty a lake for a canoe as there is in
+the State! Its natural depth is four or five feet all
+over, and about eight or ten where the stream flows
+through to the dam. Even yet, a few wild duck stop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+there spring and fall, and when I was a boy I've
+seen heron. Put back the dam, Mr. Locke, and I'll
+guarantee you'll never say swamp again!"</p>
+
+<p>"We will try it," I said. "Now let us find a
+lawyer and see how quickly I can be put in
+possession."</p>
+
+<p>We drove back to the little town from which we
+had that morning started out, and where my agent
+lived; my sleek car following his small one with
+somewhat the effect of a long-limbed panther striding
+behind an agitated mouse.</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that the sale was simply consummated.
+I do not mean that all the formalities were
+completed in a day. But by nightfall I could feel
+myself the owner of the place.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the giddiness of being a land-owner
+for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject
+wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired
+the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner.
+I had spent one night here, and did not welcome
+the prospect of a second. A return to New York
+was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet
+several contractors and an architect at the farm,
+next morning, to discuss the alterations I wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+made. Why not drive out to my new house this
+evening and sleep tonight in the rosewood-furnished
+bedroom?</p>
+
+<p>The idea gained favor as I contemplated it. I
+could go over the house tonight and sketch more
+clearly what I wanted done, while I would be on the
+ground when my men arrived next morning. There
+was an allure of camping out about it, too.</p>
+
+<p>In the end I went, of course.</p>
+
+<p>It was dark when I stabled my roadster in the
+barn that was part of my new possessions; where
+the car seemed to glitter disdain of the hay-littered,
+ragged shelter. Equipped with a flashlight, suitcase
+and bundle, I followed a faint path that wound
+its way to the house through wet blackberry vines
+whose thorns had outlived the winter. My steps
+broke the blank silence that brooded over the place.
+At this season there was no insect life; nor any other
+stirring thing within hearing or sight. But just as
+I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound
+from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the
+north. There was no wind, yet the water had
+seemed to move with a sound like the smacking of
+soft, glutinous lips. Or as if some soft body drew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+itself from a bed of clinging mud. I wondered idly
+if the tide could run this far back from Long
+Island Sound.</p>
+
+<p>The house reiterated the impression of welcoming
+me. I shut and locked the old door behind me,
+and went up to the room I had chosen as my own.
+There I unshuttered and opened the windows,
+lighted one of the candles I had brought and set it
+on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes, and
+threw my blankets on the bed. I had moved in!</p>
+
+<p>My pleasant sense of proprietorship continued to
+grow. Before I thought of sleep, I had been through
+the house several times from cellar to attic and
+accumulated a list of things to be done. Back
+in my room, an hour passed in revising the list,
+by candle-light.</p>
+
+<p>Near ten o'clock, I rolled myself in a dressing-gown
+and my blankets, spread an automobile robe
+over the four-posted bed, and fell asleep.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Beware of her fair hair, for she excels<br />
+All women in the magic of her locks."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Shelley</span> (<i>Trans.</i>).<br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>It trailed suavely through my fingers, slipping
+across my palm like a belt of silk. It glided with
+the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally,
+even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed
+my hand upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet
+resilient; solid, yet supple. If I may speak irrationally,
+it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a
+strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized
+its identity unerringly as a blind man gaining sight
+might identify a flower or a bird. In brief, it was&mdash;it
+only could be an opulent braid of hair.</p>
+
+<p>When I grasped it, it ceased to move.</p>
+
+<p>In the dense darkness of my bedroom, I lay still
+and considered. I was alone, or rather, should have
+been alone in the old house I had bought the day
+before. The agent assured me that it had been unoccupied
+for years. Who, then, was my guest? A
+passer-by seeking refuge in a supposedly deserted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+house would hardly have moved about with such
+silent caution. A tramp of this genus would be a
+rarity indeed. I had nothing with me of value to
+attract a thief. The usual limited masculine jewelry&mdash;a
+watch, a pair of cuff-links, a modest pin&mdash;surely
+were not sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a
+bird of prey as one wearing such plumage as I held.
+I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a generous
+handful. How did it come to trail across my bed,
+in any case? And why was its owner locked in
+silence and immobility? Surely startled innocence
+would have cried out, questioned my grasp or struggled
+against it! My captive did neither.</p>
+
+<p>I began to paint a picture against the darkness;
+the picture of a crouching woman, fear-paralyzed;
+not daring to stir, to sob or pant or shiver lest she
+betray herself. Or, perhaps, a woman who was
+not hushed by panic, but by deliberation. A woman
+who slowly levelled a weapon, assuring her aim in
+the blank darkness by such guides as my breathing
+and the taut direction of her imprisoned tresses. An
+ugly woman could not have such hair as this. Or,
+could she? I had a doubtful recollection of various
+long-haired demonstrators glimpsed in drugshop<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+windows, who were not beautiful. Yes, but they
+would never have found themselves in such a situation
+as this one! Only resolve or recklessness could
+bring a woman to such a pass; and with spirit and
+this hair no woman could be ugly.</p>
+
+<p>How quiet she was! I suddenly reflected that
+she must be thinking the same thing of me, since
+neither of us had moved during a considerable space
+of time. Possibly she fancied me only half-aroused,
+and hoped that I would relapse into sleep without
+realizing upon what my drowsy grasp had closed.
+No doubt it would have been the course of chivalry
+for me to pretend to do so, but it was not the course
+of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>The deadlock could not last indefinitely. Apparently,
+though, it must be I who should break it. As
+quietly as possible, I brought my left hand forward
+to grope along that silken line which certainly must
+guide me to the intruder herself. My hand slipped
+along the smooth surface to the full reach of my
+arm; and encountered nothing. Check, for the first
+attempt! The candle and matches I had bought in
+the village were also beyond my reach, unless I released
+my captive and rolled across the bed toward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+the little bookcase where I had placed them beside
+the flashlight. If I should speak, what would she
+do? And&mdash;a new thought!&mdash;was she alone in
+the house?</p>
+
+<p>There came a gentle draw at the braid, instantly
+ceasing as I automatically tightened my hold. The
+pretense that I slept was ended. I spoke, as soothingly
+and kindly as I could manage.</p>
+
+<p>"If you will let me strike a light, we can explain
+to each other. Or, if you will agree not to
+escape&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>In spite of my efforts, my voice boomed startlingly
+through the dark, still room. No reply followed,
+but the braid quivered and suddenly relaxed
+from its tension. She must have come closer to me.
+Delighted by so much success attained and intrigued
+by the novelty of the adventure, I moved
+slightly, stretching my free arm in the direction
+of the flashlight.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not a difficult person," I essayed encouragement.
+"Nor too dull, I hope, to understand a
+mistake or a necessity. Nor am I affiliated with the
+police! Permit me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I halted abruptly. A cool edge of metal had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+been laid across the wrist of my groping hand. As
+the hand came to rest, palm uppermost, I could feel,
+or imagined I could feel my pulse beating steadily
+against the menacing pressure of the blade. The
+warning was eloquent and sufficient; I moved no
+further toward my flashlight. Of course, if I had
+lifted my right hand from its guard of the braid, I
+could easily have pinioned the arm which poised the
+knife before I suffered much harm. But I might
+have lost my captive in the attempt; an event for
+which I was not ready, yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Check," I admitted. "Although, it is rather
+near a stalemate for us both, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>The knife pressed closer, suggestively.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I dissented with the mute argument. "I
+think not. I do not believe you could do it; not in
+cold blood, anyway!"</p>
+
+<p>"You do not know," insisted the closer pressing
+blade, as if with a tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not know," I translated aloud. "But
+I am confident enough to chance it. What reason
+have you for desperate action? I would not harm
+you. Have I not a right to curiosity? This is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+my house, you know. Or perhaps you did not
+know that?"</p>
+
+<p>A sigh stirred the silence, blending with the
+ceaseless whisper of the rain that had recommenced
+through the night. The braid did not move in my
+right hand, nor did the blade touching my left.</p>
+
+<p>"Speak!" I begged, with an abrupt urgency that
+surprised myself. "You are the invader. Why?
+What would you have from me? If I am to let you
+go, at least speak to me, first! This is&mdash;uncanny."</p>
+
+<p>"There is magic in the third time of asking,"
+came a breathed, just audible whisper. "Yet, be
+warned; call not to you that which you may neither
+hold nor forbid."</p>
+
+<p>"But I do call&mdash;if that will make you speak to
+me," I returned, my pulses tingling triumph.
+"Although, as to not holding you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You fancy you hold me? It is not you
+who are master of this moment, but I who am
+its mistress."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had gained in strength; a soft voice,
+yet not weak, used with a delicate deliberation that
+gave her speech the effect of being a caprice of her
+own rather than a result of my compulsion. Yet, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+thought, she must be crouched or kneeling beside
+me, on the floor, held like the Lady of the Beautiful
+Tresses.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I doubt if you have the disposition to use
+your advantage," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, the cruelty," she corrected me.</p>
+
+<p>"I am from New York," I smiled. "Let me
+say, the nerve. If you pressed that knife, I might
+bleed to death, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you hear a story of a woman of my
+house, and her anger, before you doubt too far?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," I consented; and smiled in the darkness
+at the transparent plan to distract my attention
+from that imprisoned braid.</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for so long that I fancied the plan
+abandoned, perhaps for lack of a tale to tell. Then
+her voice leaped suddenly out of the blackness that
+closed us in, speaking always in muted tones, but
+with a strange, impassioned urgency and force that
+startled like a cry. The words hurried upon one
+another like breaking surf.</p>
+
+<p>"See! See! The fire leaps in the chimney; it
+breathes sparks like a dreadful beast&mdash;it is hungry;
+its red tongues lick for that which they may not yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+have. Already its breath is hot upon the wax image
+on the hearth. But the image is round of limb and
+sound. Yes, though it is but toy-large, it is perfect
+and firm! See how it stands in the red shine: the
+image of a man, cunningly made to show his stalwartness
+and strength and bravery of velvet and
+lace! The image of a great man, surely; one
+high in place and power. One above fear and
+beyond the reach of hate!</p>
+
+<p>"The woman sits in her low chair, behind the
+image. The fire-shine is bright in her eyes and in
+her hair. On either side her hair flows down to the
+floor; her eyes look on the image and are dreadfully
+glad. Ha, was not Beauty the lure, and shall it not
+be the vengeance?</p>
+
+<p>"The nine lamps have been lighted! The feathers
+have been laid in a circle! The spell has been
+spoken; the spell of Hai, son of Set, first man to
+slay man by the Dark Art!</p>
+
+<p>"The man is at the door of the woman's house.
+Yes, he who came in pride to woo, and proved traitor
+to the love won&mdash;he is at her door in weakness
+and pain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>"As the wax wastes, the man wastes! As the
+mannikin is gone, the man dies!</p>
+
+<p>"On her doorstep, he begs for life. He is coward
+and broken. He suffers and is consumed. He calls
+to her the love-names they both know. And the
+woman laughs, and the door is barred.</p>
+
+<p>"The door is barred, but what shall bar out the
+Enemy who creeps to the nine lamps?</p>
+
+<p>"See, the fire shines through the wax! The
+image is grown thin and wan. Three days, three
+nights, it has shrunk before the flames. Three days,
+three nights, the woman has watched. As the fire is
+not weary, she is not weary. As the fire is beautiful,
+she is beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>"The man is borne to her door again. He lifts up
+his hands and cries to her. But now he begs for
+death. Now he knows anguish stronger than fear.
+And the woman laughs, and the door is barred.</p>
+
+<p>"The fire shines on a lump of wax. The man is
+dead. From her chair the woman has arisen and
+stands, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>But what crouches behind her, unseen? The
+lamps are cast down! The pentagram is crossed!
+The Horror takes its own.</i>"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>The impassioned speech broke off with the effect
+of a snapped bar of thin metal. In the silence, the
+steady whisper of rain came to my ears again, continuing
+patiently. I became aware of a rich yet
+delicate fragrance in the air I breathed. It was not
+any perfume I could identify, either as a composition
+or as a flower scent. If I may hope to be understood
+it sparkled upon the senses. It produced a
+thirst for itself, so that the nostrils expanded for it
+with an eagerness for the new pleasure. I found
+myself breathing deeply, almost greedily, before
+answering my prisoner's story.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sister Helen,'" I quoted, as lightly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>"And do you think Rossetti had no truth to base
+his poem upon?" her quiet voice flowed out of the
+darkness, seeming scarcely the same speech as the
+swift, irregular utterance of a moment before. "Do
+you think that all the traditions and learning of the
+younger world meant&mdash;nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you asking me to believe in witchcraft
+and sorcery?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ask nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Not even to believe that you will press the
+knife if I refuse to free you?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>"Not even that; now!"</p>
+
+<p>Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded
+more faint, as if from fatigue or discouragement.
+It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had
+relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in
+position. I seemed to read my lady's weariness in
+the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was really
+frightened, now that her brave attempt to lull me
+into incaution had failed.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, please," I spoke earnestly. "I am
+going to set you free. I apologize for keeping you
+captive so long! But you will admit the provocation
+to my curiosity? You will forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>A sigh drifted across the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask no questions," I urged. "But will you
+not trust me to make a light and give what help I
+can? You are welcome to use the house as you
+please. Or, if you are lost or stormbound, my car
+is in the old barn and I will drive you anywhere that
+you say. Let us not spoil our adventure by suspicion.
+In good faith&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I opened my hand, releasing the lovely rope by
+which I had detained my prisoner. Then, with a
+quickening pulse, I waited. Would she stay? Would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+she spring up and escape? Would she thank me, or
+would she reply with some eccentricity unpredictable
+as her whim to tell me that tale?</p>
+
+<p>She did none of these things. The braid of hair,
+freed entirely, continued to lie supinely across my
+open palm. The coolness of the blade still lightly
+touched my wrist. She might be debating her course
+of action, I reflected. Well, I was in no haste to
+conclude the episode!</p>
+
+<p>When the silence had lasted many moments,
+however, I began to grow restive. Anxiety tinged
+my speculations. Suppose she had fainted? Or did
+she doubt my intentions, and was her quietness that
+of one on guard? I stirred tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>Two things happened simultaneously with my
+movement. The braid glided away from me, while
+the knife slipped from its position and tinkled upon
+the floor. I started up, perception of the truth seizing
+my slow wits, and reached for my flashlight.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one in the room except myself.
+Down my blanket was slipping a severed braid of
+hair, perhaps a foot in length, jaggedly cut across
+at the end farthest from my hand. Leaning over, I
+saw on the floor beside the bed a paper-knife of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+own; a sharp, serviceable tool that formed part of my
+writing kit. Before going to bed, I had taken it
+from my suitcase to trim a candle-wick, and had left
+it upon the bookstand.</p>
+
+<p>Now I understood why her voice had sounded
+more distant than seemed reasonable while I held her
+beside me. No doubt she had hacked off the detaining
+braid almost as soon as I grasped it. The knife
+she had pressed against my wrist to keep me where
+I lay while she made ready for flight; or amused
+herself with me. Flight? Say rather that she had
+leisurely withdrawn! Perhaps she had not even
+heard my magnanimous speech offering her the freedom
+that she already possessed. If she had stayed
+to hear me, probably she had laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she was still in the house.</p>
+
+<p>I rose and lighted a candle, under the impulsion
+of that idea, reserving my flashlight for the search.
+But there was no one in any of the dusty, sparsely
+furnished rooms and halls through which I hunted.
+The ancient locks on doors and windows were fastened
+as I had left them, although my lady certainly
+had entered and left at her pleasure. Puzzled and
+amused, I finally returned to my bedchamber.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>There was some difference in that room. I was
+conscious of the fact as soon as I entered and closed
+the door behind me. The candle still burned where
+I had left it, flickering slightly in some current of air.
+There was no change that the eye could find, no
+sound except the rain, yet I felt an extreme reluctance
+to go on even a step from where I stood. What I
+wanted to do was to tear open the door behind me,
+to rush out into the hall and slam the door shut
+between this room and myself.</p>
+
+<p>Why? I looked around me, sending the beam of
+the flashlight playing over the quiet place. Nothing,
+of course! I walked over to the bookcase, took up
+the braid I had left there, and sat down in an old
+armchair to study my trophy. On principle and by
+habit I had no intention of being mastered by nerves.
+It was humiliating to discover that I could be made
+nervous by the mere fact of being in an unoccupied
+farmhouse after midnight.</p>
+
+<p>The braid was magnificent. It was as broad as
+my palm, yet compressed so tightly that it was thick
+and solid to the touch. If released over someone's
+shoulders, it would have been a sumptuous cloak,
+indeed! In what madness of panic had the girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+sacrificed this beauty? How she must hate me,
+now the panic was past! The color, too, was unique,
+in my experience; a gold as vivid as auburn. Or
+was it tinged with auburn? As I leaned forward
+to catch the candle-light, a drift of that fragrance
+worn by my visitor floated from her braid.</p>
+
+<p>At once I knew what had changed in the room.
+The air that had been so pure when the house was
+opened, now was heavy with an odor of damp and
+mould that had seeped into the atmosphere as moisture
+will seep through cellar walls. One would have
+said that the door of some hideous vault had been
+opened into my bedchamber. This stench struggled,
+as it were, with the volatile perfume that clung about
+the braid; so that my senses were thrust back and
+forth between disgust and delight in the strangest
+wavering of sensation.</p>
+
+<p>I made the strongest effort to put away the effect
+this wavering had upon me. I forced myself to sit
+still and think of normal things; of the men whom
+I was to see next morning, of the plans I meant to
+discuss with them.</p>
+
+<p>Useless! The stench was making me ill. A
+wave of giddiness swept over me, and passed. My<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+heart was beating slowly and heavily. Something in
+my head pulsed in unison. I felt a frightful depression,
+that suddenly burst into an attack of fear gripping
+me like hysteria. I wanted to shriek aloud like
+a woman, to cover my eyes and run blindly. But
+at the same time my muscles failed me. Will and
+strength were arrested like frozen water.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat there, facing the door of the room, I
+became aware of Something at the window behind
+my back. Something that pressed against the open
+window and stared at me with a hideous covetousness
+beside which the greed of a beast for its prey
+is a natural, innocent appetite. I felt that Thing's
+hungry malignance like a soft, dreadful mouth sucking
+toward me, yet held away from me by some force
+vaguely based on my own resistance. And I understood
+how a man may die of horror.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, presently, I turned around. Weak and sick,
+with dragging effort I turned in my chair and faced
+the black, uncurtained window where I felt It to be.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was there, to sight or hearing. I sat
+still, and combated that which I knew <i>was</i> there.
+In the profound stillness, I heard the wind stir the
+naked branches of the trees, the flowing water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+through the fragments of the one-time dam, the
+sputtering of my candle which needed trimming.
+Sweat ran down my face and body, drenching me
+with cold. It crouched against the empty window,
+staring at me.</p>
+
+<p>After a time, the presence seemed not so close.
+At last, I seemed to know It was gone. In the gush
+of that enormous relief my remaining strength was
+swept away like a swimmer in a torrent and I collapsed
+half-fainting in my chair.</p>
+
+<p>When I was able, I rose and walked through the
+house again. Again the rooms showed nothing to
+my flashlight except dull furniture, walls peeling
+here and there from long neglect, pictures of no
+merit and dreary subject. I had expected nothing,
+and I found nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom that
+a sentence from the invisible lady's story came back
+to my mind.</p>
+
+<p>"What crouches behind her, unseen? The
+Horror takes Its own&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The bedroom door opened quietly under my
+hand. The rain had ceased and a freshening breeze
+came from the west, filling the room with sweet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+country air. The candle had burned down. While
+I stood there, the flame flickered out.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief indecision, I made my way to the
+bed, rolled myself in the blankets, and laid down
+between the four pineapple-topped posts. This time
+I kept the flashlight at my hand. But almost at once
+I slept, and slept heavily far into a bright, windy
+March morning.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Wide is the seat of the man gentle of speech."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Instruction of Ke' Gemni.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>On the second day after my return to New
+York, my Aunt Caroline Knox called me up on
+the telephone.</p>
+
+<p>There are reasons why I always feel myself at a
+disadvantage with Aunt Caroline. The first of
+these brings me to a trifling matter that I should
+have set down before, but which I have made a habit
+of ignoring so far as possible in both thought and
+speech. As was Lord Byron, I am slightly lame.
+I admit that is the only quality in common; still, I
+like the romantic association. Now, my limp is very
+slight, and I never have found it interfered much
+with things I cared to do. In fact, I am otherwise
+somewhat above the average in strength and vigor.
+But from my boyhood Aunt Caroline always made
+a point of alluding to the physical fact as often
+as possible. She considered that course a healthful
+discipline.</p>
+
+<p>"My nephew," she was accustomed to introduce<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+me. "Lame since he was seven. Roger, do not
+scowl! Yes; run over trying to save a pet dog. A
+mongrel of no value whatever!"</p>
+
+<p>Which would have left some doubt as to whether
+she referred to poor Tatters or to me, had it not been
+for her exceeding pride in our family tree.</p>
+
+<p>The second reason for my disadvantage before
+her, was her utter contempt for my profession as a
+composer of popular music.</p>
+
+<p>Today her voice came thinly to me across the
+long-distance wire.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Cousin Phillida has failed in her examinations
+again," she announced to me, with a species
+of tragic repose. "In view of her father's intellect
+and my&mdash;er&mdash;my family's, her mental status is
+inexplicable. Although, of course, there is your
+own case!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she is the most educated girl I know," I
+protested hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume you mean best educated, Roger.
+Pray do not quite lose your command of language."</p>
+
+<p>I meant exactly what I had said. Phillida has
+studied since she was three years old, exhaustively
+and exhaustedly. A vision of her plain, pale little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+face rose before me when I spoke. It is a burden
+to be the only child of a professor, particularly for a
+meek girl.</p>
+
+<p>"She has studied insufficiently," Aunt Caroline
+pursued. "She is nineteen, and her position at
+Vassar is deplorable."</p>
+
+<p>"Her health&mdash;&mdash;" I murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Would not have hampered her had she given
+proper attention to athletics! However, I did not
+call up to hear you defend Phillida in a matter of
+which you are necessarily ignorant. Her father and
+I are somewhat better judges, I should suppose, than
+a young man who is not a student in any true sense
+of the word and ignores knowledge as a purpose in
+life. Not that I wish to wound or depreciate you,
+Roger. There is, I may say, a steadiness of moral
+character beneath your frivolity of mind and pursuit.
+If my poor brother had trained you more wisely; if
+you had been <i>my</i> son&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt," I acknowledged the benevolent
+intention, with an inward quailing at the clank
+of fetters suggested. "Was there something I can
+do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you meet Phillida at the Grand Central<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+and bring her home? I cannot have her cross New
+York alone and take a second train out here. Her
+father has a lecture this afternoon and I have a club
+meeting at the house."</p>
+
+<p>"With pleasure, Aunt! What time does her
+train get in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Half after four. Thank you, Roger. And,
+she looks on you as an elder brother. I believe an
+attitude of cool disapproval on your part might
+impress upon her how she has disappointed
+the family."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave it to me, Aunt. May I take her to tea,
+between trains, and get out to your place on the six
+o'clock express?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you think best. You might advise her
+seriously over the tea."</p>
+
+<p>"A dash of lemon, as it were," I reflected.
+"Certainly, Aunt, I could."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I am really obliged!"</p>
+
+<p>"The pleasure is mine, Aunt."</p>
+
+<p>But that it was going to be Phillida's, I had
+already decided. She would need the support of tea
+and French pastry before facing her home. As for
+treating her with cool disapproval, I would sooner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+have spent a year at Vassar myself. It was my intention
+to meet her with a box of chocolates instead of
+advice. Phil was not allowed candy, her complexion
+being under cultivation. On the occasions when
+we were out together it had been my custom to
+provide a box of sweets, upon which she browsed
+luxuriously, bestowing the remnants upon some
+street child before reaching her home.</p>
+
+<p>From the telephone I turned back to that frivolous
+pursuit of which my aunt had spoken with
+such tactfully veiled contempt. She was not softened
+by the respectable fortune I had made from
+several successful musical comedies and a number of
+efforts which my publishers advertise as "high-class
+parlor pieces for the home." In fact, she felt it to be
+a grievance that my lightness should be better paid
+than the Professor's learning. In which she was
+no doubt right!</p>
+
+<p>Ever since my return from my newly purchased
+farm in Connecticut, however, I had not been working
+for money or popular approval, but for my own
+pleasure. There was a Work upon which I spent
+only special hours of delicious leisure and infinite
+labor. It held all that was forbidden to popular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+compositions; depth and sorrow and dissonances
+dearer than harmony. I called it a Symphony Polynesian,
+and I had spent years in study of barbaric
+music, instruments and kindred things that this love-child
+of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone
+or a fancy. Aunt Caroline had interrupted, this
+morning, at a very point of achievement toward
+which I had been working through the usual alternations
+of enjoyment and exasperation, elevation and
+dejection that attend most workmen. Pausing only
+to set my alarm-clock, I hurried into recording what
+I had found, in the tangible form of paper and ink.</p>
+
+<p>I always set the alarm-clock when I have an
+engagement, warned by dire experiences.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Caroline had summoned me about eleven in
+the morning. When the strident voice of the clock
+again aroused me, I had just time to dress and reach
+the Grand Central by half-past four. I recognized
+that I was hungry, that the vicinity was snowed over
+with sheets of paper, that the piano keys had acquired
+another inkstain, and my pipe had charred another
+black spot on the desk top. Well, it had been a good
+day; and Phillida's tea would have to be my belated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+luncheon or early dinner. Even so, it was necessary
+to make haste.</p>
+
+<p>It was in that haste of making ready that I uncovered
+the braid of glittering hair which I had
+brought from Connecticut. I use no exaggeration
+when I say it glittered. It did; each hair was lustrous
+with a peculiar, shining vitality, and crinkled slightly
+along its full length. With a renewed self-reproach
+at sight of its humbled exile and captivity, I took up
+the trophy of my one adventure. While I am without
+much experience, such a quantity seemed unusual.
+Also, I had not known such a mass of hair could be
+so soft and supple in the hand. My mother and little
+sister died before I can remember; and while I have
+many good friends, I have none intimate enough to
+educate me in such matters. Perhaps a consciousness
+of that trifling physical disadvantage of mine has
+made me prefer a good deal of solitude in my hours
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>The faint, tenacious yet volatile perfume drifted
+to my nostrils, as I held the braid. Who could the
+woman be who brought that costly fragrance into a
+deserted farmhouse? For so exquisite and unique a
+fragrance could only be the work of a master per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>fumer.
+There was youth in that vigorous hair,
+coquetry in the individual perfume, panic in her useless
+sacrifice of the braid I held; yet strangest self-possession
+in the telling of that fanciful tale of
+sorcery to me.</p>
+
+<p>On that tale, told dramatically in the dark, I had
+next morning blamed the weird waking nightmare
+that I had suffered after her visit. The horror of
+the night could not endure the strong sun and wind
+of the March morning that followed. Like <i>Scrooge</i>,
+I analyzed my ghost as a bit of undigested beef or
+a blot of mustard. Certainly the thing had been
+actual enough while it lasted, but my reason had
+thrust it away. That was over, I reflected, as I laid
+the braid back in the drawer. But surely the lady
+was not vanished like the nightmare? Surely I
+should find her in some neighbor's daughter, when
+my house was finished and I went there for the
+summer? She could not hide from me, with that
+bright web about her head whose twin web I held.</p>
+
+<p>It had grown so late that I had to take a taxicab
+to the Terminal, just halting at a shop long enough
+to buy a box of the chocolates my cousin preferred.
+But when I reached the great station and found my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+way through the swirl of travelers to the track
+where Phil's train should come in, I was told the
+express had been delayed.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably half an hour late," the gateman informed
+me. "Maybe more! Of course, though, she
+may pull in any time."</p>
+
+<p>Which meant no tea for Phillida; instead, a rush
+across town to the Pennsylvania station to catch the
+train for her home. As I could not leave my post
+lest she arrive in my absence, it also meant nothing
+to eat for me until we reached Aunt Caroline's hospitality;
+which was cool and restrained rather
+than festive.</p>
+
+<p>I foresaw the heavy atmosphere that would brood
+over all like a cold fog, this evening of Phil's disgraceful
+return from the scholastic arena. Ascertaining
+from the gateman that the erring train was
+certain not to pull in during the next ten minutes, I
+sought a telephone booth.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Caroline, Phil's train is going to be very
+late, possibly an hour late," I misinformed my kinswoman,
+when her voice answered me. "I have had
+nothing to eat since breakfast, and she will be hungry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+long before we reach your house. May I not take her
+to dinner here in town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not call your cousin 'Phil'," she
+rebuked me, and paused to deliberate. "You had
+no luncheon, you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"None."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Were you ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; just busy. I forgot lunch. I am beginning
+to feel it, now. Still, if you wish us to come
+straight home, do not consider me!"</p>
+
+<p>I knew of old how submission mollified Aunt
+Caroline. She relented, now.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;&mdash;! You are very good, Roger, to save
+your uncle a trip into the city to meet her. I must
+not impose upon you. But, a quiet hotel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, Aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Phillida does not deserve pampering enjoyment.
+I am consenting for your sake."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt. I wonder, then, if you
+would mind if we stopped to see a show that I especially
+want to look over, for business reasons? We
+could come out on the theatre express; as we have
+done before, you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>"Thank you. I'll take good care of her.
+Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>The receiver was still talking when I hung up.
+There is no other form of conversation so incomparably
+convenient.</p>
+
+<p>The train arrived within the half-hour. With
+the inrush of travelers, I sighted Phillida's sober
+young figure moving along the cement platform.
+She walked with dejection. Her gray suit represented
+a compromise between fashion and her
+mother's opinion of decorum, thus attaining a length
+and fulness not enough for grace yet too much for
+jauntiness. Her solemn gray hat was set too squarely
+upon the pale-brown hair, brushed back from her
+forehead. Her nice, young-girl's eyes looked out
+through a pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. She was
+too thin and too pale to content me.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw me coming toward her, her face
+brightened and colored quite warmly. She waved
+her bag with actual abandon and her lagging step
+quickened to a run.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Roger!" she exclaimed breathlessly.
+"Oh, how good of you to come!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>She gripped my hands in a candid fervor of relief
+and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so glad it is you," she insisted. "I was
+sorry the train could not be later; I wished, almost,
+it would never get in&mdash;and all the time it was you who
+were waiting for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was, and now you are about to share an
+orgy," I told her. "I have your mother's permission
+to take you to dinner, Miss Knox."</p>
+
+<p>"Here? In town? Just us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. And afterward we will take in any show
+you fancy. How does that strike you?"</p>
+
+<p>She gazed up at me, absorbing the idea and my
+seriousness. To my dismay, she grew pale again.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I really believe it will keep me from
+just dying."</p>
+
+<p>I pretended to think that a joke. But I recognized
+that my little cousin was on the sloping way
+toward a nervous breakdown.</p>
+
+<p>"No baggage?" I observed. "Good! I hope
+you did not eat too much luncheon. This will be an
+early dinner."</p>
+
+<p>She waited to take off the spectacles and put them
+in her little bag.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>"I do not need them except to study, but I didn't
+dare meet Mother without them," she explained.
+"No; I could not eat lunch, or breakfast either,
+Cousin Roger. Nor much dinner last night! Oh,
+if you knew how I dread&mdash;the grind! I should
+rather run away."</p>
+
+<p>"So we will; for this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Where&mdash;where were you going to
+take me?"</p>
+
+<p>We had crossed the great white hall to street
+level, and a taxicab was rolling up to halt before us.
+Surprised by the anxiety in the eyes she lifted to
+mine, I named the staid, quietly fastidious hotel
+where I usually took her when we were permitted an
+excursion together.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless you have a choice?" I finished.</p>
+
+<p>"I have." She breathed resolution. "I want to
+go to a restaurant with a cabaret, instead of going
+to the theatre. May I? Please, may I? Will you
+take me where I say, this one time?"</p>
+
+<p>Her earnestness amazed me. I knew what her
+mother would say. I also knew, or thought I knew
+that Phillida needed the mental relaxation which
+comes from having one's own way. In her mood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+no one else's way, however, wise or agreeable, will
+do it all.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," I yielded. "If you will promise me,
+faith of a gentlewoman, to tell Aunt Caroline that I
+took you there and you did not know where you were
+going. My shoulders are broader than yours and
+have borne the buffeting of thirty-two years instead
+of nineteen. Had you chosen the place, or shall I?"</p>
+
+<p>To my second surprise, she answered with the
+name of an uptown place where I never had been,
+and where I would have decidedly preferred not
+to take her.</p>
+
+<p>"They have a skating ballet," she urged, as I
+hesitated. "I know it is wonderful! Please,
+please&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>I gave the direction to the chauffeur and followed
+my cousin into the cab. It seemed a proper moment
+to present the chocolates from my overcoat pocket.
+When she proved too languid to unwrap the box, I
+was seriously uneasy.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot possibly know how dreadful it is
+to be the only child of two intellectual people who
+expect one to be a credit," she excused her lack of
+appetite, nervously twitching the gilt cord about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+package. "And to be stupid and a disappointment!
+Yes, as long as I can remember, I have been a disappointment.
+If only there had been another to
+divide all those expectations. If only you had been
+my brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven forbid!" I exclaimed hastily. "That
+is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't bother about explaining," she smiled
+wanly, "I understand. But you are distinguished,
+and you look it. I never will be, and I am ugly.
+Mother expects me to be an astronomer like Father
+and work with him, or to go in for club life and
+serious writing as she does. I never can do either."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither could I, Phil."</p>
+
+<p>"You are clever, successful. Everybody knows
+your name. When we are out, and people or an
+orchestra play your music, Mother always says: 'A
+trifle of my nephew's, Roger Locke. Very original,
+is it not? Of course, I do not understand music,
+but I hear that his last light opera&mdash;&mdash;' And then
+she leans back and just <i>eats up</i> all the nice things
+said about your work. She would never let you
+know it, but she does. And that is the sort of thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+she wants from me. I&mdash;I want to make cookies,
+and I love fancywork."</p>
+
+<p>The taxicab drew up with a jerk before the
+gaudy entrance to Silver Aisles.</p>
+
+<p>I imagine Phillida had the vaguest ideas of what
+such places were like. When we were settled at a
+table in a general blaze of pink lights, beside a fountain
+that ran colored water, I regarded her humorously.
+But she seemed quite contented with her
+surroundings, looking about her with an air I can best
+describe as grave excitement. At this hour, the
+room was not half filled, and the jazz orchestra had
+withdrawn to prepare for a hard night's work.</p>
+
+<p>After I had ordered our dinner, I glanced up to
+see her fingers busied loosening the severe lines of
+her brushed back hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Everyone here looks so nice," she said wistfully.
+"I wish my hair did shine and cuddle around
+my face like those women's does. Do&mdash;do I look
+queer, Cousin? You are looking at me so&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking what pretty eyes you have."</p>
+
+<p>Her pale face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"Really?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most truthfully. As for the hair, isn't that a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+matter of bottled polish and hairdressers? But you
+remind me of a question for you. Isn't a braid of
+hair this wide," I laid off the dimensions on the
+table, "this long, and thick, a good deal for a woman
+to own?"</p>
+
+<p>"Show me again."</p>
+
+<p>I obeyed, while she leaned forward to observe.</p>
+
+<p>"Not one girl in a hundred has so much," she
+pronounced judgment. "Who is she? Probably it
+isn't all her own, anyhow!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not now, but it was," I said remorsefully.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you tell? Did you measure it?"&mdash;with
+sarcasm. "Do you remember the maxim we
+used to write in copybooks? 'Measure a thousand
+times, and cut once?' One has to be cautious!"</p>
+
+<p>"I cut it first, and then measured."</p>
+
+<p>"What? Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>At last she was interested and amused. There
+was no reason why I should not tell her of my midnight
+adventure. We never repeated one another's
+little confidences.</p>
+
+<p>She listened, with many comments and exclamations,
+to the story of the unseen lady, the legend of
+the fair witch, the dagger that was a paper-knife by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the
+singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my
+second visitor. My reason had accounted for the
+experience and dismissed it. Some other part of
+myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning
+sense of horror sometimes left by a
+morbid dream.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate
+and talked. A burst of applause aroused me to this
+fact and the commencement of the first show of the
+evening. The orchestra had taken their places.</p>
+
+<p>"They will hardly begin with their best act," I
+remarked, surprised by Phillida's convulsive start
+and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice that
+formed the exhibition floor. "Your ballet on skates
+probably will come later."</p>
+
+<p>"I did not come to see the ballet," she answered,
+her voice low.</p>
+
+<p>"No? What, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"A&mdash;man I know?"</p>
+
+<p>Once when I was a little fellow, I raced headlong
+into the low-swinging branch of a tree, the bough
+striking me across the forehead so that I was bowled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+over backward amid a shower of apples. I felt a
+twin sensation, now.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, Phillida?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Someone from your home town or your college
+town?" I essayed a casual tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither. He belongs here, and they call him
+Flying Vere. He&mdash;Look! Look, Cousin!"</p>
+
+<p>I turned, and saw that the first performer was
+upon the ice floor.</p>
+
+<p>He came down the center like a silver-shod Mercury.
+In the silence, for the orchestra did not accompany
+his entrance, the faint musical ringing of his
+skates ran softly with him. My first unwilling
+recognition of his good looks and athletic grace was
+followed by an equally reluctant admission of his
+skill. Reluctant, because my anger and bewilderment
+were hot against the man. My little cousin, my
+pathetic, unworldly Phillida&mdash;and this cabaret entertainer!
+At the mere joining of their names my senses
+revolted. What could they have in common? How
+had she seen him? Having seen him, it was easy to
+understand how he had fascinated her inexperience.
+Only, what was his object?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>He had seen us, where we sat. I saw his dark
+eyes fix upon her and flash some message. Her
+plain little face irradiated, her fingers unconsciously
+twisting and wringing her napkin, she leaned forward
+to watch and answer glance for glance.</p>
+
+<p>I would rather not put into words my thoughts.
+Yet, I watched his performance. In spite of myself,
+he held me with his swift, certain skill, his vitality
+and youth.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone, with the swooping suddenness of
+his appearance. The jazz music clattered out.
+Phillida turned back to me and began to speak with
+a hushed rapture that baffled and infuriated me.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand, Cousin Roger? Now that
+you have seen him, you do understand? No! Let
+me talk, please. Let me tell you, if I can. It began
+last summer, at the school where I was cramming for
+college work. Oh, how tired I was of study! How
+tired of it I am, and always shall be! I think that
+side of me never will get rested. Then, in the
+woods, I met him. He was stopping at a hotel not
+far away. I&mdash;we&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I waited for her to go on. Instead, she abruptly
+spread wide her hands in a gesture of helplessness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>"After all, I cannot tell you. Not even you,
+Cousin! He&mdash;he liked me. He treated me just as
+a really, truly girl who would have partners at dances
+and wear fluffy frocks and curl her hair. He thought
+I was pretty!"</p>
+
+<p>The na&iuml;ve wonder and triumph of her cry, the
+challenge in her brown eyes, to my belief, were moving
+things. I registered some ugly mental comments
+on the rearing of Phil and the kind of humility that
+is <i>not</i> good for the soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" I demanded. "Of course!"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Thank you, but&mdash;no! Not pretty, except
+to him. Only to him, because he loves me."</p>
+
+<p>I do not know what impatience I exclaimed. She
+checked me, leaning across the table to grasp my hand
+in both hers.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Oh, hush, dear Cousin Roger! For it
+is quite too late. We were married six months ago;
+last autumn."</p>
+
+<p>When I could, I asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Married legally, beyond mistake? Were you
+not under eighteen years old?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was eighteen years and a half. There is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+mistake at all. We walked over to the city hall in
+the nearest town, and took out our license, and
+were married."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. I will take you home to your
+father and mother, now; then see this man, myself.
+If there is indeed no flaw in the marriage and it
+cannot be annulled, a divorce must be arranged. Any
+money I have or expect to have would be a small
+price to set you free from the miserable business.
+But the first thing is to get you home. We will
+start now."</p>
+
+<p>She detained my hand when I would have signalled
+our waiter. Her eyes, shining and solemn
+as a small child's, met mine.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Cousin, please! I am not going home any
+more. At least, not alone. I asked you to bring
+me here where he is, because I am going to stay
+with my husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Never," I stated firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I have to send for your father and take
+you home by force."</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot. I am of age."</p>
+
+<p>"Phillida, I am responsible for you to your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+parents tonight. Let me take you home, explain
+things to them, and then decide your course."</p>
+
+<p>"But that is what I most do not want to do!"
+she na&iuml;vely exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry. No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I must see the man."</p>
+
+<p>"Not&mdash;hurt&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>I recalled the man we had just seen on the skating
+floor, with a qualm of quite unreasonable bitterness.
+That anxiety of Phillida's had a flavor of irony
+for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly," I returned. "There are fortunately
+other means of persuasion than physical force."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! But you cannot persuade him to give
+me up."</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. At which, being a woman, she
+grew troubled.</p>
+
+<p>"How could you?" she urged.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had no opportunity of judging what
+influence money has on some people, Phil."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed out in relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all? Try, Cousin."</p>
+
+<p>"You trust him so much?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>"In everything, forever!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then if I succeed in buying him off, promise
+me that you will come home with me."</p>
+
+<p>"If he takes money to leave me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I should die. But I will promise if you want
+me to, because I know it never will happen. Just
+as I might promise to do anything, when I knew that
+I never would have to carry it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," I accepted the best I could get.
+"I will go find him."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no need. He is coming here to our
+table as soon as he is free."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not have you seen with him in this place."</p>
+
+<p>"But I am going to stay here with him," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, the meek eyes of Phillida, defied me.
+My faint authority was a sham. What could be
+done, I recognized, must be done through the man.</p>
+
+<p>We sat in silence, after that. Presently, her gaze
+fixed aslant on me as if to dare my interference, she
+drew up a thin gold chain that hung about her neck
+and ended beneath her blouse. From it she unfastened
+a wedding ring and gravely put the thing on
+her third finger, the school-girl romanticism of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+gesture blended with an air of little-girl naughtiness.
+She looked more fit for a nursery than for
+this business.</p>
+
+<p>I could tell from the change in her expression
+when the man was approaching. I rose, meaning
+to meet him and turn him aside from our table. But
+Phillida halted me with one deftly planted question.</p>
+
+<p>"You would not leave me alone in this place,
+Cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>Certainly I would not leave her alone at a table
+here; not even alone in appearance while I had my
+interview with the man close at hand. Yet it
+seemed impossible to speak before her. She calmly
+answered my perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"You must talk to him here, of course. I&mdash;want
+to listen to you both. Indeed, I shall not interfere
+at all, or be angry or hurt! I know how good you
+mean to be, dear; only, you do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>I sat down again, perforce. When the man's
+shadow presently fell across our table, it did not
+soothe me to see Phil thrust her hand in his, her
+small face enraptured, her fingers locking about his
+with a caress plain as a kiss. She said proudly,
+if tremulously:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>"Cousin Roger, this is my husband. Mr. Locke,
+Ethan dear."</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing. His hesitating movement to
+offer his hand I chose to ignore. I admit that my
+spirit rose against him to the point of loathing as
+he stood there, tall, correct in attire&mdash;the focus of
+admiring glances from other diners&mdash;in every way
+the antithesis of my poor Phillida.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," I bade curtly, when he did not
+speak. "Miss Knox insists that we have our interview
+here. I should have preferred otherwise, but
+her presence must not prevent what has to be said."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't prevent anything I want to say, Mr.
+Locke," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a drawl. Not the drawl of affectation,
+nor the drawl of South or West so cherished
+by the romantic, but the slow, deliberate speech of
+New England's upper coasts. It had the oddest
+effect, that honest, homely accent on the lips of a
+performer in this place. Phil drew him down to the
+third chair at the table. After which, she folded
+her hands on the edge of the cloth as if to signify to
+me how she kept her promise of neutrality, and
+looked fixedly at her glass of water instead of at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+either of us. Plainly, all action was supposed to
+proceed from me.</p>
+
+<p>"My cousin has just told me of her marriage," I
+opened, as dryly concise as I could manage explanation.
+"It is of course impossible that she should
+adopt your way of living, as she seems to have in
+mind. You may not understand, yet, that it also is
+impossible for you to adopt hers. No doubt you
+have supposed her to be the daughter of wealthy
+people, or at least people of whom money could be
+obtained. You were wrong. Professor Knox has
+nothing but his modest salary. Her parents are of
+the scholarly, not of the moneyed class. She has
+no kin who could or would support her husband or
+pay largely to be rid of him. Of all her people, I
+happen to be the best off, financially. It happens also
+that I am not sentimental, nor alarmed at the idea of
+newspaper exploitation for either of us. It is necessary
+that all this be plainly set forth before we
+go further.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, for your side: you have involved Miss
+Knox to the extent of marriage. To free her from
+this trap into which her inexperience has walked is
+worth a reasonable price. I will pay it. I shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+take her home to her father and mother tonight, and
+consult my lawyer tomorrow. He will conduct
+negotiations with you. The day Miss Knox is
+divorced from you without useless scandal or trouble-making,
+I will pay to you the sum agreed upon with
+my lawyer. If you prefer to make yourself objectionable,
+you will get nothing, now or later."</p>
+
+<p>He took it all without a flicker of the eyelids, not
+interrupting or displaying any affectation of being
+insulted. I acknowledge, now, that it was an outrageous
+speech to make to a man of whom I knew
+nothing. But it was so intended; summing up what
+I considered an outrageous situation brought about
+by his playing upon a young girl's ignorance of such
+fellows as himself. Phillida's usually pale cheeks
+were burning. Several times she would have broken
+in upon me with protests, if Vere had not silenced her
+by the merest glances of warning. A proof of his
+influence over her which had not inclined me toward
+gentleness with him!</p>
+
+<p>When I finished there was a pause before he
+turned his dark eyes to mine, and held them there.</p>
+
+<p>"Honest enough!" he drawled, with that incongruous
+coast-of-Maine tang to his leisureliness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+"I'll match you there, Mr. Locke. I don't care
+whether you make fifty thousand a year with your
+music writing, or whether you grind a street-piano
+with a tin-cup on top. It's nothing to me. I guess
+we can do without your lawyer, too. Because, you
+see, I married Mrs. Vere because I wanted her; and
+I figure on supporting her. If her folks are too
+cultivated to stand me, I'm sorry. But they won't
+have to see me. So that's settled!"</p>
+
+<p>He was honest. His glance drove that fact home
+to me with a fist-like impact. There was nothing I
+was so poorly prepared to meet.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida's hands went out to him in an impulsive
+movement. He covered them both with one of his
+for a moment before gently putting them in her lap
+with a gesture of reminder toward the revellers all
+about us. The delicacy of that thought for her was
+another disclosure of character, unconsciously made.
+Worthy or unworthy, he did love Phil.</p>
+
+<p>I am not too dully obstinate to recognize a mistake
+of my own. Whatever my bitterness against
+the man, I had to accord him some respect. I sat
+for a while striving to align my forces to attack
+this new front.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>"I don't blame you for thinking what you said,
+Mr. Locke," his voice presently spoke across my perplexity.
+"I can see the way things came to you;
+finding me here, and all! I'm glad to have had this
+chance to talk it out with one of my wife's relations.
+I'd like them to know she'll be taken care of. Outside
+of that, I guess there is nothing we have to say
+to each other."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I owe you both an apology," I
+said stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right&mdash;for both of us! I can see
+how much store you set by her."</p>
+
+<p>"But what are you going to do with her, man?"
+I burst forth. "Do you expect to keep her here;
+sitting at a table in this place and watching you do
+your turn, making your fellow performers her
+friends, seeing and learning&mdash;&mdash;?" I checked my
+outpouring of disgust. "Or do you propose to shut
+her up in some third-class boarding house day and
+night while you hang around here? Good heavens,
+Vere, do you realize what either life would be for an
+nineteen-year-old girl brought up as she has been?"</p>
+
+<p>He colored.</p>
+
+<p>"As for bringing up," he retorted, "I guess she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+couldn't be a lot more miserable than her folks worried
+her into being. But&mdash;you're right about the
+rest. That's why I was going to leave her with her
+folks yet a while, until I had a place for her. I
+mean, while I saved up enough to get the place."</p>
+
+<p>"But I wrote to him when I failed in my exams,
+Cousin Roger," Phillida broke in. "I told him that
+I would not go home. I could not bear it. I was
+coming to him, and he would just have to keep me
+with him or I should <i>die</i>. Indeed, I do not care about
+places. I think it will be lovely fun to sit here and
+watch him, or go behind the scenes with him and
+make friends with the other people. I&mdash;I am surprised
+that you are so narrow, Cousin Roger, when
+all your own best friends are theatrical people and
+artists and you think so highly of them."</p>
+
+<p>I answered nothing to that. The distance between
+the stage and this class of cabaret show was
+not to be traversed in a few seven-league words. I
+looked at Vere, who returned my look squarely
+and soberly.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't worry about her being here, Mr.
+Locke," he said. "I know better than that! But
+she has to come to me; it's her right, don't you think?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+I'll promise you to take her to a better place as soon
+as I can manage."</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a place?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm saving to get a place in the country," he
+answered diffidently. "I'm a countryman, and
+Phillida thinks she'd like it."</p>
+
+<p>"You?" I exclaimed, unable to smother my
+derision and unbelief. My glance summed up his
+fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his
+curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his
+little finger.</p>
+
+<p>He reddened through his clear, dark skin, but his
+eyes were not those of a man taken in a lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you take notice of what I do here?" He
+asked me, with the first touch of humility I had seen
+in him. "I couldn't dance or sing or do parlor tricks.
+I wasn't bred to parlors or indoors. But I learned
+to skate pretty fancy from a boy up. My folks' farm
+was on one side of a lake and the schoolhouse on
+the other. About November that lake used to freeze
+solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to
+school, and back again, before we were six years old.
+We lived on skates about half the year, I guess.
+Well&mdash;you don't care about the rest; how the farm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+was just about big enough to support my elder brother
+and his family, and I came to New York. Nor how
+I found New York pretty well filled up with folks
+who knew considerably more than I did. It was
+the manager of this place who advertised for expert
+skaters, who dressed me up like this, and paid me the
+first living wages I'd had in the city. All the same,
+I was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it.
+Always have! You're a man, Mr. Locke, and I'd
+hate you to think I was a shimmy dancer on ice and
+nothing else, or I wouldn't mention it. My father
+would have taken the buggy-whip to me, I guess, if
+he'd lived to see me in this rig. Soon as I've enough
+put by, I'll shed this perfumed suit and the cheap
+jewelry and take my wife where she can have a chance
+to forget I ever wore them."</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>like</i> them," put in Phillida ardently.
+"Please do not fuss so, Ethan; because I really do."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" I turned upon her. "Are you sure,
+then, that it is not all this cabaret glamour you really
+are in love with? Would you care for him as an ordinary,
+hard-working fellow in a pair of overalls and
+a flannel shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed up at me.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>"You have forgotten that I met Ethan while he
+was on a vacation from his work here, and roughing
+it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in
+anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby
+trousers, and funny blunt-toed shoes."</p>
+
+<p>"You served in the war?" I asked him.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. On a submarine chaser. Got pneumonia
+from exposure and was invalided home just before
+the Armistice."</p>
+
+<p>"And you came back here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came here," he corrected me. "I enlisted
+from Maine. I was discharged in New York. That
+was when I couldn't find anything I could do, until
+this skating trick came along."</p>
+
+<p>I sat thinking for a time; as long thoughts as I
+could command. The obvious course was to send for
+Phillida's father. Yet what could that vague and
+learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned
+the Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant,
+swinging his eye-glasses by their silk ribbon
+and peering at Vere in helpless distaste and consternation.
+It was practically certain that Phil would
+refuse to go home with him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>What if she did go home? I could picture the
+scene there, when the truth came out. The mortification
+of her people, the gossip in the little town,
+her outcast position among the girls and boys with
+whom she had grown up&mdash;what a martyrdom for
+a sensitive spirit! Of course, the only possible
+thing considered by Aunt Caroline would be a
+prompt divorce.</p>
+
+<p>If Phillida refused to consent to a divorce, how
+could she live at home as the wife of a man her
+parents had pronounced unfit to receive? If she
+yielded and gave up Vere, would she be much better
+off? An embarrassment to her family, the heroine
+of a stolen marriage and Reno freedom, what chance
+of happiness would she have in her conventional
+circle? Especially as she neither was a beauty nor
+the dashing type of girl who might make capital of
+such a reputation. Probably she would bury herself
+in nunlike seclusion, stay in her room when callers
+came, and wear a veil when she went out to walk.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, she would break her heart for Vere.</p>
+
+<p>Could matters be any worse if she tried life with
+him, even if the experiment eventually proved a
+failure and ended in a divorce instead of beginning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+there? Might not her parents be spared much they
+most dreaded, if their friends could be told simply
+that Phillida had made a love match and was with
+her husband?</p>
+
+<p>Finally, Phillida was a human creature with the
+right to manage her own life. Had any of us the
+right to lay hands upon her existence and mould it
+to our fancy?</p>
+
+<p>I looked up from my revery to find the eyes of
+both of them fixed on me as if I held their doom
+balanced upon my palm. Perhaps, in a sense, I did.</p>
+
+<p>"Phil, will you come home to your father and
+mother, and consider all this a bit more before you
+decide?" I asked her.</p>
+
+<p>I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Cousin Roger," she refused firmly.
+"Please forgive me. I know how kind you mean
+to be, but&mdash;no! I shall stay with Ethan. If ever you
+love anyone, you will understand."</p>
+
+<p>I accepted the decision. There was no reason
+why I should think of the woman who had spoken to
+me across the darkness in a voice of melody and
+power, or why I should seem to feel again the ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>quisite,
+live softness of her braid within my hand.
+But it was so.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," I said. "Vere, it is to you, then,
+as Phillida's husband, that I must address any plans.
+I do not pretend to like the course she has taken. I
+do not know what action her parents may take,
+although I believe they will listen to my advice.
+Putting all that aside, she refuses to come with me
+and you agree that she cannot stay here.</p>
+
+<p>"I have just bought a farm in Connecticut, intending
+to use it as a summer home. There are some
+alterations and repairs being made, but little is to be
+changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable
+shape. Here is my offer. Take Phillida there, and
+I will make you manager of the place. I will pay all
+reasonable expenses of putting the land into proper
+condition and getting such stock and equipment as
+you judge best; all expenses and up-keep of the house
+and whatever salary usually is drawn by such managers
+of small estates. I shall be there, on and off, but
+you and Phillida must take charge of everything. I
+am neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not
+wish to be either. I bought the place only because
+New York is too hot to work in during three months<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+of the year, and I hate summer resorts. Keep my
+room ready, and you will find I disturb you little.
+Of course, hire what servants are necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside
+of five years, I will deed the whole thing to you
+two. To put it better, if you succeed in making the
+farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to
+you and withdraw. If you fail&mdash;well, I suppose you
+will be no worse off than you are now!"</p>
+
+<p>They were stricken speechless. Perhaps my attitude
+had not pointed to such a conclusion of our interview.
+Phillida told me long afterward that she expected
+me to bid them good-evening and abandon
+them forever, as my mildest course; with alternative
+possibilities such as summoning a policeman and
+having Vere haled to prison. Seeing their condition,
+I rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I will stroll about and leave you a chance to
+talk it over," I declared; although there are few
+ordeals I dislike more than displaying my limp about
+such public rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Vere stopped me, rising as I rose.</p>
+
+<p>"No need of that, for us," he answered, facing
+me across the little table. "About giving us your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+farm, Mr. Locke, that's for the future! Just now,
+the manager's job is plenty big enough to thank you
+for. I wish I could say it better. If you'll stay here
+with Phillida for ten minutes, until I can get back,
+I'll be obliged."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?"</p>
+
+<p>"To resign here, and get my outfit into a
+suitcase."</p>
+
+<p>He had taken up my challenge like a man, at
+least. There were none of the hesitations and excuses
+to stay in town that I had half expected. It
+pleased me that he decided for Phil as well as himself.
+Some of my ideas about marriage are antiquated,
+I admit. I nodded to him, and sat
+down again.</p>
+
+<p>It is unnecessary to record the childish things
+Phillida tried to say to me, while he was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so happy," was her apology for threatened
+tears. "I never knew anyone&mdash;except Ethan&mdash;could
+be so kind. And&mdash;and, will you tell Father
+and Mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." I winced, though, at that prospect.
+"Give me that little bag you carry on your wrist."</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed, wide-eyed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>"You do tote a powder-puff. I did not know
+whether Aunt Caroline permitted it. Rub it on your
+nose," I advised, passing the bit of fluff to her.</p>
+
+<p>While she complied, almost like a normally frivolous
+girl, I used the moment to transfer a few banknotes
+to the bag, so some need might not find
+her penniless.</p>
+
+<p>Vere came back in not much more than the promised
+ten minutes. He had changed to gray street
+clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the diamond
+had disappeared from his finger and his curly
+head looked as if it had been held under a water-faucet
+and vigorously toweled to lessen the brilliantine
+gloss.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll tell us where your farm is, Mr.
+Locke, we'll start," he volunteered.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring
+trust.</p>
+
+<p>"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase
+to be called for. We shall have to get it, dear."</p>
+
+<p>In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing
+promptitude. There was both reassurance and
+pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness
+pressing forward&mdash;where? They did not know, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+I. Certainly we did not dream how strange a goal
+awaited one of us three, or on what weird, desolate
+path that traveler's foot was already set.</p>
+
+<p>"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight,"
+I modified their plan. "Tomorrow is time enough
+to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has had
+enough excitement for one day. I will write full
+directions for the trip, Vere, on the back of this
+timetable of the railroad you must take."</p>
+
+<p>They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed,
+they were in a state of mind to have assented
+if I advised them to sit out on a park bench
+until morning.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage
+into a taxicab, I suffered a bad pang of misgiving.
+What responsibility was I assuming in letting
+my little-girl cousin go like this? What did I
+know of this man, or where he would take her? I
+think Phillida divined something of my trouble, for
+she leaned out the door to me and held up her face
+like a child's to be kissed.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so <i>happy</i>," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>I turned to Vere; who had a long envelope in
+readiness to put in my hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>"I guess you might like to have these for a
+while, Mr. Locke," he said, with one of his slow,
+straightforward glances.</p>
+
+<p>With which farewells I had to be content, and
+watch their taxi swing out into the bright-dark flow
+of traffic where it was lost from my sight. After
+which, I entered another taxicab by my unromantic
+self and was driven to that railroad station where
+I would find a train bound to the college town that
+was the home of Aunt Caroline and her husband.
+One always thought of Phil's parents in that order,
+although the Professor was a moderately distinguished
+scientist and his spouse merely masterful in
+her own limited circle.</p>
+
+<p>The envelope Vere had given me contained their
+marriage certificate, his release from the Navy, and
+his membership card in the American Legion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave
+maidens on the pebbles."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ptah-Hotep.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned
+from my sleep by the bell of the telephone beside my
+bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I had not
+returned to my apartment until dawn. Nightmare
+doubts galloped ruthless hoofs over any repose.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida's voice came over the wire to me like
+the morning song of a bird.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Cousin Roger. We are going
+to take the train in a few moments. But I could not
+leave New York without telling you how happy I
+am. Are you&mdash;did I wake you up? I was afraid
+that I might, but Ethan said you would like me to
+call, even so."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, it was the kindest thought you ever
+had," I told her fervently.</p>
+
+<p>"Was it?" she hesitated. "Then&mdash;were they
+pretty dreadful to you at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>"Do you suppose they will <i>do</i> anything dreadful
+about us?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>It did not seem necessary to tell her that Aunt
+Caroline did not know where the runaways had gone,
+and was thereby debarred from hasty action. Phillida's
+father had privately agreed with me in this.</p>
+
+<p>"I am so very happy, Cousin Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad, Phil."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will come to the farm soon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Soon," I promised.</p>
+
+<p>So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her
+galloped themselves away, routed for that time. Like
+my gold-fish when their bowl has been unduly shaken,
+I sank down again into the quieted waters of my
+little world and absorption in my own affairs. There
+have been hours when I wondered if I was of more
+importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact.</p>
+
+<p>A month passed before I kept my promise to go
+to the farm in Connecticut.</p>
+
+<p>As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young
+couple alone for a period of adjustment. Also, I was
+curious to see how they would handle the business
+left to them. I held telephone conversations with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+Phillida, and with various contractors now and then.
+I sent out the furnishings for my own room. Everything
+else I purposely left to the experimenters.</p>
+
+<p>There was a second reason, more obscure. I
+wanted to keep for a while the little mystery of the
+lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the
+dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare
+incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare
+of such delicately spiced morsels, and I relished the
+savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite
+ready to find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of
+some neighbor, who had sought shelter from the
+storm in that supposedly empty house and probably
+mistaken me for a tramp.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and
+prove that the adventure was ended, that she had
+been a bird of passage who had gone on with no
+thought of return.</p>
+
+<p>With all these delays, and the fact that my work
+really kept me busy in town, April was verging
+toward May when I finally saw the last of my luggage
+put into the car and started on my fifty-mile
+drive to the house by the lake. I did not take this
+first visit very seriously, or intend it to be over long.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+To be a constraint upon the household I had established,
+or assume a right there, was far from the
+course I planned. It was not certain Vere and I
+would be comfortable housemates. But to stay
+away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much
+as to stay too long, I considered. Probably a week
+would be about enough for this time.</p>
+
+<p>So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first
+great division of my life into the second; not hearing
+the closing of the gate through which there was no
+turning back.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"The very room, coz she was in,<br />
+Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 8.5em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">The Courtin'.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the
+country air afloat with motes like dust of gold. The
+place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the
+young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered
+hot with yellow sparkles.</p>
+
+<p>The house was transformed. The cream-colored
+stucco that hid its homely walls, deep, arched porches
+that took the place of the old shallow affairs, scarlet
+Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been&mdash;all
+united in giving it the gayest, most modern air
+imaginable. A gravel drive curved in beneath the
+new porte-coch&egrave;re, inviting the wheels of my car to
+explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds
+laid out. The new dam was up, and the miniature
+lake no longer suggested a swamp. If the place had
+appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out
+its arms to me and laughed an invitation.</p>
+
+<p>As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+and a girl sped around the veranda to meet me. She
+cast herself into my arms before I fairly realized this
+was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the
+house! After the first greetings I held her off to
+analyze the change.</p>
+
+<p>She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners
+of her once sad little mouth turned up instead of
+down and developed&mdash;I looked twice&mdash;yes, developed
+a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen
+brushed plainly back, now was parted on one side
+and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her
+cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was
+attired in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash
+knotted in front quite daringly, for Phillida.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired.</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and
+smoothed the sash. I noticed she wore above her
+wedding ring that "diamond" which once had
+adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It
+shone bravely in the sunlight with quite a display of
+fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her hand for
+me to see.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we
+have not very much money yet, and I do not care<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+about all the engagement rings that ever were
+thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might
+notice that I had none and think slightingly of Ethan.
+So I asked him, and we went to a jeweler, who made
+it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you know.
+It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the
+biggest diamond."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are still happy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forever and ever, world without end," she
+answered solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>We went in.</p>
+
+<p>Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic
+in the long-closed house. Quaint furniture, no
+longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness and
+polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery
+in cheerful tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs,
+order and daintiness everywhere changed the interior
+out of my recognition. Already the atmosphere of
+home and cheer was established.</p>
+
+<p>"Come see your rooms," Phillida invited, enraptured
+by my admiration. "They are so pretty!"</p>
+
+<p>She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and
+ushered me into the room of graceful adventure and
+grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>I had ordered the partition removed between the
+two chambers on this side, giving me one large room.
+This, with the little bathroom attached, occupied the
+entire large frontage of the house. This long,
+spacious room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs,
+walls echoing the rugs' smoke-blue, my piano in a
+bright corner, my special easychairs and writing-table
+in their due places, welcomed me with such
+familiar comfort that I could not identify the neglected
+chamber where I had slept one night in the old
+bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The windows
+were opened, and white curtains with their
+over-draperies of blue silk were swinging in and out
+on a fresh breeze where the Horror of my dream
+had seemed to press itself against the black panes.
+Decidedly, I must have had a bad attack of indigestion
+that night!</p>
+
+<p>"See how nice?" Phillida was urging appreciation
+at my side. "We swung those lovely old hangings
+from the arch, so they can be drawn across the
+bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I
+do not know why you <i>should</i> like, everything is
+so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came safely,
+and all your darling lamps. And&mdash;and I hope you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+like it so well, Cousin Roger, that you will stay
+here always!"</p>
+
+<p>When she left me alone, I walked to the different
+windows, contemplating the stretches of lawn dotted
+with budding apple trees and the lake that lay beyond
+shining in the sun. Was Phillida's charming wish
+to become a fact, I wondered? Could this rest
+and calm hold me content here, where I had meant
+merely to pause and pass on? I looked at the yellow
+country road meandering past the lake into unseen
+distance. Should I ever see my Lady of the Beautiful
+Tresses come that way, or travel that road to where
+she lived? If I did meet her, would she forgive me
+the loss of her braid? There would be a test for the
+sweetness of her disposition!</p>
+
+<p>When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me
+downstairs, I found Vere awaiting me beside Phillida.
+We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant
+speech about their having expected me sooner. If
+pale, timid Phil had become a surprising butterfly,
+Vere had taken the reverse progress toward the sober
+grub. I like him better in outing clothes, although
+he showed even more the unusual good looks which
+so unreasonably prejudiced me against him. If he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+felt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil
+trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did
+as well! It was then I discovered that his wife's
+pet name for him fitted like a glove. She called
+him "Drawls."</p>
+
+<p>The luncheon was good; cooked and served by a
+middle-aged Swedish woman named Cristina.
+Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by
+the lady of the house, to view the new fittings and
+improvements. Most odd and pretty it was to see
+Phillida in that r&ocirc;le of housewife, and to watch her
+pride in Vere and deference to him. Let me record
+that I never saw the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail
+in this settled course toward her husband. Whether
+it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring
+domestic methods, or of consciousness that outsiders
+might rate Vere below his wife in station and education,
+so her respect for him must forbid their slight,
+I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or
+speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose
+they may have had the usual conjugal differings,
+neither of them being angelic. If so, no outsider
+ever glimpsed the fact.</p>
+
+<p>We spoke of nothing serious on that first day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+They both showed me the various improvements
+finished or progressing, indoors or out.</p>
+
+<p>We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite
+early, afterward, I excused myself, and left together
+the two who were still on their honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p>At the door of my room, I pushed a wall-switch
+that lighted simultaneously three lamps. In this I
+had repeated the arrangement used by me for years
+in my city apartment. I have a demand for light
+somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not
+indulging it. There flashed out of the dusk a large
+lamp upon my writing-table, a tall floor-lamp beside
+the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my
+bed at the far end of the room. All three were
+shaded in a smoke-blue and rose-color effect that long
+since had caught my fancy for night work; the
+shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones,
+rough-cut things of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and
+baroque pearl.</p>
+
+<p>I lay emphasis upon this, to make clear how
+normal, serene and even familiar in effect was the
+room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the door
+behind me and stood in that softly brilliant radiance,
+a shudder shook me from head to foot with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+violence of an electric shock. A sense of suffocation
+caught at my throat like an unseen hand.</p>
+
+<p>Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn
+breath, leaving only astonishment in their wake.
+Presently I went on with the purpose that had
+brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the table
+and beginning to unpack the work which I had been
+doing in New York. As I laid out the first sheets of
+music, there drifted to my ears that vague sound
+from the lake I had heard on my first night visit here,
+while I stood on the tumble-down porch. The sound
+that was like the smack of glutinous lips, or some
+creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime.
+As before, I wondered what movement of the shallow
+waters could produce that result. Not the tide, now,
+for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from
+Long Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall
+flowed on as a reminder of that fact.</p>
+
+<p>The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside
+the windows offered nothing unusual to
+be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at
+my writing-table.</p>
+
+<p>I am not accustomed to heed time. There never
+has been anyone to care what hours I kept, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+work best at night. Midnight was long past when I
+thought of rest.</p>
+
+<p>I declare that I thought of nothing more; not
+even recalling the vague unease felt on entering the
+room. A day spent in the fresh air, followed by
+an evening of hard work and journeyings between
+the piano and table, had left me utterly weary. When
+I lay down, it was to sleep at once.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"I have made a story that hath not been heard;<br />
+A great feat of arms that hath not been seen!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 13em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Amenemhe'et.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to
+wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles toward
+shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep I dragged
+myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity.
+Peril had stolen upon me in my unconsciousness, a
+stalking beast. I knew that with nightmare certainty.
+It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside
+my brain, wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand
+with it against the menace. And my brain answered,
+but with infinite difficulty; like a drugged
+warrior who hears the clang of battle and forces
+numbed limbs to stir, arise and grasp the sword.</p>
+
+<p>I was awake. Suddenly; the swimmer reaching
+the surface!</p>
+
+<p>How shall I describe Fear incarnate? The Horror
+was at the open window opposite the foot of
+my bed, staring in upon me with slavering covetousness
+of the prey It watched. I lay there, and felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+It seek for me across the darkness with tentacles of
+evil that groped for some part of me upon which It
+might lay hold.</p>
+
+<p>The room was still. Between the draperies, the
+window showed nothing to the eye except a dark
+square faintly tinged with the night luminance of the
+sky. There was nothing to see; nothing to hear.
+But gradually I became aware of a hideous odor of
+mould and mildew, of must and damp decay that
+loaded the air with disgust.</p>
+
+<p>I lay there, and opposed the approach of the
+Thing with all the will of resistance in me. The
+sweat poured from my whole body, so that I lay as in
+water and the drenched linen of my sleeping-suit
+clung coldly to me.</p>
+
+<p>It could not pass the defense of my will. I felt
+the malevolent fury of Its striving. Like the antenn&aelig;
+of some monstrous insect brushing about my
+body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about my mental
+self, examining, searching where It might seize. It
+had not yet found the weakness It sought. If
+It did&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>The sickening, vault-like air I must breathe
+fought for It. So did the darkness. All this time,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+or the time that seemed so long, I had no more command
+of my body than a cataleptic patient. Every
+ounce of force in me had rushed to support the two
+warriors of the battle: the brain and will that opposed
+the clutching menace. But now, as I grew more and
+more fully awake, out of very loathing and danger
+I drew determination. Slowly, painfully, I began to
+free my right arm and hand from this paralysis.</p>
+
+<p>As I advanced in resolution, the Thing seemed
+to recoil. Inch by inch, I moved my hand across the
+bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand beside me.
+In proportion as I moved, the dreadful tentacles
+drew back and away. A last effort, and the chain
+was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.</p>
+
+<p>Rosy light from the lamp flashed over the room.
+All the quiet comfort of the place sprang into view as
+if to reassure me; the piano open as I had left it, the
+table strewn with my evening's work, each bit of
+furniture, each drapery or trinket undisturbed.</p>
+
+<p>The Thing was gone. In the hush I heard my
+panting breath and the tick of my watch on the
+stand. It was two o'clock in the morning. As I
+mechanically read the hour, a cock somewhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+shrilled its second call before dawn. The Horror
+had been true to the legendary time of apparitions.</p>
+
+<p>Weak and chilled, I presently made an attempt
+to rise. But at the movement, a wave of sickness
+swept through me. The room seemed to rock and
+swing. I had just time to recognize the grip of
+faintness before I fell back on the pillow.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils, which
+expanded avidly for this new air. Perfume that was
+a tonic, a subtle elixir; that sparkled upon the senses,
+sank suavely and healingly through me, so that I
+seemed to draw refreshment with each breath. Reluctantly,
+I aroused more and more in response to
+this unusual stimulant; which somehow gave delicious
+rest yet drew me from it into life.</p>
+
+<p>I could have sworn someone had touched me.
+With some exclamation on my lips, I started up; to
+find myself in darkness. The lamps I had left lighted
+burned no longer.</p>
+
+<p>This time there was no terror in my awakening.
+No Thing of nightmare pressed against my window-space.
+The fragrance persisted; the ghastly smell
+of mould and corruption was gone. But I wanted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+light for all that! Reaching for the lamp beside me
+on its stand, I found the little chain. I felt the
+chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that
+should have meant light; but no answering brightness
+sprang up.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, across the dark came a voice; a voice
+low-pitched, soft without weakness, keen with
+exultation:</p>
+
+<p>"Victory! Victory! You have no need of
+light&mdash;who conquered in darkness! The Enemy
+has fled. It has covered the Unspeakable Eyes from
+the eyes of a man. By the will of a man Its will
+has been forbidden. It has dragged Itself back to
+the Barrier and cowers there for this time. Oh,
+soldier on the dreadful Frontier, be proud, putting
+off your armor tonight! Be proud, and rest."</p>
+
+<p>Those practical people who are never unnerved
+by the intangible, may gauge if they can the weirdness
+of this address following my first experience,
+and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess
+to a moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that
+of the woman who had trailed her braid of hair into
+my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how
+did she know of the Thing's visit to me? I had not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+spoken nor uttered a cry throughout Its visitation.
+How could she have knowledge of that silent struggle
+between It and me, or of my escape so narrowly won.
+How, unless she too&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>I groped for a glass of water left on my stand.
+I drank, and felt my dry throat relax.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>A sigh trembled toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"I am one who stands on the threshold of your
+beautiful world, as a traveler stands outside a lighted
+palace, gazing where she may not enter, and feeling
+the winter about her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool,"
+I said bruskly. "You are a woman. The woman
+who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not
+long ago, to save herself from capture!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than
+the One which came for you a while since."</p>
+
+<p>"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of
+flesh and blood, or clever mechanism? You know it.
+Perhaps you produced it?"</p>
+
+<p>The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless
+heat against her cool melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>"Real? What is real?" she challenged me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+"Turn to the sciences that you should understand better
+than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a
+million years men have vowed you touch empty air.
+They saw and felt it empty. But now a child knows
+air swarms with life. In that thin nothingness,
+crowd and move the distributors of death, disease,
+health, vigor&mdash;existence itself. The water you have
+just tasted is pure and clear in the glass? Pure?
+Each drop is an ocean of inhabitants clean and unclean.
+I speak commonplaces. But is there no
+knowledge not yet commonplace? Oh man, with
+all the unfathomed universe about us, <i>dare</i> you pronounce
+what is real?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is natural," I began.</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted me.</p>
+
+<p>"Doubtless what is not natural cannot and does
+not exist. Have you, then, measured Nature? He
+was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge, who
+compared Man to a child wandering on the shore of
+a vast ocean and picking up a pebble here and there."</p>
+
+<p>"Of what would you convince me? And, why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of what? Danger! Why? Would you watch
+a man enter a jungle where some hideous beast
+crouched in ambush, while you neither warned nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+armed him? I am here to turn you back. I
+am the native of that country who runs to cry
+warning to a stranger; to put into his hand the
+weapon of understanding."</p>
+
+<p>So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was in her voice,
+that again chill touched me. The clammy dampness
+of my garments hung on my limbs as a reminder of
+the Thing, real or unreal, that twice had made Its
+presence felt beyond denial. Wild as her words
+might be, their incredible suggestion was matched
+by my experience. I sought with my eyes for her,
+before answering. The room was dark, yet the
+darker bulk of furniture loomed out enough to be
+distinguishable. No figure was visible, even traced
+by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any
+movement to seek her would mean her flight.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that you want me to go away
+from this place?" I questioned.</p>
+
+<p>The sigh came again, just audibly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why should you die?"</p>
+
+<p>Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful?
+Did I not hear a wistful reluctance in her tone? Excitement
+ran along my veins like burning oil on flowing
+water. The woman hidden in the dark, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+association of her voice with the strange, exquisite
+fragrance I breathed, the thought of beauty in her
+born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized&mdash;all
+blended in a spell of human magic. I have said I
+was a man much alone, and a lame man who
+craved adventure.</p>
+
+<p>"Just now," I said, "you spoke of some victory.
+You called me&mdash;soldier."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not victory to have driven back the Dark
+One? Is he not a soldier who, aroused in the night
+to meet dreadful assault, sets his face to the enemy
+and battles front to front? Before the Eyes men
+and women have died or lost reason, or fled across
+half the world, broken by fear. What are the wars
+of man with man, compared with a man's battle
+against the Unknown? I honor you! I salute you!
+But&mdash;soldier alone on the forbidden Frontier, go!
+Join your fellows in the world alloted to you; live,
+nor seek to tread where mankind is not sent."</p>
+
+<p>"How can there be wrong in facing a situation
+that I did not cause?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no wrong. There is danger."</p>
+
+<p>"What danger?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask me?" she retorted with a hint of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+impatience. "You who have felt Its grope toward
+your inner spirit?"</p>
+
+<p>I shuddered, remembering the brush of those
+antenn&aelig;, exploring, examining! But I persisted, beyond
+my every-day nature. Her speech was for me
+like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed
+the Norsemen to war fury.</p>
+
+<p>"You say I came off victor," I reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But can you conquer again, and again,
+and again? Will you not feel strength fail, health
+break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn
+down by the Thing that knows no weariness and
+fall its prey at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will come&mdash;often?"</p>
+
+<p>"Until one conquers, It will come."</p>
+
+<p>I forced away a qualm of panic.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you know?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask me not. I do know."</p>
+
+<p>"But, look here!" I argued. "If as you say,
+this creature was not meant to meet mankind, how
+can It come after me this way?"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to pause, finally answering with
+reluctance:</p>
+
+<p>"Because, two centuries ago one of the race<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+of man here broke through the awful Barrier that
+rears a wall between human kind and those dark
+forms of life to which It belongs. For know that a
+human will to evil can force a breach in that Barrier,
+which those on the other side never could pass
+without such aid."</p>
+
+<p>I neither understood nor believed. At least, I
+told myself that I did not believe her wild, legendary
+explanation of the nightmare Thing that visited me.
+I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to
+offend her by saying so!</p>
+
+<p>"You will go," she presently mistook my silence
+for surrender. "You are wise as well as brave.
+Good go with you! Good walk beside you in that
+happy world where you live!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" I cried sharply. Her voice had
+seemed to recede from me, a retreating whisper at
+the last word. "No! I will not go. I must&mdash;I
+will know more of you. You are no phantom. Who
+are you? Where&mdash;when can I see you in daylight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I came to hold a light before the dreadful path.
+The warning is given."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>"But you will come again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What have I to do with It, who am more
+helpless before It than you? Go; and give thanks
+that you may."</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could.
+"I am not going away from this house without better
+reason. All this is too sudden and too new to
+me. If you have more knowledge than I, you
+have no right to desert me half-convinced of what
+I should do."</p>
+
+<p>"I can stay no longer."</p>
+
+<p>"Why can you not come again?"</p>
+
+<p>"You plan to trap me," she reproached.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go
+as you please; I will not make a movement
+toward you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not try&mdash;to see me, even?" she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Not even that, if you forbid."</p>
+
+<p>There was a long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps&mdash;&mdash;" drifted to me, a faint distant
+word on the wind that had begun to stir the tree-branches
+and flutter through my room.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>She was gone. There sounded a click whose
+meaning did not at once strike me, intent as I was
+upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no
+reply, before judging that I might rise without
+breaking my promise. Then I recognized the click
+of a moment before, as that of the electric switch
+beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my
+lights at her entrance and now restored them. I
+pulled the chain of my reading-lamp, and this time
+light flashed over the room.</p>
+
+<p>I had known no one would be there, and no one
+was. Yet I was disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock
+downstairs strike four. Not a breath or a step
+stirred in the house. The damp freshness of coming
+dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy
+and bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the
+unknown fragrance in my room. The melancholy
+depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath
+the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed
+to detect a lurking foulness of mould and decay.</p>
+
+<p>I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp
+for the coming of sunrise.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings
+live upon sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate
+perfumes."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Oriental Mythology.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese
+chimes, merrily summoned me to the dining-room;
+a homely spell to exercise the phantoms of the night.</p>
+
+<p>My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white
+middy blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place
+behind the coffeepot. Vere sat opposite her at the
+round table. They were holding hands across the
+rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in
+a shining content that made my solitariness rather
+drab and dull to my own contemplation. At my
+clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere
+rose while Phillida welcomed me to my chair and
+went into a young housewife's pretty solicitude about
+my fruit and hot eggs.</p>
+
+<p>The sun glinted across the table. The very servant
+had a smiling air of enjoying the occasion. I
+never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big brindle
+cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+dainty Persian or Angora, but a battered veteran
+whose nicked ears and scarred tail proved him a
+battling cat of ring experience.</p>
+
+<p>"I planned to have a wee white kitten," Phil
+explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the
+feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon, you
+know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother
+always forbade pets because she believed animals
+carry germs? I meant to have a puss, if ever I had
+a home of my own. This one just walked into the
+kitchen on the first day we came here. Ethan said it
+was a lucky sign when a cat came to a new home.
+He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we
+had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided
+to keep it instead of a kitten. It really is more cat!"</p>
+
+<p>What footing was here for dreary terrors? In
+a mirror across the room I glimpsed my own countenance
+looking quite as usual. No over-night white
+hairs appeared; no upstanding look such as the
+legend gave to Sir Sintram after he met the
+Little Master.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal, Vere asked me to walk over to
+the lake with him.</p>
+
+<p>We strolled through the old orchard toward the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+dam. This was my side of the house. In passing,
+I looked up at the window against which the Thing
+had seemed to press Itself with sickening lust for
+me. Phillida was framed in the open square, and
+shook a dustcloth at us by way of greeting and
+evidence of her busyness.</p>
+
+<p>The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement,
+except at the head of the dam. There the
+water poured over with foam and tumult, an amber-brown
+cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush
+on below in a winding stream that grew calmer
+as it flowed.</p>
+
+<p>"We must put our lake in order, Vere," I observed,
+as we stood on a knoll at the head of the dam.
+"All this growth of rank vegetation ought to be
+pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the
+bottom cleaned up. Water-lilies would look better
+than cat-tails."</p>
+
+<p>To my surprise, he did not assent. Instead, he
+set his foot on a boulder and rested his arm upon
+his knee; looking into the clear water.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Locke, I just about hate saying what I
+have to," he told me in his sober, leisurely fashion.
+"I expect you won't like it; not at all. Well&mdash;best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+said before you get deeper in. I can't see my way
+to make farming this place pay."</p>
+
+<p>I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst
+estimate of Vere, I had imagined he would stick the
+thing out a little longer than this. Poor Phillida's
+time of happiness should have lasted more than these
+few weeks. But the call of New York, of the
+"lounge lizard's" ease and unhealthy excitement
+had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all.
+The blow was too sore.</p>
+
+<p>"There are too few acres of arable land, and
+they're used up," Vere was continuing. "I've seen
+plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New England.
+You could pour money into the soil out of
+a gold pitcher these five years to come, before it
+began to pay you back. And then your money
+might better have been put anywhere in bank, for
+profit! I saw that, the first week here. Since then
+I've been looking around for something better to do."</p>
+
+<p>"And have found it, of course," I said bitingly.
+"Or else you would be drawing your salary as manager
+and saying nothing to me of all this! Well,
+where does poor Phil go, and when?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me
+with calm surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't exactly know that my wife was going
+anywhere, Mr. Locke."</p>
+
+<p>"What? You do not mean to leave the farm?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've
+been calculating how to make it pay. That won't
+be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a wagon-load
+into town! If you think I'm wrong, call in any
+practical man who knows this sort of business.
+We've got to think closer to win here. That's why
+I'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying
+it up."</p>
+
+<p>"The lake, Vere? There isn't enough water-power
+over the dam to do any more than run a toy,
+is there?"</p>
+
+<p>He motioned me nearer to where he stood
+gazing down.</p>
+
+<p>"Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke?
+Brown like forest water, sort of green-lighted because
+the bottom is like turf; neither mud nor sand,
+but a kind of under-water moss? You see? It's
+pure and clean, with a little fishy smell about it.
+Matter of fact, it is forest water! Comes from way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+off yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out
+into our lake, here. I borrowed a boat and followed
+back two miles before it got too shallow for me.
+Boys have caught trout here three times since I've
+been watching."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"My father was fish-warden in our district. I
+learned the business. If you're willing, I can start
+some trout-raising that ought to pay well. You
+know, the State is glad to help game preserving,
+free."</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the
+subject, in his quiet, unpretentious manner; producing
+notes and diagrams from his pockets. He
+had written to various authorities and exhibited their
+replies. He knew exactly what the State would do,
+what he himself must do, and what investment of
+money would be required. I listened to him in admiration
+and astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>From fish raising, he went on to discuss each
+acre of the farm; its best use in view of its situation,
+condition, and our needs. We could afford so much
+labor, it appeared, and no more. We must have
+certain apparatus; methodically listed with prices.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+If we used a certain sheltered south field for a peach
+orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and
+have giant-powder blast deep beds for them in order
+that they might soon bear fruit.</p>
+
+<p>When at last he ended his deceptive speech that
+sounded so lazy while implying so much energy, and
+turned his black eyes from the papers on his knee to
+my face, I had been routed long since.</p>
+
+<p>"Vere," I said abruptly, "did you know that I
+thought you were going to desert the farm, when
+you began to speak?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me;
+haven't had any occasion to! You don't judge me a
+fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would anyone
+else, yet!"</p>
+
+<p>He began to gather his papers together, his attention
+divided with them while he finished his answer:</p>
+
+<p>"There will be plenty of time before that 'yet'
+runs out. Mighty pleasant time, thanks to you,
+Mr. Locke! Phillida and I expect to enjoy building
+things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all
+built. Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the
+more because I know how you feel. Now, if you'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+be interested to look over these plans or submit
+them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection,
+I'll just turn them over to you."</p>
+
+<p>He had so accurately measured me that I was
+disconcerted. It was quite true that he was compelling
+my respect, while my first dislike of him
+still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind.
+I felt ungenerous, but I would not lie to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a queer fellow, Vere," I said. "Leave
+that to time, as you say! As for the plans, they
+are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been
+my way to 'phone for an expert when anything was
+to be done, or to buy what I fancied and pay the
+bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans
+seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate
+in cost. Keep them, and carry them out as soon as
+that may be done. You are master here, not I."</p>
+
+<p>We walked back together through the sun and
+freshness of the early spring morning. As we
+neared the house Phillida's voice hailed us. She
+was at my window again, leaning out with her hair
+wind-ruffled about her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Roger," she summoned me, "I have
+found out what makes your room as sweet as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+garden of spices. See what it is to be a composer
+completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the
+most gorgeous scents to lay on one's pillow! And
+all enclosed in antique gold!"</p>
+
+<p>She held up some small object that shone in
+the sunlight. "Throw it down," I begged, startled
+into excitement.</p>
+
+<p>She complied, laughing. Vere sprang forward,
+but I made a quicker step and caught the thing.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought
+into openwork, about the size of a walnut, that
+fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain or ribbon
+and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen
+perfume or essence supposed to be reviving in case
+miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to overwhelm
+her; as ladies did in past centuries and do no longer.</p>
+
+<p>Whose gentle pity had brought this pomander to
+my pillow, to help me from that faintness which had
+followed my struggle with the Thing? Whose was
+the exquisite, individual fragrance contained in the
+ball I held? I had a vision of a figure, surely light
+and soft of movement, haloed with such matchless
+hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by
+timid step across my room; within my reach while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+I lay inert. Perhaps her face had bent near mine
+in her doubt of my life or death; hidden eyes had
+studied me in the scanty starlight.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, for Ethan Vere's good looks and athlete's
+grace, to lure my lady from her masquerade!</p>
+
+<p>"Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? 'Fess
+up!" Phillida's merry voice coaxed me.</p>
+
+<p>"It was given to me," I slowly answered. "I
+cannot offer it to you, Phil. But I will buy any other
+pretty thing you fancy, instead, next time I go
+to town."</p>
+
+<p>She made a gesture of disclaim.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not mean <i>that</i>! Only, do tell me what the
+perfume is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was going to ask if you knew."</p>
+
+<p>"No. Something very expensive and imported,
+I suppose. Perhaps whoever gave it to you had it
+made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do.
+It is the most clinging, yet delicately refreshing scent
+I ever met."</p>
+
+<p>"Tuberose," suggested Vere.</p>
+
+<p>"Drawls, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned
+funeral!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Tuberose didn't always go to funerals," he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+corrected her teasingly, as she made a face at him.
+"I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's
+garden. Creamy looking posies, kind of kin to a
+gardenia, seems to me! Thick-petalled, like white
+plush, and holding their sweet smell everlastingly.
+But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either.
+There was something else grew in that garden&mdash;I
+can't call to mind what I mean. Basil, maybe?"</p>
+
+<p>"The basil plant, that feeds on dead men's
+brains," quoted Phil with a mock shiver. "You <i>are</i>
+happy in your ideals, Drawls!"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the
+dew was just warming up in the sun, mornings&mdash;and
+so does this little gilt ball! I'll guess Mr. Locke's
+lady never got it from France. Smells like old
+New England."</p>
+
+<p>There was no reason why a vague chill should
+creep over me, or the sunshine seem to darken as
+if a thin veil drifted between me and the surrounding
+brightness. Let me say again that no place could
+have been more unlike the traditional haunted house.
+There hung about it no sense of morbidity or depression.
+Yet, what was I to think? I was not sick or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+mad; and the Thing had come to me twice. I turned
+from the married lovers and made my way to the
+veranda, where I might be alone to consider the
+pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence
+walking beside me.</p>
+
+<p>Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs
+Phillida had cushioned in peacock chintz and marked
+especially mine by laying my favorite magazines on
+its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There
+was a satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real
+enough, resting in my palm.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; but it was not ordinary among its quaint
+kind! As I picked out the design of the gold-work,
+that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was no
+pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts.
+The small sphere was belted with the signs of the
+Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection. All the rest
+of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating
+one group of characters over and over. I was
+not learned enough to tell what the characters were,
+but the whole plainly belonged to those strange, outcast
+academies of astrology, alchemy&mdash;magic, in
+short. It contained what appeared to be a pinkish
+ball; originally a scented paste rolled round and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+dried, I judged by peering through the interstices
+of the gold.</p>
+
+<p>Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder
+me? Why, and by whom? What interest had my
+lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why
+muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable
+quaintness of language, the choice of words that
+made her speech so different from even the college-bred
+Phillida's?</p>
+
+<p>She urged me to leave the house. If she, or
+anyone associated with her wanted the place left
+vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and
+the warning come to others of our household group?
+Vere, Phillida, the Swedish woman, Cristina&mdash;all
+had lived here for weeks without any experiences like
+mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but
+the house. The danger, then, was only for me?</p>
+
+<p>Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at
+the first alarm?</p>
+
+<p>The gray cat came purring about me and presently
+leaped upon my knee. On impulse, I offered
+the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow
+eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and
+unclosed with convulsive pleasure, it breathed with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+that thirsty eagerness for the scent so familiar to
+my own senses.</p>
+
+<p>"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned.
+"You wouldn't bolt from it, either, would you?"</p>
+
+<p>Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by
+way of answer, sniffed toward the hand I withdrew,
+and composed itself to sleep. I put the pomander
+in my waistcoat pocket.</p>
+
+<p>I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing
+which had visited me. Better confront that fact! It
+was real. Only, real in what sense? What human
+agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion
+so hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall
+it here in full daylight, without the use of a sight
+or sound to confuse the brain?</p>
+
+<p>Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation?
+A truth hinted at by alchemists, Pythagoreans,
+Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and magnificent
+charlatans, these many centuries? Were
+there other races between earth and heaven; strange
+tribes of the middle spaces whose destinies were fixed
+and complete as our own, but between whose lives
+and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had
+I met one of these beings, inimical to man as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its victim by
+methods unknown to us?</p>
+
+<p>Was I a cheated fool, or a pioneer on the borders
+of a new country?</p>
+
+<p>Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow
+night? Could I bear the agony of Its presence, the
+stench of death and corruption that was Its atmosphere?
+At the mere memory my forehead grew wet.</p>
+
+<p>The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox.
+Phillida ran down to meet the event of the morning.
+Her laughing chatter came back to me while she
+waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man
+to sort our letters from his bags. It did not appear
+so hard to make a woman happy, I mused. A man
+might attempt it with hope, if he could but persuade
+her to try him.</p>
+
+<p>My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps,
+with patience&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>Phillida came across the lawn with an armful
+of gaudy-covered catalogues and a handful of letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Catalogues for Ethan; letters for you," she
+called in advance of her arrival. "What an important
+person you are, Cousin Roger! It always gives
+me a quivery thrill to realize <i>who</i> you are as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+as how nice you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled
+speech to tumble out of me?"</p>
+
+<p>I took her tanned little hand along with the letters;
+letters that were so many voices summoning
+me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer,
+Phil! But does that sort of thing matter to
+you women? What do you love Vere for, at bottom?
+Because he is strong and supple and has curly
+hair? No?" as she shook her head. "Because he
+has worn the uniform, then; proved his courage in
+war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him
+of real adventure and cabaret glitter? Or because he
+took you away from a life you hated? Or, perhaps,
+because he is kind and loves you? No! For none of
+these reasons? Why, then, love Ethan Vere?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated
+denial, and smiled at me triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Because he <i>is</i> Ethan Vere," she promptly responded.
+"Oh, Cousin Roger, you clever people are
+so stupid! It would not make any difference at all
+if Drawls were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or
+could not skate or do things, or had not been able to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+make me happy. It is something very much bigger
+than all that!"</p>
+
+<p>"And all the divorce courts, Phil? The breach
+of promise suits, and the couples who make each
+other miserable?"</p>
+
+<p>"But they never had anything," she said. "Perhaps
+they will have it, some day. Don't you know,
+Cousin Roger, that the most important things in the
+world are those most people never know about?"</p>
+
+<p>I was not sure whether I knew that, or not. After
+last night, I was not sure of many things. Still, if
+such gifts were given as she believed, if it was
+merely a question of being Ethan Vere&mdash;or
+Roger Locke&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>But I had never seriously considered leaving
+the adventure.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It
+is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not
+sufficient for it."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Hugo de Anima.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>That evening Vere and I settled the business
+details of the developments he had planned. Also
+while we three were quietly together, I launched a
+discussion that had been gathering in my mind all
+day while I watched Phillida.</p>
+
+<p>"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I
+told her. "In fact, you are a most moderate pair!
+I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you have
+furnished the house for so little that I am amazed.
+And it is all so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an
+ignorant man, the details are beyond me. But&mdash;one
+servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard?
+I had expected you to need several. Of course, we
+are not counting Vere's outdoor force."</p>
+
+<p>She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and
+glanced toward the window behind her, before replying.
+I noticed the action, because a moment before
+Vere had turned precisely the same way.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>"It is good of you to think of those things,
+Cousin Roger," she declared. "But, I want to be a
+real wife to Drawls. I do, indeed! And I have it
+all to learn because I was not brought up for that.
+Look at this dish-towel I am hemming. Cristina
+would laugh at the stitches if she dared, yet they
+are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew
+fine things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I
+think we should begin as we mean to go on, so I
+have furnished the house for&mdash;us. Perhaps if it
+had been for you alone, I should have chosen satin-wood
+and tapestry instead of willow and cretonne.
+The same way about Cristina. If Ethan and I are
+to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered,
+we cannot afford more than one maid. You understand
+what I am trying to explain, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I assented. "Surely! What were you
+looking for, just now, behind you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had
+passed by the window and stared in. I can't imagine
+what made me fancy that. Unless the cat&mdash;&mdash;"
+She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair,"
+Vere observed casually.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are
+living," she resumed. "It is very miserable of me,
+I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all Father
+and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want
+to live this way all my life; to be busy, and
+plan things with Ethan, and make them come
+true together."</p>
+
+<p>Under cover of the table she put her hand into
+Vere's, and silence held us a little while. I watched
+Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair staring
+with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window
+across the room. Did I imagine a slight uneasiness
+in those eyes, a wary readiness in gathered limbs and
+muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now
+the tail twitched with a lashing movement.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A
+moment more, and he curled down, composing himself
+to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You
+do not find it lonely here, or in any way depressing?"</p>
+
+<p>The candor of her surprise told me that no
+dweller between the worlds had visited her.</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>I passed that question safely, and after a few<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+minutes bade them good-night. They had a fashion
+of gazing at one another that made it a matter of
+necessary kindness to leave them alone together.</p>
+
+<p>As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not
+deny a growing excitement, or that dread fought
+with my resolution. Who would keep tryst with me
+tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each
+time before? If so, which one would come first, and
+what might be my measure of success or failure?
+If some trick were being played upon me, I meant
+to pluck it out of the mystery.</p>
+
+<p>The quietly pleasant room received me without
+a hint of the unusual. I lighted the lamps and sat
+down to my work.</p>
+
+<p>The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out
+except mine. At midnight I lay down in the dark,
+the pomander under my pillow. Whether I put the
+gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd
+fancy about its perfume and mystic carving being
+somehow a talisman against evil, or because I feared
+the trinket might be taken from me during the night,
+I should be troubled to answer. I did place it there,
+and lay lapped in its sweet odor while the moments
+dragged past; heavy, slow-footed moments of strain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope
+uneasy as fear.</p>
+
+<p>The cock crowed for the first hour; and for the
+second. I slept, at last. When I awoke, level sun-rays
+were striking across the world.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing had happened.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that
+call a spade a spade."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Plutarch</span>.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic
+investigation of the neighborhood. There
+proved to be few houses within reasonable distance
+where such a woman as my lady could be lodged.
+However, I made my cautious inquiries even where
+the quest seemed useless, resolved to leave no chance
+untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition
+of the pomander with a vague story of wishing
+to return it to a young lady with red-gold hair. But
+nowhere did a native show recognition of the top or
+the description.</p>
+
+<p>On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained
+buggy that inspired me with a fresh disrespect
+for my own abilities. Why had I not put my
+question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning?
+Surely here was a man who knew everyone and
+went everywhere!</p>
+
+<p>The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the
+car that drew up beside it, then returned to cropping<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+the young grass by the roadside. The postman
+looked up from the leather sack open before him,
+and nodded to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let
+me get the right stuff into this here box, an' I'll sort
+your family's right out for you. There's a sample
+package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em,
+for Cliff Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of
+the bag. I don't know but Cliff's poultry'd thank
+me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the
+ruddy old face peering into the sack.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to
+lay or eat it, judgin' from the smell that sample's put
+in my bag."</p>
+
+<p>"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned
+across to lay the pomander in his gnarled hand.</p>
+
+<p>The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy
+pleasure flowed into his face. His nostrils expanded
+with eager intake of the perfume that seemed an
+elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed
+in sensation.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+I asked. "A lady with bright fair hair, colored like
+copper-bronze?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I!" he denied briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"No one at all like that&mdash;with hair warmer in
+shade than ordinary gold color, and a lot of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been!
+What do you call this perfumery, Mr. Locke?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed.
+"No one knows except the young lady I
+am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me
+at all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood,
+no visitor at any house who might be the one I am
+looking for?"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, giving back the pomander
+with marked reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>"No one who might be able to tell more than
+yourself?" I persisted.</p>
+
+<p>A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a
+cardboard cylinder into Mr. Clifford Brown's mailbox
+and began to sort out my letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss
+much of what goes on around here. When she hears
+a good bit of tattle, she has her husband hitch up, and
+she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+that don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know
+Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere gets butter and cheese
+from her. Might ask her!"</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him and drove on.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who
+owned the place next to ours, was on her porch when
+I came to a halt before the house. She granted me
+more interest than the other natives upon whom I
+had called that morning; inviting me into her parlor
+to "set," when she had identified me. But she knew
+nothing of the object of my quest.</p>
+
+<p>"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the
+Michell place," she observed, her beady, faded brown
+eyes busy with my appearance, picking up details in
+avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking
+crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had
+bought it. I don't see as that little limp cripples you
+much, the way you can rampus 'round in that fast
+automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and
+I wouldn't be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought
+to get the other fellow to run it for you; the handsome
+one. I guess you like to do it, though?
+Writer, ain't you? Books or newspapers?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the
+machine-gun attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried
+face wrinkling into new lines of inquisitiveness.
+"They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but
+I thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never
+heard of havin' a piano upstairs. Most folks like to
+show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of funny,
+takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But
+then it's kind of a funny thing for a man to take to,
+anyhow! I got a niece ten years old next August who
+can play piano so good there don't seem anythin' left
+to learn her, so&mdash;&mdash;! But there ain't no use of you
+drivin' 'round here lookin' for a fair-headed girl,
+Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in the shanties by
+the post road are about the only light-complected ones
+in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to
+plain brown. Senator Allen has two girls, but
+they're only home from a boardin' school for vacation.
+How do you like your place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not
+know a great deal about it, yet. Its history, I mean.
+Are there any interesting stories about the house?
+You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+story to tell our friends when they come to visit us."</p>
+
+<p>She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered
+rocking-chair, arms folded on her meagre breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never
+heard of none. The Michell family always owned
+it&mdash;and they were so stiff respectable an' upright
+everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were
+clergymen in their time. The last, Reverend Cotton
+Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign parts for
+missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years
+ago; an' died there. He never married, so the
+family's run out. The Michells were awful hard on
+women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of
+Adam. Preached it right out of the pulpit&mdash;so I
+guess no girl in these parts could have been hired
+to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died
+when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence.
+After news came of his death, the house was shut up
+'till you bought it. My, how you've changed it,
+already! I'd admire to go through it."</p>
+
+<p>When I had invited her to call on Phillida and
+inspect our domicile, and paid due thanks for information
+received, she followed me out to the car.</p>
+
+<p>"All this land 'round here is old and full of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+Indian relics," she remarked. "Over to the Sound
+where the swamps used to be, there was lots of
+fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was
+stoned to death where the Catholic convent stands
+now, on the road up above your place. So I guess
+you can figure out a story to tell your company,
+if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught
+by a new possibility. "Do they, perhaps, have visitors
+there, ladies in retreat for a time, as convents
+often do abroad?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled.
+"They're the strictest sisterhood in America, folks
+say. Poor Clares, I think they're called. No one,
+not even their relations, ever see their faces after
+they join. They're not allowed to talk to each other,
+even. Just stay in their cells, an' pray, even in the
+middle of the night, an' shave their heads an' live on
+a few vegetables an' dry bread."</p>
+
+<p>I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would
+harbor my lady of marvelous tresses and magical
+perfume, of wild fancies and heretical theories. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where,
+then, was I next to seek?</p>
+
+<p>I made a detour and used some strategy to gain
+a view of the Senator's daughters. They proved to
+be brunettes who wore their locks cropped after the
+fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment
+was not great; my lady was not suggestive
+of a boarding-school miss. But I had hoped to find
+somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose
+royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore
+King Childeric's Gothic locks.</p>
+
+<p>I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me.
+Suppose she never came again? Suppose the episode
+was ended? Not even freedom from the Thing
+could compensate for the baffled adventure.</p>
+
+<p>Think of the lame feller with an Adventure!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Plato expresses four kinds of Mania&mdash;Firstly, the musical;
+secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+fourthly, that which belongs to Love."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Preface to Zanoni</span>.</p></div>
+
+
+<p>For myself, I have always found that excitement
+stimulates imagination. There are others, I know,
+who can do no creative work except when all within
+and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too
+much calm as an ordinary thing! That evening,
+when I went to my room, lighted my lamps and closed
+my door, I stood alone for awhile breathing the
+mingled sweetness of the country air and the pomander
+ball. In that interval, there came to me, complete
+and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the
+melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured
+me has reached every ear in America.</p>
+
+<p>As to that extravagant statement, I can only
+measure by the preposterous amount of money the
+melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic
+about it. For myself, I cannot hear it&mdash;ground on
+a street-organ, given on the stage, played on a phonograph
+record or delicately rendered by an orchestra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>&mdash;without
+feeling again the exaltation and enchantment
+of that night.</p>
+
+<p>I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing
+my former work right and left to make room for this.
+If it should escape before I could set it down! If
+the least of those airy cadences should be lost!</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock in the morning I came back to
+realization of time and place. The composition was
+finished; it stood up before me like a flower raised
+over-night. Eight hours had passed since I sat down
+to the work, after dinner. I was tired. As I began
+to draw into a pile the sheets of paper I had covered
+with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand.</p>
+
+<p>Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice
+that long I could have felt no more exhausted.
+Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body, I
+dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the
+table. My hot, strained eyes closed with relief, my
+stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content flowed over
+me; my work was done, and good.</p>
+
+<p>Rest passed into sleep, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>The sleep could not have been long, for not many
+hours remained before dawn. When I started awake
+and lifted my head, I found the room in darkness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence
+scarcely more tangible than the perfume. Even in
+the first dazed moment, I knew my lady had
+come again.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not rise!" her murmuring voice cautioned
+me. "Unless you wish me to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am here because I promised to come. It was
+not wise of you to ask that of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I prefer folly to wisdom," I answered,
+steadying myself to full wakefulness. "Or, rather,
+I am not sure that you can decide for me which
+is which!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? After all, why? Just&mdash;curiosity?"</p>
+
+<p>"You, who speak so learnedly of magic and
+sorcery," I retorted, smiling under cover of the
+darkness, "have you never heard of the white magic
+conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a
+voice sweeter than the perfume? An image of wax
+does not melt before a witch's fire so easily as a
+man before these things."</p>
+
+<p>"My hair pleased you?" she questioned na&iuml;vely.</p>
+
+<p>"Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration!"
+I supplemented. "I am delighted to prove<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+you human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone
+fail to be pleased with that most magnificent braid?
+But how can either you or I forgive the cruelty that
+took it from its owner? Why did you cut it off?"</p>
+
+<p>"So little of it! And I did not know you, then."</p>
+
+<p>"Little? That braid?"</p>
+
+<p>"It reached below my knee, now it is but little
+less," she answered with indifference. "We all have
+such hair."</p>
+
+<p>I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of
+all that shining richness enwrapping a slim young
+body. It was fantastic beyond belief to sit there
+at my desk, beneath my fingers the tools of sober,
+workaday life, and stare into the dark room that held
+the reality of my vision. She was there, but I could
+not rise and find her. She was opposite my eyes,
+but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and
+see her.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are 'we'?" I slowly followed her last
+sentence.</p>
+
+<p>A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory
+floated to me of the story she had told while I held
+her prisoner that first night:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The woman sits in her low chair.</i> The fire-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span><i>shine
+is bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either
+side, her hair flows down to the floor.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, by legend young witches had such hair;
+sylphs, undines and all of the airy race of Lilith. I
+thrust absurdities away from me and offered a quotation
+to fill the pause:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p>
+<span class="i0">"'I met a lady in the meads'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Full beautiful; a faery's child.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Her hair was long, her foot was light,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'And her eyes were wild.'"<br /></span>
+</p></div></div>
+
+<p>She did not laugh, or put away the suggestion.
+When I had decided that she did not mean to reply,
+and was seeking my mind for new speech to detain
+her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another
+quotation:</p>
+
+<p>"'A spirit&mdash;one of the invisible inhabitants of
+this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning
+whom Josephus and Michael Psellus of
+Constantinople may be consulted. They are very
+numerous, and there is no climate or element without
+one or more.' Have you read the writings of
+the learned Jew or of the Platonist, you who are so
+very bold?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>"Neither," I meekly admitted. "But neither
+ancient gentleman could convince me that you
+are unhuman."</p>
+
+<p>Her answer was just audible:</p>
+
+<p>"Not I&mdash;but, It!"</p>
+
+<p>Now I was silenced, for dreadful and uncanny
+was that whisper in the dark to a man who had met
+here in this room What I had met.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me more of this Thing without a name,"
+I urged, mastering my reluctance to evoke even the
+idea of what the blood curdled to recall. "Why
+does It hate me?"</p>
+
+<p>"What can I tell you? Even in your world,
+does not evil hate good as naturally as good recoils
+from evil? But this One has another cause also!"
+She hesitated. "And you yourself? How have you
+challenged and mocked It this very night? Here,
+where It glooms, you have dared bring the high joy
+of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave!&mdash;he
+who could await alone the visit of the Unspeakable,
+in the chamber into which the Loathsome Eyes have
+looked, and write the music of hope and beauty!"</p>
+
+<p>I started, with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure.
+She had heard my work. She approved it. More<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+than that, not to her was I the lame fellow who ought
+to get a better man to drive his car!</p>
+
+<p>"Nor should you, who have two worlds of your
+own," she added in a lower tone, "doubt the existence
+of many both dark and bright. Go, then, out of
+this haunted place where a human madness broke
+through the Barrier. Be satisfied with the victories
+you have had. Let the visits of the Dark One fade
+into mere nightmare; and know I am no more a living
+woman than Franchina Descartes."</p>
+
+<p>"Who was she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you not read that early in the seventeenth
+century there appeared in Paris the philosopher
+Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a beautiful
+woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself;
+but Descartes declared she was an automaton, a
+masterpiece of mechanism he himself had made. Yet
+many refused to believe his story, declaring he had
+by sorcery compelled a spirit to serve him in this
+form. He called her Franchina, his daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"And the truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you all the record tells. She was
+soon lost. Descartes took her with him upon a journey
+by sea; when, a storm arising, the superstitious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into
+the Mediterranean."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you. But, are you fairy or automaton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not laugh," she exclaimed with sudden passion.
+"You know I would say that I have no part
+in the world of men and women. Not through me
+shall the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time,
+now, then the doors will close upon me as the sea
+closed over Franchina. I will not take with me the
+memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come
+to this house after tonight. If you would give me
+a happiness, promise me you will leave, too."</p>
+
+<p>I had known we should come to this point. After
+a moment, I spoke as quietly as I could:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me your name."</p>
+
+<p>She had not expected that question. I think she
+might have withheld the answer, given time to reflect.
+But as it was, she replied docilely as a
+bidden child:</p>
+
+<p>"Desire Michell."</p>
+
+<p>The name fell quaintly on both hearing and
+fancy, with a rustle of early New England tradition.
+Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction before
+I answered her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>"Thank you. Now, I, Roger Locke, do promise
+you, Desire Michell, that I will not leave this house
+until these matters are plainer to my understanding,
+whether you go or stay. But if you go and come
+no more, then I surely shall stay until I find a way
+to trace you or until the Thing kills me."</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Then, to my utter dismay,
+I heard her sobbing through the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is
+it not hard enough, my duty? For me it is such pleasure
+to be here&mdash;to leave for a while the loneliness
+and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all
+things, free and happy&mdash;how should it matter to
+you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent? Let
+me go."</p>
+
+<p>Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.</p>
+
+<p>"I can keep you, then?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I am&mdash;so weak."</p>
+
+<p>"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be,
+in my real life. I have gone apart from much that
+occupies men and women; gaining and losing in different
+ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+of myself without grief or loss to anyone, except
+the perfunctory regret of friends. Will you believe
+there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours
+with you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come
+to me as you can, let us take what time we may, and
+the chances be mine."</p>
+
+<p>"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect
+you I must go."</p>
+
+<p>"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is
+sorrow in knowing you, I accept it. I understand
+nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to the
+commonplace emptiness of life before I found you.
+Indeed, I will not be sent away."</p>
+
+<p>"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."</p>
+
+<p>"Never."</p>
+
+<p>"It could only be like this&mdash;that we should speak
+a few times before the gates close upon me."</p>
+
+<p>"What gates?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," I took what the moment would
+grant me. "That is a bargain. Yet, what safety lies
+in secrecy between us? If we are to help each other,
+as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You
+will tell me no more about yourself? Very well. Tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+me something more about the enemy in the dark
+whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a
+special motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere
+malignance toward mankind. What is that motive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.</p>
+
+<p>"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned
+is a heavy drawback in this combat. Arm
+me with a little understanding. What moves It
+against me?"</p>
+
+<p>The pause following was filled with a sense of
+difficulty and recoil, her struggle against some terrible
+reluctance. So painful was that effort, somehow
+clearly communicated to me, that I was about
+to devour my curiosity and withdraw the question
+when her whisper just reached my hearing:</p>
+
+<p>"Jealousy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"For&mdash;me."</p>
+
+<p>The monstrous implication sank slowly into my
+understanding; then brought me erect, gripping the
+edge of the table lest I forget restraint and move
+toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"By what right?" I cried. "By what claim?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+Desire Michell, what has the Horror to do
+with you?"</p>
+
+<p>The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a
+shock through the hushed room distinct as the shattering
+of crystal. There was no answer, no movement;
+no rebuke of my movement. I was alone.
+With that confession she had fled.</p>
+
+<p>My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently
+I heard a door open. Steps sounded along the hall
+from the rooms on the opposite side of the house.
+Someone knocked hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right, Mr. Locke?" Vere's voice
+came through the panels.</p>
+
+<p>I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood
+at the threshold, an electric torch in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"We thought you called," he apologized. "I
+thought maybe you were sick, or wanted something;
+and no light showed around your door."</p>
+
+<p>I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps.
+As on the last occasion, she had switched the lights
+off there, beyond my reach unless I broke my promise
+not to move about the room while she remained
+my guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+and Phillida for looking me up! I had been working
+late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a nightmare
+as the result."</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to have his normal presence,
+prosaic in bathrobe and pajamas, in my cheerfully
+lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the
+music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned
+to meet my eyes smilingly.</p>
+
+<p>"We heard some of that work," he admitted.
+"Phil and I&mdash;well, I guess we were guilty of sitting
+on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never listened
+to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that
+one. We'd certainly prize hearing all of it together,
+sometime, if you didn't mind."</p>
+
+<p>The warmth of achievement flowed again in me.
+I crossed to the piano to assemble the finished sheets,
+answering him with one of those expressions of
+thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward
+vanity. I was really grateful for this first
+criticism that soothed me back to the reality of
+my own world.</p>
+
+<p>Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in
+small, square script quaint as the pomander, was
+written a quotation strange to me:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a
+level thrown, and pant like climbers."</p>
+
+<p>I did not know that I had read the words aloud
+until Vere answered them.</p>
+
+<p>"So we do! I guess there is more panting over
+shadows and less real mountain-climbing done by us
+humans than most folks would believe. Most roads
+turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills
+we make such a fuss about. Who wrote that,
+Mr. Locke?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon
+Desire Michell's meaning in leaving this to me.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt
+like you did when you wrote that piece tonight," he
+observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not amount
+to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now.
+She might be anxious."</p>
+
+<p>Could that be what Desire had meant me to
+understand? Was there indeed some quality
+of courage&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>That is why my most successful composition
+from the standpoint of money and popularity went
+to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of Hills."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+Of course no one connected the allusion. The general
+interpretation was best expressed by the cover
+design of the first printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded
+lake on which floated a canoe containing two
+young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.</p>
+
+<p>But&mdash;in what land unknown to man towered the
+vast mountains in whose shadow I panted and
+strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain
+itself?</p>
+
+<p>I did not know. I do not know, now.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant
+of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place
+is to be understood of the Other World."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Oneirocritica
+Achmetis.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>In the morning I drove down to New York.
+There were affairs demanding attention. Also, I
+was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night
+work into the hands of the publisher. To be exact,
+I wanted to put the manuscript out of reach of the
+Thing at the house. Without reason, I had awakened
+with that instinct strong within me.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely
+driving through the friendly, crowded streets was
+an exhilaration. The practical employment of the
+day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening
+I turned toward Connecticut with a feeling of
+leaving home behind me. But I would not stay away
+from the house for a night, risking that Desire
+Michell might come and find me missing. She might
+believe I had been seized by cowardice and deserted.
+She might never return.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was
+no intention in me of accepting her fleeting visits
+as the utmost she could give. I meant to snatch
+her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the
+wholesome sunlight where Phillida flitted happily.
+If I could prevent, those gates of which she vaguely
+spoke never should close between us. But it was
+plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened
+away, how could she be found? Her home, her history,
+even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing
+her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried,
+and failed. Of her connection with the Dark Thing
+I refused to think too deeply. Her connection with
+me must come first.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill,
+glimmering whitely in the starlight, where the road
+made an angle toward the farm, that I recalled our
+talk in her "best room."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>The Michell family always owned it. The
+Reverend Cotton Mather Michell went to foreign
+parts for missionary work twenty years ago and
+died there&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>My lady of the night was Desire Michell.
+A clue?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>"<i>He never married, so the family's run out.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>It was damp here in the hollow where the road
+dipped down. A chill ran coldly over me.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the garage which had taken the place
+of our tumble-down barn, I put the car away as
+quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I
+passed through the last village, and our household was
+asleep. Moving without unnecessary noise, I crossed
+to the house. Bagheera, the cat, padded across the
+porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs
+while I stooped to put the latch-key in the lock.</p>
+
+<p>As the key slid in place, I heard the waterfall
+over the dam abruptly change the sound of its flow,
+swelling and accelerating as when a gust of wind
+hurries a greater volume of water over the brink.
+But there was no wind. Immediately followed that
+sound from the lake which I can liken to nothing
+better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the
+suck of a thick body drawing itself from a bed of
+mud. The cat thrust himself violently between my
+feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a
+whimpering mew of urgency. Startled, I looked in
+the direction of the lake.</p>
+
+<p>At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+darkness, only the reflection of a star here and there
+revealing the surface as water. What else could be
+shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them;
+and turned the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall
+when the door opened wide enough to admit his body.
+I followed more sedately and closed the door behind
+us both.</p>
+
+<p>Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night
+privileges. Did Phillida allow him in the house, or
+not? After an instant's consideration, I bent and
+picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He
+should spend the night shut in with me, out of mischief
+yet comfortable. Purring in the curve of my
+arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his
+part. Until we reached my room! On its threshold
+I felt his body stiffen; his yellow eyes snapped open
+alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I reflected,
+amused, as I switched on the lights.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Bagheera," I spoke soothingly, and
+put him upon the rug.</p>
+
+<p>He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from
+side to side after the fashion of a miniature panther.
+When I stooped to stroke him, he eluded my hand.
+In a gliding run, body crouched, ears flattened, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+sped toward the doorway, was through it and gone.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all
+through the house. It would be easier to explain
+him to Phillida next morning. I was tired; pleasantly
+tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm
+and congratulations of my associates, with
+conferences and plans for launching the new music
+via theatres and advertising. It ought to "go big,"
+they assured me. In my optimism of mood, I wondered
+if I had not already driven off the Dark Thing,
+since the girl had come to me the night past without
+It appearing before or afterward. Perhaps, woman-timid,
+she exaggerated the danger and It had retreated
+after the second failure to overpower me.</p>
+
+<p>I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing
+would disturb my rest this night.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate. Silence
+contained me. Yet the thought of another scorched
+against my understanding in a burning communication
+of intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Man," It commanded, "I am here. Fear!"</p>
+
+<p>And I knew that which was my body did fear to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+the point of death, but that which was myself stood
+up in revolt.</p>
+
+<p>"Crouch," It bade. "Crouch, pygmy, and beg.
+Fear! The blood crawls in the veins, the heart
+checks, the nerves shrink and wither&mdash;man, your life
+wanes thin and faint. Down&mdash;shall your race
+affront mine?"</p>
+
+<p>My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept
+a sluggish current. But there was another force that
+stiffened to resistance, and gathered itself to compact
+strength within me.</p>
+
+<p>"No," my thought refused the dark intelligence.
+"I am not yours. Command your own, not me."</p>
+
+<p>"Weakling, you have touched that which is mine.
+Into my path you have dared step. Back&mdash;for in
+my breath you die!"</p>
+
+<p>The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous.
+With more and more difficulty my heart labored.
+Confused memories came to me of men found dead
+in their beds in haunted rooms. Would morning
+find me so? Better that way than to yield to the
+Thing! Better&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I struggled erect; or fancied so.</p>
+
+<p>Now I saw myself as one who stood with folded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+arms fronting a breach in a colossal wall. Huge,
+immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond
+the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown
+distances, dully glistening like gray ice,
+unbroken save in this place. The gray strand on
+which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot
+of the wall. Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean
+banked over with an all-concealing mist. Not a
+ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed
+the fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my
+danger was not of the common dangers of mankind,
+but that which freezes the blood of man when he
+draws near the supernatural; the ancient fear.</p>
+
+<p>I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from
+me, and fronted my enemy who pressed me hard.</p>
+
+<p>The Thing was at the breach, couched in the
+great cleft that split the Barrier, darkness within
+darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate beat
+upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the
+nearness of an iceberg in the night, with an odor of
+damp and mold.</p>
+
+<p>"Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace
+breathed, "what keeps you from destruction? For
+you the circle has not been traced nor the pentagram<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass
+is death. Die, then."</p>
+
+<p>Only my will held It from me, and I felt that
+will reel in sickened bewilderment. I had no strength
+to answer, only the steadfast instinct to oppose.</p>
+
+<p>The Thing did not pass. There in the breach
+It ravened for me, thrust Itself toward me, pressed
+against the thin veil of separation between us. I saw
+nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself, gigantic in
+formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its
+whispered threats broke against me like an evil surf.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge
+me? The woman is mine by the pact of centuries.
+Save yourself. Escape."</p>
+
+<p>The woman? Startled wonder filled me. Was
+I then fighting for Desire Michell?</p>
+
+<p>Out of the air I was answered as if her voice
+had spoken; certainty came to grip me as if with her
+small hands. She had no help but in me. If I fell,
+she fell. If I stood firm&mdash;&mdash;? Exultant resolve
+flared strong and high within me. My will to protect
+leaped forward.</p>
+
+<p>The Thing shrank. It dwindled back through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+the gap in the Barrier. But as It fled, a last venomous
+message drifted to me:</p>
+
+<p>"Again! And again! Tire but once,
+pygmy&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my
+fingers clutching the chain of the lamp beside me.
+Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond my
+window? Or was I still dreaming?</p>
+
+<p>I was trembling with cold, drenched as with
+water so that my relaxing hand made a wet mark
+on the table beneath the lamp. This much might
+have been caused by nightmare. But what sane man
+had nightmares like these?</p>
+
+<p>When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments
+and wrapped myself in a heavy bathrobe. There
+was an electric coffee service in my room kept for
+occasions when I worked late into the night. I
+made strong black coffee now and drank it as near
+boiling as practicable. Presently the blood again
+moved warmly in my veins.</p>
+
+<p>Then I knew that the chill in the room was not
+a delusion of my chilled body. I was warm, yet
+the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened
+and soiled, as pure water may be muddied by the
+passage of some unclean body. In this atmosphere
+persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring
+with the homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of
+the pomander beneath my pillow.</p>
+
+<p>I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter
+with the unknown than by either of my former
+experiences. A fact which drove home the
+grim farewell of my enemy! <i>Tire but once,
+pygmy&mdash;&mdash;!</i> Desire herself had foretold that the
+dark Thing would wear me down.</p>
+
+<p>Well, perhaps! But not without fighting for Its
+victory. At least I would be no supine victim. Already
+I had forced my way&mdash;where? Where was
+that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank
+coldly through me at memory of that colossal land
+where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human intruder
+upon the unhuman. What other shapes of
+dread stalked and watched beyond that titanic
+wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope to win
+against Them?</p>
+
+<p>I would not consider escape by flight, even if the
+end had been certain destruction. But my head sank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+to my hands beneath the weight of a profound depression
+and discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the
+worst for man. The hour superstition sets apart for
+its own, when the life flame burns lowest. At a
+distance a dog had treed some little wood creature,
+and bayed monotonously.</p>
+
+<p>There was a weakness at the core of my strength.
+I waged this combat for the sake of Desire Michell.
+<i>But what was she to whom the Thing laid claim by
+the pact of centuries?</i></p>
+
+<p>Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray
+filtered into the dusk with grudging slowness. As
+day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the house
+in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls
+like thin smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim.
+I forced away my languor, rose and walked to the
+nearest window.</p>
+
+<p>Something was moving up the slope from the
+lake; a dim shape about which the fog clung in steamy
+billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly.
+What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom
+so tall?</p>
+
+<p>A moment later the figure was near enough to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+be distinguished as Ethan Vere, bearing several long
+fishing-rods over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Vere!" I hailed him, with mingled relief and
+utter disgust with myself. "Anything going on
+so early?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at me&mdash;I never saw Vere startled&mdash;and
+came on to stop beneath the window. Taking off
+his cap, he ran his fingers through his black curls,
+pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed
+how the mists painted him with a spectral pallor.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted me.
+"Just as I've been thinking, there are some big snapping-turtles
+about the lake and creek. I guessed
+there'd be some war between them and me before that
+water was safe for use! One of the fellows dragged
+a duck under, drowned it and started feeding right
+before my eyes, just now."</p>
+
+<p>"We will have to get a canoe."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded placid assent.</p>
+
+<p>"That'll look pretty on the lake. Phillida will
+like it. But I guess I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed
+punt out of sight around some corner for
+work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs
+like mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+my rifle, now. I'd admire to blow that duck-eater's
+ugly head off."</p>
+
+<p>"I will get into some clothes and be right with
+you," I invited myself to the hunt.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to have you," he replied with his quaint
+politeness. There were times when I could visualize
+Vere's New England mother as if I had known her.</p>
+
+<p>The human interlude had been enough to dispel
+the black humors of the night. When I was ready to
+go out, I opened the drawer that held the copper-bronze
+braid and took it into my hand. How vital
+with youth its crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I
+thought; young, too, were its luxuriance and shining
+color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness here
+or the passing of musty centuries over the head that
+had worn this tress! A flood of reassurance rose
+high in me. Whatever the Thing might be, I would
+trust the girl Desire Michell. Yes, and for her I
+would stand fast at that Barrier until victory declared
+for the enemy or for me. Until It passed me, It
+should not reach her.</p>
+
+<p>I went downstairs to join Vere. The brightening
+mist was cool and fresh. There was neither horror
+nor defeat in the promise of the morning.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.<br />
+We were but seated at the festival<br />
+Of many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"<br />
+<span style="margin-left:9.5em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Rose Garden of Sa'adi.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Now I entered a time of experiences differing at
+every point, yet interwoven closely, so that my days
+might compare to a rope whose strands are of violently
+contrasted colors. The rope would be inharmonious,
+startling to the eye, but strong to bind
+and hold. As I was bound and held!</p>
+
+<p>All day I lived in the wholesome household
+atmosphere evoked by Vere and Phillida. It is impossible
+to describe the sunny charm they created
+about the commonplace. Our gay, simple breakfasts
+where Phillida presided in crisp middy blouse
+or flowered smock; where the gray cat sat on the
+arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant
+of his master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina
+served us her good food with the spice of an occasional
+comment on farm or neighborhood events&mdash;how
+perfect a beginning for the day! How stale<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+beside our breeze-swept table was any board at which
+I had ever sat! I do declare that I have never seen
+a more winning face than the bright one of my little
+cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain."
+Vere and I basked in her sunbeams gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward, we each had our work. Of the three,
+Vere was the most industrious; slow, steady and unsparing
+of himself to a degree that accomplished
+surprising results. Phillida flitted over the place
+indoors and out, managing the house, following Vere
+about, driving to village or town with me on purchasing
+trips for our supplies. I did rather more of my
+own work than usual, that summer, and consequently
+had more of the commercial side to employ me.</p>
+
+<p>A healthy, normal life? Yes&mdash;until the hours
+between midnight and dawn.</p>
+
+<p>I never knew when I laid down at night whether
+I should sleep until sun and morning overlay the
+countryside; whether the whispering call of Desire
+Michell would summon me to an hour more exquisite
+than reality, less satisfying than a dream, or whether
+I should leap into consciousness of the Loathsome
+Eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+enemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the
+darkness Its presence fouled.</p>
+
+<p>For my two guests kept their promises.</p>
+
+<p>If I speak briefly of the coming of the Thing
+during this time, I do so because the mind shrinks
+from past pain. It came again, and again. It
+craftily used the torture of irregularity in Its coming.
+For days there might be a respite, then It would
+haunt me nights in succession until my physical endurance
+was almost spent.</p>
+
+<p>I have stood before the breach in that Barrier,
+fighting that nightmare duel, until the place of colossal
+desolation, last frontier the human race might
+hope to keep, became as well known to me as a landscape
+on earth. Yet the effect of the Thing's
+assaults upon me never lessened. On the contrary,
+the horror gained in strength. A dreadful familiarity
+grew between It and me. Communication flowed
+more readily between us with use. I will not set
+down, perhaps I dare not set down the intolerable
+wickedness of Its alternate menaces and offered
+bribes. Contact with Its intelligence poisoned.</p>
+
+<p>There were nights when It was dumb, when all
+Its monstrous power concentrated and bore upon me,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+Its will to destroy locked with my will. My victory
+was that I lived.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>In the shadow, Desire Michell and I drew closer
+to one another.</p>
+
+<p>How can I tell of a love that grew without sight?
+So much of the love of romance and history is a
+matter of flower-petal complexions, heart-consuming
+eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make
+beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew
+strong and passionately demanding, knew delicate
+coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of minds
+like the meeting of eyes in understanding&mdash;all in the
+dark? The blind might comprehend. But the blind
+have a physical communication we had not; touch
+has enchantments of its own.</p>
+
+<p>Every night, near midnight, I switched off the
+lights and waited in the chair at my writing-table,
+where I was accustomed to work. If she had not
+come by two o'clock, I learned to know she would
+not visit me that night. I might sleep in that certainty.
+A strange tryst I kept there in the dark;
+listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake,
+loud in that dead hour's stillness, or hearing the soft,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+incessant sounds of insect life awake in trees and
+fields. If she came&mdash;a drift of perfume, a movement
+slight as a curtain stirred by the wind, then an
+hour with such a companion as the ancient magician
+might have drawn out of the air to his nine
+mystic lamps.</p>
+
+<p>Strange, fantastic tales she told me, spun of
+fancies luminous and frail as threads of glass. She
+could not speak without betraying her deep learning
+in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern
+world. Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished
+her speech with allusions blank to my ignorance;
+which she most gently and politely enlightened when
+I confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus
+was not a beast, but a recipe for making gold;
+that Salamandar's Feather was better known today
+as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no
+means an article of furniture. I give these examples
+merely by way of illustration.</p>
+
+<p>On the other side of the shield held between us,
+I soon discovered that she knew no more of modern
+city life than a well-taught child who has never left
+home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theatres
+and restaurants. The history of Phillida and Ethan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+Vere seemed to her more moving and wonderful than
+any story she could tell me. I was amazed and humbled
+to find that she rated my ability to make music
+as a lofty art among the occult sciences.</p>
+
+<p>Of the evil Thing that haunted me, we came to
+say little. To press her with questions meant to
+end her visit, I found by experience. When I spoke
+of that strand between the Barrier and the gray mist-hidden
+sea, her passion of distress closed all intercourse
+with the plea that I go away at once, while
+escape was possible, while life remained mine. So
+for the most part I curbed my tongue and
+my consuming curiosity; not from consideration, but
+of necessity.</p>
+
+<p>One night I asked her how the dark Thing spoke
+to me, by what medium of communication.</p>
+
+<p>"Spirits of all orders can speak to man in every
+language, so long as they are face to face," she answered,
+with a faint surprise at my lack of knowledge.
+"'<i>When they turn to man, they come into
+use of his language and no longer remember their
+own, but as soon as they turn from man they resume
+their own language, and forget his.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"But they themselves are unaware of this fact,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+for they utter thought to thought by direct intelligence.
+So if angel or demon turns his back to you,
+Roger, you may not make him hear you though you
+call with great force."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that, Desire?"</p>
+
+<p>"But by simple reading! Do not Ennemoser
+and many writers record it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you spoken to such beings, Desire?"</p>
+
+<p>The question was rash, but it escaped me before
+I could check the impulse. To my relief, she answered
+without resentment:</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"No? The Thing&mdash;the enemy that comes to
+me has never spoken to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>I was silent in amazement and incredulity. The
+dark creature claimed her, she declared herself helpless
+to escape from that dominion into normal life,
+and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me,
+a stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who
+was familiar with Its existence and the lore which
+linked humanity to Its fearful kind?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>"You do not believe me," her voice came quietly
+across my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you, of course," I stammered. "I
+was only&mdash;astonished. You have described It, and
+the Barrier, so often; from the first night&mdash;&mdash;! I
+supposed you had seen all I have, and more."</p>
+
+<p>"All you have seen? Now tell me with what
+eyes you have seen the Barrier and the Far Frontier?
+The eyes of the body, or that vision by which man
+sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech
+of spirits is to the hearing?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose&mdash;with the inner sight."</p>
+
+<p>"Then understand me when I say that I have
+seen with the eyes of another, by a sight not mine
+and yet my own."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and
+jealousy of her human associations of which I knew
+nothing. "You mean&mdash;hypnotism?"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed with half-sad raillery.</p>
+
+<p>"How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a
+time, the jewel called beryl was thought unrivaled as
+a mirror into which a magician might look to see
+reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections
+of the future. But by and by magicians grew
+wiser. They found any crystal would serve as well
+as a beryl. Later still, they found a little water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+poured in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand
+showed as true a fantasm. So one wrote: '<i>There is
+neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the
+magick is in the Seer himself.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Desire?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Roger&mdash;if to see with the sight of another
+is hypnotism, then every man who writes a
+book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every historian
+who makes us see the past is a necromancer."</p>
+
+<p>"You read of the Thing&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew
+It through sympathy with one who died as I would
+not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I
+shall think long in that place to which I go presently.
+Question me no more. When the time comes for you
+to throw a certain braid of hair and a pomander
+into the fire&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I will never do that!"</p>
+
+<p>"No? Well, you might keep the pomander,
+which is pure gold engraved with ancient signs and
+the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit
+characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious,
+being blent with the herb vervain which is powerful
+against evil spirits."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor
+the pomander that holds the powerful spell."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;value the braid so much?"</p>
+
+<p>"I value only one other beauty as highly."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore
+the braid."</p>
+
+<p>Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet
+I thought I sensed a movement toward me as airy as
+the flutter of a bird's wing. The fragrance in the
+atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But
+when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting,
+she had gone.</p>
+
+<p>I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in
+her ideas of neatness than my little Cousin Phillida,
+and no maid more exact in carrying out orders than
+Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the
+quietest roads, and my windows are always wide
+open. There is the fireplace, too, with possibilities of
+soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust overlaying
+the writing-table on the following morning. And
+in the dust was a print as if a small hand had rested
+there, a yard from my chair.</p>
+
+<p>A slim hand it must have been. I judged the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+palm had been daintily cupped, the fingers slender,
+smooth and long in proportion to the absurd size of
+the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing
+an outline.</p>
+
+<p>I could not put this souvenir away with the braid
+and the pomander. But I could put its evidence with
+their witness of Desire Michell's reality.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses
+being dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts
+whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"
+whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"
+&mdash;<span class="smcap">King James' "Demonology."</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Now I have to record how I walked into the
+oldest snare in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence
+brought home to me by her hand-print on the table
+so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was her
+speech of presently leaving me to return no more.
+Or perhaps both these joined in urging on my determination
+to learn more of Desire Michell before
+some unknown bar fell between us. I only know
+that I passed into a mood of trapped exasperation
+at my helplessness and lack of knowledge. It seemed
+imperative that I should act to save us both, act
+soon and surely; yet inaction was bound upon me
+by my ignorance. Who was she? Where did she
+live? What bond held her subject to the Thing
+from the Barrier? What gates were to close between
+us? Why could she not put her hand in mine, any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+night, and let me take her away from this haunted
+place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light,
+and let me see her face to face? I was a man groping
+in a labyrinth while outside something precious to
+him is being stolen.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time I found myself unable to work,
+unable to share our household life with Phillida
+and Vere, or to find relaxation in driving about the
+countryside. Anger against Desire herself stirred at
+the bottom of my mind; Desire, who hampered me
+by the word of honor in which she had netted me
+so securely.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that my enemy from the unknown
+places began to whisper of the book.</p>
+
+<p>I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We
+did not meet at the breach in the mighty wall, confronted
+in death conflict between Its will and mine.
+Instead, night after night It crept to my window as
+at our first meeting. I started awake to find Its
+awful presence blackening the starlight where It
+crouched opposite me, Its intelligence breathing
+against mine. As always, my human organism
+shrank from Its unhuman neighborhood. Chill and
+repugnance shook my body, while that part of me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+which was not body battled against nightmare
+paralysis of horror. But now It did not menace or
+strive against me. It displayed a dreadful suavity
+I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those
+great snakes who are reported to mesmerize their
+prey by looping movements and figures melting from
+change to change in the Hunger Dance of Kaa.</p>
+
+<p>There was a book that held all I longed to know,
+It whispered to me. A book telling of the woman!
+She did not wish me to read, for fear I should grow
+overwise and make her mine. The book was here,
+in my house. I might arise and find&mdash;if I would be
+guided by It&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust
+my enemy? If such a book existed, which seemed
+improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to Desire
+in the thought of reading without her knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>The Thing was not turned away. How could
+I do harm by learning what she was, unless she had
+evil to conceal? Did I fear to know the truth? As
+for the book's existence, I had only to accept guidance
+from It&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>I persisted in refusal. But the idea of the book
+followed me through my days like a wizard's familiar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+dogging me. Where could such a volume be hidden,
+in what secret nook in wall or floor? How came a
+book to be written about the girl I supposed young,
+unknown and set apart from the world? Was I
+letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions
+of delicacy?</p>
+
+<p>Indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond
+rest. Phillida and Vere began to consider me with
+puzzled eyes. Cristina developed a habit of cooking
+individual dishes of especial succulence and triumphantly
+setting them before me as a "surprise"; a
+kindness which of course obliged me to eat whether
+I was hungry or not. I suspect my little cousin
+abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the
+heat as an excuse for all. We were in late August
+now. Cicadas sang their dry chant in the fields,
+where the sun glared down upon Vere's crops and
+painted him the fine bronze of an Indian. Our lake
+scarcely stirred under the hot, still air.</p>
+
+<p>It was after a day of such heat, succeeded by a
+night hardly more cool, that the lights in my room
+quietly went out. I was sitting at my table, some
+letters which required answers spread before me
+while I brooded, pen between my fingers, upon the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+mystery which had become my life. For the moment
+I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident
+at the powerhouse.</p>
+
+<p>Not for long! The hateful cold that crept like
+freezing vapor into the room, the foul air of damp
+and corruption pouring into the scented country
+atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves&mdash;before
+I turned my eyes to the window I knew the
+monster from the Frontier crouched there.</p>
+
+<p>"Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of
+old, how should you prevail? By your fear, the
+woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in
+whose hand the weapon was laid and who shrinking
+let it fall unused, the end comes."</p>
+
+<p>"The book?" I gasped, against my better
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>"The book was the weapon."</p>
+
+<p>"No, or you would not have offered it to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you
+may. The offer is past."</p>
+
+<p>Past? A madness of bafflement and frustrated
+curiosity gripped and shook me.</p>
+
+<p>"I take the offer," I cried in passion and defiance.
+"If there is such a book, show it to me!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>The Thing was gone. Light quietly filled the
+lamps&mdash;or was it that I had opened my eyes? I
+gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what?
+I did not know. Only, all the horror I ever had felt
+in the presence of the Thing was slight compared to
+the fear that presently began to flow upon me as an
+icy current. There in the pleasantly lighted room,
+alone, I sank through depths of dread, down into
+an abyss of despair, down&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A long sigh of rising wind passed through the
+house like a sucked breath of triumph. Windows
+and doors drew in and out against their frames with
+a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural
+abruptness. Absolute stillness succeeded. I felt a
+very slight shock, as if the ground at my feet
+was struck.</p>
+
+<p>I fled from the terror for the first time. Yes,
+coward at last, deserter from that unseen Frontier's
+defense, I found myself in the hall outside my room,
+leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me
+the door shut violently, yet I felt no current of air
+to move it.</p>
+
+<p>From the other side of the house there sounded
+the click of latch, then a patter of soft-shod feet.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+Phillida came hurrying down the hall toward me.
+She was wrapped in some silky pink-flowered garment.
+Her short hair stood out around her head like
+a little girl's well-brushed crop. She presented as
+endearingly natural a figure, I thought, as any man
+could seek or imagine. The wisdom of Ethan Vere
+who had garnered his love here!</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin?" she exclaimed. "The hall light is
+so dim! You almost frightened me when I glimpsed
+you standing there. Did the wind wake you, too?
+I think we are going to have a thunder storm, it is so
+hot and gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and
+scratching at the door, so I was just going down to
+let him in before the rain comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I achieved. Then, finding my voice secure:
+"I will let in the cat. Where is Vere?"</p>
+
+<p>"He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not like to have you going about the house
+alone at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes widened and she laughed outright.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Cousin Roger! What a funny idea to
+have about our very own house! I have one of the
+electric flashlights you bought for us all; see?"</p>
+
+<p>What could I tell her of my vision of her womanly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+softness and timidity brought to bay by the Thing
+of horror, down in those empty lower rooms? How
+did I know It stalked no prey but me? Its clutch
+was upon Desire Michell. These were Its hours,
+between midnight and dawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Tramps," I explained evasively. "Give me
+the light."</p>
+
+<p>But she pattered down the stairs beside me,
+kimono lifted well above her pink-flowered slippers,
+one hand on the balustrade. The light glinted in the
+white topaz that guarded her wedding ring, a richer
+jewel than any diamond in the sight of one who
+knew the tender thought with which she had set it
+there. No! The horror was not for her, clothed in
+her wholesome goodness as in armor of proof.
+Surely for such as she the Barrier stood unbreached
+and strong.</p>
+
+<p>When I opened the front door, Bagheera darted
+in like a hunted cat. A drift of mist entered with
+him. Looking out, I saw the night was heavy with
+a low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree tops; a
+ground-mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray
+where our light fell upon it. Such mists were common
+here, yet I shivered and shut it out with relief.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around
+my ankles, pressing caressingly against me as if
+thanking me after the manner of cats. I remembered
+this was not the first time he had shown this
+anxiety and gratitude for shelter.</p>
+
+<p>"Bagheera does love you," Phillida commented,
+stooping to pat him. "Isn't it funny, though, that he
+never will go into your room? He is always petting
+around you downstairs. When Cristina or I are
+doing up your quarters, he will follow us right up
+to the door-sill, but we can't coax him inside. Perhaps
+he doesn't like that perfume you always
+have about."</p>
+
+<p>A qualm ran through me, recalling the night I
+had taken the cat there by force and its frantic
+escape. But I snapped the key fast and straightened
+myself with sharp self-contempt. Had I fallen so
+low as to heed the caprices of a pet cat? Was it not
+enough that I had fled from my enemy after accepting
+the knowledge It had striven so long to force
+upon me?</p>
+
+<p>For I had that knowledge. When I had halted in
+the passage outside my room, in the moment before<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+Phillida had joined me, there had been squarely set
+before my mental sight the place to seek the book.</p>
+
+<p>"Phillida, there was a bookcase in this house
+when it was bought," I said. "I believe it stood in
+my room before the place was altered. A small
+stand; I remember putting my candle on its top the
+first night I slept here. Have you seen it?"</p>
+
+<p>Some tone in my question seemed to touch her
+expression with surprise as she lifted her eyes to
+mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for
+the inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed
+you had noticed it long ago; I mean, where it stands.
+The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And holding
+the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe
+they may be valuable, out-of-print, early editions.
+If," her voice faltered wistfully, "if Father ever
+forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and
+comes to visit us, he would love every musty
+old volume. Do you think Mother and he ever will,
+Cousin Roger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic
+parents are out of date. They must adjust themselves
+gradually when they realize Vere is&mdash;himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where
+to find that bookcase?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now? Why, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>She led me across the hall to her sewing room.
+I cannot say that she sewed there very much, but she
+had chosen that title in preference to boudoir or study
+as more becoming a housewife. She had assembled
+here a spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers,
+a Hepplewhite sewing-table and chairs discovered
+about the house. Her canaries' cage hung
+above a great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which
+she kept gold-fish. A pipe of Vere's balanced beside
+the bowl showed that his masculine presence
+was not excluded.</p>
+
+<p>In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled
+the chain of a lamp bright under a shade of peacock
+chintz, and watched me stoop to look at the
+faded bindings.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some
+time to find the book I want. You had better hurry
+back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a
+missing wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book
+tonight, then?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your
+canaries?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked
+my sleeve with a caressing doubt and remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon
+it will be morning! Do you have to write your lovely
+music at night, Cousin Roger? You have been
+growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite
+well? You are so good that you should be happy,
+but&mdash;are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why,
+how did your lazy, tune-spinning, frivolous cousin
+get that reputation in this branch of the family?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan
+says so. You know, Cousin Roger, that I was over-educated
+in my childhood; my brain choked with
+little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at
+all. We went to church Sundays because that was
+the correct thing to do. But I was almost a heathen
+when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about
+church. He doesn't trouble about the past, or life
+after death, or punishment for sin. He believes if
+one tries to be kind and straight, the big Kindness
+and Straightness takes care of everything. So I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+learned to feel that way, too. It is a&mdash;a calm sort
+of feeling all the time, if you know what I mean.
+And that is the way you are good, although perhaps
+you never thought of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and
+walked with her to the foot of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind
+her bedroom door, I went back to the sewing room
+and drew up a chair before the case of books.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them
+as stuffy. They were a sober collection. Burton's
+"Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of the
+Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin
+Luther loaded the first shelf. I looked at the second
+shelf and found it filled with the bound sermons of
+a divine of whom I had never heard.</p>
+
+<p>The lowest shelf held strange companions for the
+sedate volumes above. Erudite works on theosophy,
+magic, the interpretation of dreams and demonology
+huddled together here. Not all of them were readable
+by my humble store of learning. There was a
+Latin copy of Artemidorus, Mesmer's "Shepherd,"
+Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some
+I judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+the row stood a thin, dingy book whose title had
+passed out of legibility. I took it out and opened
+the covers.</p>
+
+<p>Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the
+portrait of a woman. Beneath in old long-s type,
+dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the legend:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Desire Michell, ye foul<sup>e</sup> witch.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward.
+I was resolved that panic should not drive me
+again nor my defense fall from within its walls.
+Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my
+own inner kingdom I must and should be. But I was
+glad to be here instead of upstairs while I read;
+glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and of
+the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked
+down at the disturbing lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The date stamped into the back of the book in
+Roman numerals was of a year in the seventeen hundreds.
+What connection could its Desire Michell
+have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted
+the name to mystify me. Or at most, she might
+be of the family of that unfortunate woman branded
+witch by a bigoted generation.</p>
+
+<p>Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff por<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>trait.
+The face was young, delicate of line, with long
+eyes set wide apart; eyes that even in this wretched
+picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The
+inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls
+clustered about the brow and two massive braids
+descended over either shoulder. The perfumed
+bronze-colored braid up in my drawer&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>The volume was entitled "Some Manifestations
+of Satan in Witchcraft in Ye Colonies," by Abimelech
+Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic manifestations
+set forth in the other four chronicles, I
+turned to "Ye Foul<sup>e</sup> Witch, Desire Michell."</p>
+
+<p>As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed
+through the house, sucking windows and doors in
+and out with the shock of sound, instantly ended, that
+is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a
+flash of lightning whipped across my eyes. But
+when I glanced toward the windows I saw only
+the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Beauty is a witch&mdash;"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3.5em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Much Ado About Nothing.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I will tear the core out of many yellow pages
+of diffuse writing spiced with smug moral reflections.</p>
+
+<p>Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag,
+hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to
+accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and
+Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops.
+Her father was a clergyman who brought his goods
+and his motherless daughter from England to the
+Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country."
+There he found a congregation, and they lived much
+respected. Their culture appeared to be far beyond
+that of their few, hard-working neighbors. Young
+Mistress Michell was reputed learned in the use of
+simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a
+beauty exceeding the custom among godly women, to
+so great degree that sorcery should have been suspected
+of her."</p>
+
+<p>However, sorcery was not suspected; not even
+when her fame spread among near-dwelling Indian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+tribes who gave her a name signifying <i>Water on
+which the Sun is Shining</i>. Admiration was her portion,
+then, with all the suitors the vicinity held. But
+from fastidiousness or ambition she refused every
+proposal made to her father for her. She walked
+aloof and alone, until another sort of wooer came to
+the gate of the minister's house.</p>
+
+<p>This man's full name was not given, apparently
+through the writer's cautious respect for place and
+influence. He was vaguely described as goodly in
+appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied
+with riches. However he chanced to come to the
+obscure settlement was not stated. He did come,
+saw Desire Michell, and fell as abjectly prostrate
+before her as any youth who never had left
+the village.</p>
+
+<p>He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At
+first he was welcome at the minister's house. But
+a day came when Master Michell forbade him to
+cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized,
+that Sir Austin's suit had not been honorable to
+the maid.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then
+he broke under the torment of not seeing Desire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+Michell. Their betrothal was made public, and he
+rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in
+the spring.</p>
+
+<p>Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled
+slowly across snowbound distances. With spring
+came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his
+affair with an heiress recently come to New York
+from England. She was rich in gold and grants
+of land from the Crown. Her husband would be
+a man of weight and influence, it seemed.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Austin had married her.</p>
+
+<p>Desire Michell shut herself in her father's house.
+The clergyman did not live many months after the
+humiliation. Alone, the girl lived. "Student,"
+wrote Abimelech Fetherstone, "of black and bitter
+arts. Or as some say, having, like Bombastus de
+Hohenheim, a devil's bird enchained to do her will."</p>
+
+<p>In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened. He
+burned with fever, anguish consumed him. Physicians
+were called to the bedside of the rich man.
+They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He
+screamed for water. When it was brought, his
+throat locked and he could not swallow. He raved
+of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+times of sanity, he begged and commanded his wife
+and servants to send for the girl. In her pardon
+he saw his sole hope of life.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers were sent
+to the village. They were not even admitted to the
+house they sought, or to sight of Mistress Michell.</p>
+
+<p>"Your master came himself to woo; let him
+come himself to plead."</p>
+
+<p>That was the answer they received to carry back
+to the sick man.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Austin heard, and submitted with trembling
+hope. Writhing in the anguish wasting him by day
+and night, he made the journey by coach and litter
+to Desire Michell's house. At her door-sill he implored
+entrance and pity. The door did not open.</p>
+
+<p>It never opened for him. For three days in succession
+he was borne to her threshold, calling on her
+in his pain and fear. His servants and physician
+clustered about staring at the house which stood
+locked and blank of response. At night fire-shine
+was seen from an upper room; some declared they
+heard wild, melodious laughter.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced
+deputation of men went to the house of the late<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+clergymen. They found the door unlatched and
+open to their entrance. In the upper room they
+found Mistress Michell seated before her hearth
+where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair "flowing
+down in grate bewty."</p>
+
+<p>"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with
+me?" she calmly asked the men who gaped upon her.
+"How should I have harmed him, who came not near
+him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."</p>
+
+<p>If she had been aged and ugly, she might have
+been hung. Gossip ran rife through the countryside.
+But indignation was strong against the man who had
+jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm
+done, and the matter slept for a time.</p>
+
+<p>New matters came. A horror grew up around
+the house. The girl was seen flitting across the fields
+at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her voice
+was heard from the room where she locked herself
+alone, raised in unknown speech. Strange lights
+moved in her windows in the deep night. The old
+woman who had served in the house for years was
+stricken with a palsy and was taken away mumbling
+unintelligible things that iced the blood of superstitious
+hearers.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>There was a young man of the neighborhood
+whose love for Mistress Michell had been long and
+constant. One morning he was found dead on her
+doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his
+hand four words were scrawled in the snow: "<i>Sara
+daughter of Ruel&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>There were those who could finish that quotation.
+Next Sabbath the new minister took as his text: "Ye
+shall not suffer a witch to live." And he spoke of
+Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten
+bridegrooms, each of whom was dead on the wedding
+eve; for she was beloved by an evil spirit that
+suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at
+last against Desire Michell. But when the officers
+came to arrest her, she was found dead in her favorite
+seat before the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a
+perfume she herself distilled of her learning in such
+matters; which was said to contain a rare herb of
+Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard,
+with vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which
+she steeped her hair so that wherever she abode were
+sweet odours. So did she escape Justice, but shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+not escape Hell's Damnation and Heaven's casting out."</p>
+
+<p>I closed the book and laid it down.</p>
+
+<p>Reading those dim, closely printed pages had
+taken time. I was astonished to find the window
+spaces gray with dawn, when I glanced that way.
+The night was past. Neither from Desire nor from
+the Thing without a name which had sent me to this
+book could I find out what I was expected to glean
+from the narration.</p>
+
+<p>My enemy had made no conditions on directing
+me to the book. It had asked no price, uttered no
+menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a certainty
+that a crisis in our affair had been reached. I had
+come to an end; a corner had been turned. I had
+opened a door that could not be closed. How did I
+know this? Why?</p>
+
+<p>Why was the fog against the windows this morning
+so like the fog that shrouded the unearthly sea
+opposite the Barrier?</p>
+
+<p>By and by Cristina came downstairs and busied
+herself in the kitchen. Bagheera, who had slept beside
+my chair all night, rose and padded out to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the
+voices of Phillida and Vere drifted from above.</p>
+
+<p>To have Phillida find me there in her sewing-room,
+finishing an all-night vigil, involved too many
+explanations. I did an unwise thing. From the
+lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such books
+as were readable by my knowledge, and carried the
+armful up to my room. After a hot bath and breakfast
+I would look over these companions of the New
+England witch book.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Not a drop of her blood was human,<br />
+But she was made like a soft sweet woman."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Lilith.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense
+that it gave the effect of a solid mass enclosing the
+house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam of sun
+pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted
+and magnified. All day I sat in my
+room reading.</p>
+
+<p>There are books which should not be preserved.
+I, who am a lover of books, who detest any form of
+censorship, I do seriously set down my belief that
+there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed.
+With this few people will agree. My answer
+to them is simple: they have not read the books
+I mean.</p>
+
+<p>Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were
+of that character, of course. Nearly all of them were
+well known to classical students, at least by name.
+Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were,
+but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+were two that clung to the mind like pitch. I have
+no intention of giving their titles.</p>
+
+<p>Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I
+was in a mood akin to it. Dinner with Phillida
+and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were
+out of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart
+by a heavy sense of guilt and defilement left by those
+hateful books, most incongruously blended with contempt
+for my companions' childish light-heartedness.
+As soon as possible, I left them.</p>
+
+<p>Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table
+again, I pushed aside the pile of books and
+sank into sombre thought. What should I say to
+Desire Michell if she came tonight?</p>
+
+<p>Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable
+and who did not deny Its claim? Was I confronted
+with two beings from places unknown to
+normal humanity? If she was the woman that she had
+seemed to be throughout our intercourse, how could
+the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common
+man with full measure of mankind's common faults
+and weaknesses, could hold Its clutch from me by
+right of the law that protects each in his place.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>Was she one of those who have stepped from the
+permitted places?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sara the daughter of Ruel&mdash;who was beloved
+by an evil spirit who suffered none to come to her.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>There was a young gentlewoman of excellent
+beauty, daughter of a nobleman of Mar, who
+loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to behold,
+and for it refused rich marriages.... Until
+the Gospel of St. John being said suddenlie the wicked
+spirit flue his waies with sore noise.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books
+aside from my direct sight. But I could not so
+easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these books
+had implanted. I could not forget that Desire
+Michell herself had alleged jealousy as the Thing's
+reason for attacking me.</p>
+
+<p>What if we came to an explanation tonight and
+ended this long delirium? Was it not time? Had
+not my weeks of endurance earned me this right?
+Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.</p>
+
+<p>The evening had passed to an hour when I might
+look for the girl to come. I switched off the lights,
+and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+I would have held at bay rushed upon me as clamorous
+besiegers.</p>
+
+<p>Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine
+and of the unhuman Thing, did we grasp at Eve or
+Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold phosphorescence
+of swamp and marsh?</p>
+
+<p>A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A
+delicate stir of movement passed by me. I raised my
+head from my hands, expectant.</p>
+
+<p>"I am here," her familiar voice told me.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire, you had to come, tonight."</p>
+
+<p>Some quality in my voice carried to her a message
+beyond the words. But she did not break into exclamation
+or question as another woman might. She
+was mute, as one who stands still to find the path
+before taking a step.</p>
+
+<p>"You are angry," she said at last. "Something
+here has gone badly for you; I knew that before
+I entered this room."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If
+you are like other men and women, how can you
+know what happens when you are absent? How do
+you know what passes between the Thing from the
+Frontier and me?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I
+feel from afar when you are in sorrow, why, so do
+many people feel with another in sympathy."</p>
+
+<p>"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can,"
+I retorted.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy
+I have for you, Roger."</p>
+
+<p>Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted
+mood. Was she trying to turn me from my
+purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted
+me anything so near an admission of love until now.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne
+for these meagre meetings where I do not see your
+face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that
+must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come
+with me. Let us go out of this room where shadows
+make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with my
+cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to
+New York or Boston. I am asking you to be my
+wife. Let us have done with phantoms and spectres.
+I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she whispered. "You do not love me
+tonight. Tonight you distrust me. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>"Not this way would you have asked that of me
+when I last came! But I will answer you more
+honestly than you do me. To go with you would be
+the greatest happiness the world could give. To
+think of it dazzles the heart. But it is not for me.
+Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is not mine?
+That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little
+while? The gates soon close, now, upon me."</p>
+
+<p>"What gates?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Sacrifice and expiation."</p>
+
+<p>"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated.
+"Desire, I have read the book of Desire Michell,
+downstairs."</p>
+
+<p>I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness.
+Silence bound us both. In the hush, it seemed to
+me that the house suddenly trembled as it had done
+the night before, a slight shock as from some distant
+explosion. In my intentness upon the woman opposite
+me the tremor passed unheeded. She must answer
+me now, surely! Now&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her
+words apart:</p>
+
+<p>"How did you&mdash;find&mdash;the book?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>"It told me&mdash;the Thing from out there," I admitted,
+sullenly defiant of her opinion.</p>
+
+<p>She cried out sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal
+madness&mdash;and you are here? Oh, you are lost, and
+the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger
+flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk
+and the sorrow&mdash;yet you have thrown down all for
+a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it
+means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the
+Borderland? To brave the Loathesome Eyes so
+long&mdash;and fall this way at last! Yet&mdash;there may be
+a hope&mdash;since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow,
+not at dawn, but go now. By all that man can dread
+for soul or body, go now."</p>
+
+<p>"Not without you."</p>
+
+<p>"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I
+shall never come here again. Take with you my
+gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all
+the years to come. There is no blame to you because
+you could not trust a woman on whom falls the
+shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind me.
+I make no reproach&mdash;if only you will go. Do not
+linger. I do most solemnly warn you not to stay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+alone in this room one moment after I have gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me.
+I trust you. I did not mean what you believe. Do
+not leave me this way. Desire&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I can say honestly that my next action was without
+intention. On my table lay, as usual, a small
+electric torch. Every member of our household was
+provided with one for use in emergencies likely to
+occur in a country house, the time of candles being
+past. Now, rising in agitation and repentance, my
+hand pressed by chance upon the flashlight's button.
+A beam of light poured across the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>What did I see, starting out of the black gloom?
+A spirit or a woman? Were those a woman's draperies
+or part of the night fog that showed mere swirl
+upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light?
+I glimpsed a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes
+dark and almond shaped, then a drifting mass of
+gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering gold
+flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole
+apparition sank down out of vision, as aghast, I
+lifted my hand and the torch went out.</p>
+
+<p>Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+place. Did I hear a movement, or only a stirring
+of the orchard trees beyond the windows?</p>
+
+<p>"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoarse to
+my ears.</p>
+
+<p>No answer. I felt myself alone.</p>
+
+<p>I would not at once turn on the lamps. My
+haste might seem an attempt to break faith with her
+a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms
+upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I had seen her at last&mdash;but how? A wan
+loveliness seemingly painted upon the canvas of the
+dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A white moth
+caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at
+the instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my
+suspicions, my love hurled coarsely at her like a
+command, my promise of security for her visits
+apparently broken. How dared I even hope for
+her return?</p>
+
+<p>Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to
+those books, that I might read, fill my mind with the
+poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the comradeship
+that bound me to Desire Michell. How should I
+find her? How free us both?</p>
+
+<p>The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+bell. With dull surprise I realized that considerable
+time had passed while I sat there. Still I did not
+move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in
+advance of the incoming tide, impelled by some deep
+stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge rushed
+about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck
+through my whole body. My heart shuddered and
+staggered in its beating from pure shock.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The wave seeped back, receded away from me
+down its invisible beach. Desire's warning hammered
+at my mind, striving to burst some barred door
+to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too
+long. This was the new peril. This was what I
+had fled from, unknowing the source of my panic,
+the night before.</p>
+
+<p>This was death.</p>
+
+<p>A second surge struck me with the heavy shock
+of a veritable wave from some bitter ocean. This
+time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and hissing in
+its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt
+my heart stop, then reel on like a broken thing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+Flecks of crimson spattered like foam against
+my eyelids.</p>
+
+<p>The wave broke. The mass poured down the
+beach, tugging at me in its retreat. With the last
+strength ebbing away from me with that receding
+current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.</p>
+
+<p>The comfort of light springing up in the room!
+The relief of seeing normal, pleasant surroundings!
+Truly light is an elixir of courage to man.</p>
+
+<p>That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force
+to rise. Nor did I altogether wish to rise and go.
+I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my self-respect
+also? Was I to run a beaten man from this
+peril, after standing against my enemy so long?</p>
+
+<p>Should I not rather stand on this my ground
+where I was not the "lame feller"?</p>
+
+<p>Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified
+cat broke the night stillness. It was Bagheera's
+voice. The cry was followed by sounds indicating a
+small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of
+goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the
+stream below the dam. The series of progressive
+crashes passed back of the house and continued on,
+dying away down the creek.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak
+of noise, the light was withdrawn from every
+lamp in the room. At the same moment, the electric
+torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I
+heard its progress across the muffling softness of the
+rug, across the polished wood beyond, and final stoppage
+at some point out of my reach.</p>
+
+<p>As vapor rises from some unseen source and
+forms in vague growing mass within the curdled air,
+so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared Itself in
+the night and stared in upon me. As so many times,
+I felt the Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a
+colossal hate loomed over me, poised to crush, yet
+withheld by a force greater than either of us. The
+venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere
+about me, fouling the breath I drew. My
+lungs labored.</p>
+
+<p>"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine.
+"Frail and presumptuous Will that has dared oppose
+mine, you are conquered. This is the hour foretold
+to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength.
+Weakling, feel the death surf break upon you. Fall
+down before me. Cower&mdash;plead!"</p>
+
+<p>Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+the wash of the invisible sea never had come to me
+until tonight. And there was Desire's saying that
+I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift
+of knowledge of the book. But I summoned
+my forces.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not
+met front to front these many nights? And who
+has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return,
+but I live. The duel is not lost."</p>
+
+<p>"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken
+my gift that you might spy meanly on the secret of
+your beloved? Have you not opened your mind to
+the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of
+strength within and tear down its power? Of your
+own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks your
+breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is
+thrown from its pedestal. Your spirit rises from
+its seat and looks toward those spaces where it shall
+take flight tonight. Man, you die."</p>
+
+<p>Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea
+rushed upon me. I felt the swirl and hiss of the
+broken wave higher about me before it sank away
+down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+ebbed with it, draining low. My enemy spoke the
+truth. One more such wave&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In
+fancy, I saw bright dawn filling this room of mine,
+shining on the figure of a man who had been myself.
+His head rested on his folded arms so that his face
+was hidden. On the table beside him a vase was
+overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay near and water
+had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining
+the paper. By and by Vere would come to summon
+that unanswering figure to the gay little breakfast-table.
+Phillida would leave her place behind the
+burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and
+come running up the stairs. In her gentleness she
+would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry for that. But
+it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall
+that I had settled my financial affairs so that my little
+cousin would never lack money or know any care that
+I could spare her. Strange, how she had been rated
+below more beautiful or more clever women until the
+waif Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for
+us to wonder at!</p>
+
+<p>"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy
+now?" raged the Thing. "Yourself! Think of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the
+vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the
+grave. Think how you are alone with me. Think
+how you are abandoned to me."</p>
+
+<p>But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth
+had flowed through me like strength.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where
+I am, I stand by my own will. With where I shall
+stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for with
+the death of my body your power ends. Back&mdash;or
+else face me, Thing of Darkness, while we stand in
+one place."</p>
+
+<p>At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down
+like a shutting trap. Consciousness sank away from
+me with a sense of swooning quietness.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier;
+erect, arms folded, fronting the Breach in that inconceivably
+mighty wall. Above, away out of vision
+on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>This I had seen before. But behind me lay that
+which I had not seen. The mists I believed to be
+eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea stretched
+parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+a horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between
+these two immensities on the narrow strand at the
+foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In the
+Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there
+reared Itself against me.</p>
+
+<p>"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would
+you see the Eyes once seen by the witch-woman, who
+fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay,
+crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave
+my immemorial age?"</p>
+
+<p>It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It
+stooped, a lowering menace.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since
+the youngest days of the world have I not answered?
+Have I not brought my presence to the magician's
+lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his
+crucible? When the woman called upon me with
+ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am the guardian
+of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way
+must pass me. Have you the power? Die, then,
+and begone."</p>
+
+<p>With a long heaving sound of waters in movement,
+the gray sea stirred from its stillness. As if
+drawn to some center out of sight, the tide began to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+recede down that strange beach. Then realization
+came to me that here was the ocean which, invisible,
+had surged icy death upon me a while past. The
+ocean now gathered for the final wave that should
+overwhelm the defeated.</p>
+
+<p>"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt.
+"If the witch-woman was yours, the girl Desire is
+mine. This I know: as little as man has to do with
+you, so little have you to do with the human and
+the good. Living or dead, our path is not yours.
+I did not summon you. I do dare look upon you, if
+you have visible form."</p>
+
+<p>Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard
+as a continuing thing seemed to draw nearer. A
+sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying, hurrying;
+the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But
+I heeded this slightly. My gaze was upon that which
+took place within the cleft in the great wall. For
+there the cold darkness was writhing and turning,
+visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting
+river might look by night. And as one might glimpse
+beneath the smooth boil and heave of such a river
+the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in
+that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+which the mind shrank, appalled. Now gigantic
+tentacles rolled about a central mass, groping out in
+unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed
+to stalk there, rearing up its monstrous stature until
+all that Breach was choked with it. It fell down
+into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank
+their loops. But through all change steadily fixed
+upon me I felt the eyes of the Unseen.</p>
+
+<p>I stood my ground. With what pain and draining
+cost to my poor endurance there is no need to say.
+Each instant I anticipated the surge of that returning
+sea whose flood should smother out the human spark
+upon its shore. This I had brought upon myself.
+Yes, and would again to help Desire Michell! If
+I had sheltered her for one hour&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>The Thing halted, stooped.</p>
+
+<p>"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me.
+"Fool, evil goes with her. For her you suffer.
+Thrust her from your breast."</p>
+
+<p>I looked down. Wavering against my breast,
+just above my heart glimmered a spot of light. The
+little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the
+bright head of Desire Michell were rested there
+against me, how I would strive to shield her from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of that
+will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of
+hovering brightness.</p>
+
+<p>I felt her press warm against me. I heard the
+roar of the death-wave far out in that sea.
+Before me&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through
+the dread Breach. What formed there, more
+inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What
+Hand reached for me&mdash;for&mdash;us&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream
+it was."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Midsummer Night's Dream.</span>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>"Mr. Locke! Mr. Locke!"</p>
+
+<p>I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan
+Vere, who bent over me. Phillida was there, too, pale
+of face. But what was That just vanishing into the
+darkness beyond my window-sill? What malignant
+glare seared disappointment and grim promise across
+my consciousness? Had I brought with me or did
+I hear now a whispered: "<i>Pygmy, again!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin, Cousin, are you very ill?" Phillida was
+half sobbing. "Won't you drink the brandy, please?
+Oh, Ethan, how cold he is to touch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, dear," Vere bade, in his slow steadfast
+way. "Mr. Locke, can you swallow some of this?"</p>
+
+<p>I became aware that his arm supported me upright
+in my chair while he held a glass to my lips. Mechanically
+I drank some of the cordial. Vere put
+down the glass and said a curious thing. He
+asked me:</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I get you out of this room?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>Why should he ask that, since the spectre was
+for me alone? Or if he had not seen It, how did he
+know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied
+brain puzzled over these questions while I managed
+a sign of refusal. Any effort was impossible to me.
+The cold of the unearthly sea still numbed my body.
+My heart labored, staggering at each beat.</p>
+
+<p>Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me.
+His tact let me rest in the mute inaction necessary
+to recovery, while my body, astonished that it still
+lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow
+he reassured and directed Phillida. Presently
+she was busied with the coffee apparatus in the corner
+of the room.</p>
+
+<p>It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes
+aside from the expanse of the table before me. The
+vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see it.
+The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there
+the day before lay among the wet sheets of music.
+The Book of Hermas lay open at the page I had last
+turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might
+devour a city&mdash;whose name is Hegrin. Thou hast
+escaped&mdash;because thou didst not fear for so terrible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+a Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves,
+yet may escape&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>What did they mean, the old, old words men have
+rejected? What had Hermas glimpsed in his visions?
+How many men are written down liars because they
+traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove
+to report what they had seen? Who before me had
+stood at the Barrier and set foot on the Frontier
+between the worlds?</p>
+
+<p>The fog still dense outside was whitening with
+daybreak. A few hours while the sun ran its course
+once more for me, then night again, bringing completion
+of the menace. I recognized that this delay
+could not affect the end. Perhaps it would have
+been easier if all had finished for me tonight, easier
+if Vere and Phillida had not found me in time
+to bring me back.</p>
+
+<p>How had they found out my condition? Wonder
+stirred under my lethargy. Had I called or cried
+out? It did not seem that I could have done so.
+Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor
+an adventurer as that.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black
+coffee, tiptoeing in her anxiety and questioning Vere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+with her eyes. He took the cup, stooping to receive
+my glance of assent to the new medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The brandy had stimulated, but sickened me.
+The coffee revived me so much that I was able to
+take the second cup without Vere's help. When
+I had walked up and down the room a few times,
+leaning on his arm, life had taken me back, if only
+for a little while.</p>
+
+<p>The two nurses were so good in their care of
+me that our first words were of my gratitude to
+them. Then my curiosity found voice.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to come in at this hour?"
+I asked. "How did you know I was&mdash;ill?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot imagine what made Ethan wake up,"
+said Phillida, with a puzzled look toward her husband.
+"He woke me by rushing out of the room
+and letting the door slam behind him. Of course
+I knew something must be wrong to make Drawls
+hurry like that. Usually he does such a tremendous
+lot in a day while looking positively lazy. So I came
+rushing after and found him in here, trying to
+waken you. I&mdash;I thought at first that you were not
+living, Cousin Roger. It was horrible! You were
+all white and cold&mdash;&mdash;" she shivered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>Vere poured another cup of coffee. He said
+nothing on the subject, merely observing that the
+stimulant would hardly hurt me and some might
+be good for Phil. I asked her to bring cups for
+them both.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure I really care about the coffee, but
+I'll make some more," she nodded, dimpling. "I
+love to drink from your wee porcelain cups with their
+gold holders. You do have pretty things, you
+bachelors from town."</p>
+
+<p>When she was across the room, I asked quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"What was it, Vere? What sent you to me?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered in as subdued a tone, looking at the
+tinted shade of the lamp instead of at my face.</p>
+
+<p>"The young lady woke me, Mr. Locke. She
+came to the bedside, whispering that you were
+dying&mdash;would be dead if I didn't get to help you in
+time. She was gone before Phillida roused up so
+she doesn't know anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>My heart, so nearly stopped forever and so
+lethargic still, leaped in a strong beat. Desire, then,
+had come back to save me. For all my doubt and
+seemingly broken faith, she had brought her slight
+power to help me in my hour of danger. For my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+sake she had broken through her mysterious seclusion
+to call Vere and send him to my rescue.</p>
+
+<p>Neither he nor I being unsophisticated, I understood
+what Vere believed, and why he looked at the
+lamp rather than at me. But even that matter had
+to yield precedence to my first eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"You saw her?" I demanded. "You call her
+young. You saw her face, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could forget it if I had," he said dryly.
+"As it happened, I didn't. She was wrapped in a
+lot of floating thin stuff; gray, I guess? The room
+was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I
+don't know why she seemed young unless it was
+the easy, light way she moved. By the time I got
+what she was saying and sat up, she was gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"She went out the door like a puff of smoke.
+I just saw a gray figure in the doorway, where the
+hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When
+I came into the hall there wasn't a sign of anybody
+about. Nor afterward, either!"</p>
+
+<p>I considered briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I know what you are thinking, Vere.
+It is natural, but wrong. The lady&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not&mdash;thinking.
+I guess you're as good a judge as I am about
+what goes on in this house. After the way you've
+treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know
+you're as choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all
+that matters."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning.
+"Me? I haven't the least idea what you are talking
+about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a
+great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now
+he is able to tell us about this attack, and if he should
+have a doctor. I have noticed for weeks how thin
+and grave he has been growing to be. If only he
+<i>would</i> drink buttermilk!"</p>
+
+<p>I looked into the candid, affectionate face she
+turned to me. From her, I looked to her husband,
+whose New England steadiness had been tempered
+by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the
+test of his experience in a city cabaret. A new
+thought cleaved through my perplexities like an
+arrow shot from a far-off place.</p>
+
+<p>"How much do you both trust me?" I slowly
+asked. "I do not mean trust my character or my
+good intentions, but how much confidence have you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+in my sanity and commonsense? Would you believe
+a thing because I told it to you? Or would
+you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is
+deceiving us, or mad'?"</p>
+
+<p>They regarded one another, smiling with an
+exquisite intimacy of understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see yourself one little, little bit,
+Cousin?" she wondered at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything you say, goes all the way with us,"
+Vere corroborated.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while
+I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh
+and hot."</p>
+
+<p>I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned
+my forehead in my hands and tried to review the
+situation. They obeyed like well-bred children,
+settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking
+their coffee as prettily as a pair of parakeets. They
+seemed almost children to me, although there was
+little difference in years between Vere and myself.
+But then, I stood on the brink where years stopped.</p>
+
+<p>With the next night, my triumphant enemy could
+be put off no longer. That I could not doubt. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear weighed less
+upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization
+of the few hours left during which I could affect
+the affairs of life. What remained to be done?</p>
+
+<p>On one of my visits to New York, I had called
+on my lawyer and made my will. There were a few
+pensioners for whom provision should continue after
+my death. The aged music master under whom I
+developed such abilities as I had, who was crippled
+now by rheumatism and otherwise dependent on a
+hard-faced son-in-law; the three small daughters of
+a dead friend, an actor, whose care and education at
+a famous school of classic dancing I had promised
+him to finance&mdash;a few such obligations had been provided
+for, and the rest was for Phillida.</p>
+
+<p>But now, what of Desire Michell?</p>
+
+<p>She had seemed so apart from common existence
+that I never had thought of her possible needs any
+more than of the needs of a bird that darted in and
+out of my windows. Until tonight, when I had seen
+her and she had proved herself all woman by her
+appeal to Ethan Vere. It was not a spirit or a seeress
+or "ye foule witch, Desire Michell" who had fled
+to him for help in rescuing me. It was simply a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+terrified girl. What was to become of this girl?
+Under what circumstances did she dwell? Had she
+a home, or did she need one? Could I care for this
+matter while I was here?</p>
+
+<p>Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds
+came in to us along with a freshening air. The
+strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the lamps
+already looked wan and faded in the new light. I
+switched them out before speaking to the pair who
+watched me.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a story to tell you both," I said. "The
+beginning of it Phillida has already heard.
+Perhaps&mdash;&mdash;Have you told Vere about the woman
+who visited this room, the first night I spent in the
+house? Who cut her hair and left the braid in my
+hand to escape from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she nodded, wide-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go to my chiffonier, there in the
+alcove, and bring a package wrapped in white silk
+from the top drawer?"</p>
+
+<p>She did as she was asked and laid the square
+of folded silk before me. I put back the covering,
+showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance
+of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+like a vivifying elixir. Phillida gathered up the
+braid with a cry of envious rapture.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some
+lucky girls have hair like that? If it was unbound,
+my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity
+to have cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles
+and glitters."</p>
+
+<p>She held it out to him, extended across her palms.
+Vere refrained from touching the braid, surveying it
+where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I had no idea
+of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity
+broke in a mischievous, heart-warming smile into
+the brown eyes uplifted to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Beautiful," he agreed politely.</p>
+
+<p>No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass
+quite away from my little cousin's plain face and
+leave her content, I advanced in respect for him.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning, it was even harder to speak
+than I had anticipated. When Phillida laid the braid
+back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered before me
+and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my
+listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected
+to credit the story I had to tell? How should
+I find words to embody it?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>Only at first! Whether there clung about me
+some atmosphere of that land between the worlds
+where I so recently had stood; or the room indeed
+kept, as I fancied, the melancholy chill of the unseen
+tide that had washed through it, I met no scepticism
+from the two who heard my tale of wild experience.
+They did not interrupt me. Phillida crept close to
+her husband, putting her hand in his, but she did not
+exclaim or question.</p>
+
+<p>Silence held us all for a while after I had finished.
+I had a discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all,
+they had received but a meagre outline. The color
+and body of the events escaped speech. How could
+they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive
+the charm of Desire Michell, the white magic of her
+voice in the dark, the force of her personality that
+could impress her image "sight unseen" beyond all
+time to erase? How convey to a listener that, understanding
+her so little, I yet knew her so well?</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you all this because I need your
+help," I said presently. "Will you give it to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go away!" Phillida burst forth. She beat her
+palms together in her earnestness. "Cousin Roger,
+take your car and go away&mdash;far off! Go where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>&mdash;nothing&mdash;can
+reach you. You must not spend another
+single night here. Ethan will go with you.
+I will, too, if you want us. You must not
+be left alone until you are quite safe; perhaps in
+New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"And, Desire Michell?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is in no danger, I suppose. She is not
+my cousin, anyhow. And even she told you to
+go away."</p>
+
+<p>"You believe my story, then? You do not think
+me suffering from delusions?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come
+here in time to save you, I believe you would have
+died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have seen for
+weeks that something was changing you."</p>
+
+<p>"What does Vere say?" I questioned, studying
+the absorbed gravity of his expression. I wondered
+what I myself would have said if anyone had brought
+me such a story.</p>
+
+<p>He passed his arm around Phillida and drew her
+to him with a quieting, protective movement. His
+regard met mine with more significance than he chose
+to voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm satisfied to take the thing as you tell it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+Mr. Locke," he answered. "Phil is right, it seems
+to me, about you not staying here. I don't think the
+young lady ought to stay, either."</p>
+
+<p>"She refuses to leave, Vere. What can I offer
+her that I have not offered? How can I find her?
+You have heard how I searched the countryside for
+a hint of such a girl's presence. No one has ever
+seen her; or else someone lies very cleverly."</p>
+
+<p>In the pause, Phillida hesitatingly ventured
+an idea:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she is not&mdash;real. If the monster is a
+ghost thing, may not she be one, too? If we are to
+believe in such things at all&mdash;&mdash;? She almost seems
+to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the
+witch girl in that old book."</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying
+to explain some abstruse knowledge to a child.
+I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the solemn immensities
+of the place where I had set my human foot.
+I had tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that
+Borderland where the unnamed Thing and I met,
+each beyond his own law-decreed boundary, and
+locked in combat bitter and strong. Phillida had
+listened; and talked of ghosts the bugbears of grave-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>yard
+superstition. Did Vere comprehend me better?
+Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to
+legends of knight and dragon, as prize of which
+waited Desire Michell; forlornly helpless as white
+Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the
+Maine countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the
+truths glimpsed by Rosicrucians and mystics of lost
+cults, when the highly bred college girl failed?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed so. At least his dark eyes met mine
+with intelligence; hers held only bewilderment
+and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"They are not ghosts," I said only.</p>
+
+<p>"But how can you be sure?" she persisted.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath the braid and the pomander lay the sheet
+of paper on which Desire had written weeks before;
+the first page of that composition now pouring gold
+into my hands. This I passed to Phillida.</p>
+
+<p>"Do ghosts write?" I queried.</p>
+
+<p>She read the lines aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"'We walk upon the shadows of hills, across a
+level thrown, and pant like climbers.'"</p>
+
+<p>"They do write, people say, with ouija boards
+and mediums," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at Vere with despair of sustaining this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+argument. He stood up as if my appeal had been
+spoken, drawing her with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now that it's a decent hour, don't you think
+Cristina might give us some breakfast?" he suggested.
+"I guess bacon and eggs would be sort of
+restoring. If you feel up to taking my arm as far
+as the porch, Mr. Locke, the fresh air might be good
+medicine, too."</p>
+
+<p>I have speculated sometimes upon how civilized
+man would get through days not spaced by his recurrent
+meals into three divisions. Those meals are
+hyphens between his mind and his body, as it were.
+What sense of humor can view too intensely a creature
+who must feed himself three times a day? Are
+we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into
+the normal by breakfast, luncheon and dinner? Deny
+it as we will, when we do not heed them we are out
+of touch with nature.</p>
+
+<p>We went downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast was over, Vere and I walked
+across the orchard to a seat placed near the lake.
+There I sat down, while he remained standing in his
+favorite attitude: one foot on a low boulder, his
+arm resting on his knee as he gazed into the shallow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+amber-tinted water. Fog still overlay the countryside,
+but without bringing coolness. The damp heat
+was stifling, almost tropical as the sun mounted
+higher in the hidden sky.</p>
+
+<p>I watched my companion, waiting for him to
+speak. He appeared intent upon the darting movements
+of a group of tiny fish, but I knew his thoughts
+were afar.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Locke, I didn't want to speak before Phillida,
+because it would not do any good for her to
+hear what I have to say," he finally began. "It is
+properly the answer to what you asked upstairs,
+about our believing you had not imagined that story.
+Did anything slip out over the window-sill when you
+were waking up?"</p>
+
+<p>Startled, for I had not spoken of this, I met
+his gaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Did you see&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, exactly. Something, though! Like&mdash;well,
+like something pouring itself along; a big,
+thick mass. Something sort of smooth and glistening;
+like black, oily molasses slipping over. Only
+alive, somehow; drawing coils of itself out of the
+dark into the dark. I can't put it very plain."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>"What did you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"The air in the room was bad and close, hard
+to breathe. I guessed maybe I was a little dizzy,
+jumping out of bed the way I did and finding you
+like dead, almost." He paused, and returned his
+contemplation to the fish darting in the lake.</p>
+
+<p>"That is what I thought," he concluded. "What
+I felt&mdash;well, it was the kind of scare I didn't use
+to know you could feel outside of bad dreams; the
+kind you wake up from all shaking, with your face
+and hands dripping sweat. That isn't all, either!"</p>
+
+<p>This time the pause was so long that I thought he
+did not mean to continue.</p>
+
+<p>"My excuse for speaking of such matters before
+Phillida is that I may need a woman friend for
+Desire Michell," I reverted to the implied rebuke I
+acknowledged his right to give. "I wanted her help,
+and yours. More than ever, since you have shared
+my experience so far, I want your advice."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be proud to give it, in a minute. First, it's
+only fair to say I've felt enough wrong around here
+to be able to understand a lot that once I might have
+laughed at. Nothing compared to you! But&mdash;I've
+been working about the lake sometimes after dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+or before daylight was strong, when a kind of horror
+would come over me&mdash;well, I'd feel I had to get away
+and into the house or go crazy. That morning when
+you called from your window to ask where I'd been
+so early, and I told you looking for turtles&mdash;that
+was one time. I had gone out looking for turtles,
+but that horror drove me in. When you hailed me,
+I had it so bad that I could just about make out not
+to run for the house like a scared cat, yelling all the
+way. Turning back to the lake with you was a
+poser. But I did; and the feeling was all gone as
+quick as it came. We had a nice morning's shooting.
+Once in a while I've felt it sort of driving me indoors
+when I stepped off the porch or over to the barn
+at night. That's a funny thing: the fear was always
+outside, not in the house. I thought of that while
+you were telling us how the Thing at the window
+kept trying to get in at you. We haven't got a haunted
+house, but a haunted place!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why have you not spoken of this before?" I
+asked, deeply stirred.</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture, too American to be called
+a shrug. He said nothing, watching a large bubble
+rise through the pure, brown-green water, float an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+instant on the surface, then vanish with the abrupt
+completeness of a miniature explosion. I watched
+also, with an always fresh interest in the pretty
+phenomenon. Then I repeated my question, rather
+impatiently as I considered what a relief his companionship
+in experience would have afforded all
+these weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, Vere?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Locke, I don't like to keep saying that you
+never exactly got used to me as your cousin's husband,"
+he reluctantly replied. "But I can see it's
+a kind of surprise to you right along that I don't
+break down or break out in some fashion. Of course
+I haven't known that you were meeting queer times,
+too! If you hadn't been through any of this, what
+would you have thought if I'd come to you with
+stories of the place being haunted by something
+nobody could see? You would have judged I was a
+liar, trying to fix up an excuse for getting away from
+the work here and shoving off. I don't want to go
+away. I don't intend to go. I can't see any need
+of it for Phil and me. But&mdash;and this is the advice
+you spoke of! I think you ought to leave and leave
+now. It's little better than suicide to stay."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>"And abandon Desire Michell?"</p>
+
+<p>He turned his dark observant eyes toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"If I said yes, you wouldn't do it. Phil and I
+will take care of the young lady, if she will let us.
+Couldn't a note be left for her, telling her to
+come to us?"</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>"She would not come. Now, less than
+ever&mdash;&mdash;" I broke off, shot with sharp self-reproach
+at the memory of how I had driven her from me
+last night.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't be any help to her if you're dead,"
+he bluntly retorted.</p>
+
+<p>At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock
+out my post-breakfast pipe against an apple-tree. I
+was not so sure that he was right, self-evident as his
+statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my
+mind, convictions somehow impressed when that
+golden-bronze spot of light so gently came to rest
+above my heart when I last stood at the Barrier;
+the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire.
+To fly from my place now, herded like a cowardly
+sheep by the Thing of the Frontier, would that not
+be to thrust her away to save myself?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>No! Not myself, my life!</p>
+
+<p>I had the answer now. I walked back to Vere
+and took my seat again.</p>
+
+<p>"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you
+can help me make it both by any ingenuity, I shall be
+mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we will
+not talk any more of my running for New York like
+a kicked pup. The question is, will you and Phillida
+take care of the lady who calls herself Desire Michell,
+if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone
+and friendless?"</p>
+
+<p>"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered.
+"But I guess there isn't any disgrace in your going to
+New York, running or not, if you take her with you.
+And that is what ought to have been done long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Vere?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got me! Just pick the lady up, carry
+her out of that room, and have a show-down. Put
+her in your car and take her to town."</p>
+
+<p>"I gave her my word not&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"People can't stand bowing to each other when
+the ship's afire. If she is worth dying for, she
+doesn't want you to die for her."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of
+faith, the temptation!</p>
+
+<p>What harm could I do Desire by this plan of
+Vere's? What good might I not do her? Was it
+mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule
+her timid will? She must pardon me when she
+realized my desperate case. A dying man might be
+excused for some roughness of haste, surely.
+Whether flight could save us I did not know. I
+did know absolutely that my enemy had crossed the
+Barrier last night, and I was prey merely withheld
+from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup
+of pictures flitted across the screen of my fancy.
+Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in
+those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay
+as a garden of tulips, where I might buy for her
+frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous frivolity and
+those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman's
+arm&mdash;everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had
+described for her, where she might dine in silken ease
+and perhaps hear played the music she had named&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I aroused myself and looked at Vere.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>"You'll do it?" he translated my expression.</p>
+
+<p>"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you judge she will?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show
+herself to you in order to send help to me when I was
+in danger, I believe she will come to my room tonight
+if I wait there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me silently. The consternation and
+protest in his face were speech enough.</p>
+
+<p>"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly.
+"If she comes in time, we will try the plan.
+Have the car ready. You and Phillida will be prepared,
+of course. We will waste no time in getting
+away as far as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"And if that Thing comes before she does,
+Mr. Locke?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any other way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you haven't considered that you're inviting
+me to stand by while you get yourself killed,"
+he said stiffly. "I'm not an educated man. I never
+heard the names you mentioned this morning of
+people who used to study out things like this. I
+never heard of any worlds except earth and heaven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+and hell. But then I couldn't explain how an electric
+car runs. I know the car does run; and I know you
+nearly died last night. If you go back and stay
+alone in that room, we both know what you are
+going to meet."</p>
+
+<p>I turned away from him because I sickened at the
+prospect he evoked. The memory of that death-tide
+was too near and rolled too coldly across the future.
+If the trial had been hard when mercifully unanticipated,
+what would it be to meet my enemy now that
+I knew myself conquered? Would It not deliberately
+forestall Desire's coming, tonight?</p>
+
+<p>"Mightn't you help the lady more if you went
+away now, and came back?" he urged.</p>
+
+<p>The deserter's argument, time without end! Was
+I to fall as low as that?</p>
+
+<p>Phillida's voice called to Vere from the veranda,
+summoning him to some need of farm or household.</p>
+
+<p>"In a moment, Pretty," he called assent.</p>
+
+<p>But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped
+much from my silence and would not disturb me lest
+my decision be hindered or changed.</p>
+
+<p>By and by I stood up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>"Vere, in your varied experiences in peace and
+war, did you ever chance to meet a coward?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once," he answered briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"And, did you like the sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," I said, "let us not invite one another
+to that display. Shall we go in to Phillida?"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"They say&mdash;<br />
+What say they?<br />
+Let thame say!"<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Old Scottish Inscription.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>After luncheon, I drove over to the village with
+Phillida, who had some housewifely orders to give at
+the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I had
+agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we
+planned for tonight. We had satisfied her by the
+assurance that I meant to start for New York before
+the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she
+regained her usual spirits with the buoyancy of her
+few years and healthy nerves. I gathered her secret
+belief was that no "ghost" would dare face Ethan.</p>
+
+<p>Which may have been quite true!</p>
+
+<p>On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs.
+Hill to add to our supply of eggs, Phillida's hens having
+unaccountably failed to supply their quota. I
+went in, leaving my companion in the car.</p>
+
+<p>No one else was in the shop. An impulse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+prompted me to put a question to the little woman
+whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named
+Desire Michell?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me.
+Her sallow, wrinkled face lightened with curiosity
+and an absurd primness.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mr. Locke! I'd like to know where a
+young city feller like you got that old story from?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me.
+She was a witch?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was a hussy," said Mrs. Hill severely. "I
+was a little girl when she ran away from her father's
+respectable house, fifty-odd years ago. The disgrace
+killed him, being a clergyman. An' the gossip
+that came back, later, an' pictures of her in
+such dresses! Dear! Dear! The wicked certainly
+have opportunities."</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty years ago!" I echoed, dazed by this intrusion
+of a third Desire Michell.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive
+today; which she ain't. Why, she changed her name
+to one fancier that you might have heard talk of?
+She was&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>The name she gave me I shall not set down. It
+is enough to say it was that of a super-woman whose
+beauty, genius and absolute lack of conscience set
+Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood,
+quenched at the highest-burning hour of her career
+by a sudden and violent death.</p>
+
+<p>"There was an older house once, on your place,"
+she added pensively. "Did you know that? It stood
+in the hollow where your lake is now. Two&mdash;three
+hundred years old, folks say it was. One night it
+burned down in a big thunderstorm. The Michells
+then living had your house built over by the orchard,
+then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up the
+old site with water. All the Michells lived there till
+the last one went missionary abroad an' died in foreign
+parts. I mean the hussy's brother. He took
+up his father's work, feelin' a strong call. He was
+only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt
+it dreadful. He was a hard man on the sinner.
+Preached hell and damnation all his days, he did.
+Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire
+an' his tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can
+tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"He left children?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>"No, sir! Rev'rund never married. He felt
+women a snare. Land, not much snarin' with what
+farm women get to wear around here! I've kind
+of thought of one of those blue foulard silks with
+white spots into it since before I married Hill, but
+never came any nearer than pricin' it an' bringin'
+home a sample. He was death on sweet odors an'
+soft raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are the
+ten-cent bottles Hill makes the pedlar throw in when
+we trade. I do fancy <i>Jockey Club</i> for special times,
+an' I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I
+notice your cousin, Mrs. Vere, has scent on her handkerchief
+week days as well as when she's goin' somewhere,
+so I guess you don't hold with the Rev'rund
+Michell in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs.</p>
+
+<p>"Did the runaway sister leave any children?"
+I queried.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a Michell alive anywhere," she asserted
+positively. "Dead, all dead! The Rev'rund was
+buried at his mission in some outlandish place. An'
+if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the
+movin' picture palace in the village, I don't know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+how he makes out to rest with them flauntin' past
+his grave!"</p>
+
+<p>I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed, I
+drove home in such abstraction that Phillida reproved
+me.</p>
+
+<p>"'The cat has stolen your tongue,'" she teased.
+"Or did Mrs. Hill vamp you and make roast meat of
+your heart with her eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Phil, do you put scent on your handkerchief
+week days as well as Sundays?" I shook off thought
+to inquire.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I keep sachet in my handkerchief box.
+Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Next time you are in town, will you buy a blue
+silk foulard dress with white spots in it and the
+largest bottle of Jockey Club Extract on sale, and
+give them to Mrs. Hill for a Christmas present? I'll
+give you a blank check."</p>
+
+<p>"Cousin Roger? Why?"</p>
+
+<p>So I told her why. But I did not tell her the
+story of the second Desire Michell; nor of the original
+house that stood in the hollow now filled by
+our lake.</p>
+
+<p>Why had a peculiar horror crept through me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+when Mrs. Hill told me what ruins that water
+covered? Why had I remembered the inexplicable,
+repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded
+the coming of the Monster; a sound like the
+smack of huge lips, or some body withdrawn from
+thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to
+the alien Thing only through the ruins of the house
+where It had first been called by the sorceress of
+long ago?</p>
+
+<p>We were walking across from the garage, after
+putting away the car, when a recollection flashed
+upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York,
+held a portrait by a famous French artist of that
+incendiary beauty whose name it now appeared
+cloaked the identity of Desire Michell, daughter and
+sister of New England clergymen. I had seen the
+portrait. And piled in an intricate magnificence of
+curls, puffs and coils about the haughty little head of
+the lady, was her gold-bronze hair; the color of the
+braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.</p>
+
+<p>I went up to my room and opened the work of
+Master Abimelech Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness
+between the poor, coarse woodcut and the
+French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+expression of blended drowsiness and watchfulness
+were too individual to have escaped either record.
+Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory
+and dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric
+torch, all clouded and surrounded by swirls of gray
+vapor shot with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Who and what was the girl Desire Michell whom
+I had come to love through a more profound darkness
+than that of the sight?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the
+afternoon. I sorted my music. There was the
+score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that
+it could be sent to those who waited for it. Vere
+would attend to that, if tonight made it necessary.
+I reflected with disappointment that the first rehearsals
+would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had
+looked forward to this production with especial interest.
+There was the symphony, still unfinished, that I
+had hoped might be more enduring than popular
+music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we
+must go glimmering on our ways. If I snatched
+Desire out of her path into mine, she and I would
+see all those things together.</p>
+
+<p>I finished at last, and set my room in order. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+was a fire laid ready for lighting in my hearth, a
+mere artistic flourish in such weather. I kindled it,
+and put in the flames three of the volumes from the
+ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult
+science. Those three were vile and poisonous. No
+doubt other copies exist, but at least I refused to be
+guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in
+Phillida's household. They burned quietly enough,
+and meekly fell to ashes under my poker.</p>
+
+<p>Our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual,
+with yellow-shaded candles flanking a bowl of yellow
+and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its mistress
+suffering from a nervous headache.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the fog," she answered our sympathy.
+"It came on with the evening, somehow.
+Never mind me. Cristina has made a cream-of-lettuce
+bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do
+not eat every bit. Yes, Ethan; of course I'll take
+mine. I only wish every bush and tree would not
+drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking; and
+the foghorns over at the lighthouses <i>moo</i> regularly
+every half minute. And I never heard the waterfall
+over the dam so loud!"</p>
+
+<p>"We've had a wet summer," Vere observed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+soothingly tranquil as ever. "The lake and creek
+are full. There is more water going over to make
+a noise."</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not be so frightfully sensible, Drawls.
+You know I mean a different loudness. It sort of
+rises up and swims all over one, then dies away."</p>
+
+<p>"Even a fountain will seem to do that if a
+wind shifts the spray," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Cousin Roger. But there is no wind
+tonight."</p>
+
+<p>A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder.
+I fancied Vere was similarly affected. If something
+moved under the water&mdash;&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>We changed the conversation to a pergola planned
+for building next spring, that was to be overrun by
+grapevines and honeysuckle.</p>
+
+<p>"The grapes shall hang through like an Italian
+picture," Phillida anticipated, headache forgotten in
+her enthusiasm. She shook her hair about her pink
+cheeks, leaning over to outline a pergola with four
+spoons. "Here in the middle we must have a birdbath.
+Or no! The birds might peck the grapes.
+We could have one of those big silver-colored looking-balls
+on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+and lake and sky, with people moving no bigger than
+dolls. Imagine a reflection of Ethan like a Lilliputian
+<i>so</i> high!"</p>
+
+<p>So I was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues
+of garden ornaments in her sewing-room,
+when the time came for me to keep my rendezvous
+with Death or the lady. In spite of my warning gesture,
+Vere followed me into the hall. His dark face
+was distressed and anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go with you," he urged.</p>
+
+<p>"No, thanks. Stay with Phil, and keep her too
+busy to suspect where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"If I'm doing wrong to let you go," he began.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot stop me. It is still too early for
+danger, I think. If you like, you can stroll out on
+the lawn from time to time and look up at my windows.
+As long as the lamps are lighted in the room,
+I am all right. Nothing is happening."</p>
+
+<p>"Your lamps were all three lighted when I found
+you last night," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The darkness had been only for my eyes, then?
+Certainly I had seemed to see light withdrawn from
+the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves, and
+covered it by stroking Bagheera, who sat on a hall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+chair making an after-dinner toilet with tongue
+and paw.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, take care of Phil," I repeated, evading
+argument.</p>
+
+<p>He detained me.</p>
+
+<p>"The young lady might not come if there were
+two people, Mr. Locke. I can see that! But I'll
+go instead. I guess I'd be safer than you, with the&mdash;the&mdash;&mdash;You
+know what I mean! It would be the
+first time for me. And if I sat waiting in the dark,
+the lady couldn't tell you were not there. Of course
+I'd bring her right to you."</p>
+
+<p>No one could appreciate the courage of that offer
+so well as we who had both felt the intolerable horror
+of the nearness of the Thing whose nature was beyond
+our nature to endure.</p>
+
+<p>"She would come to no one except me," I refused.
+"But, thank you. And Vere, if what you
+have said about my feeling toward Phillida's husband
+was true once, it is true no longer."</p>
+
+<p>His clasp was still warm on my hand when I
+went into my room and switched on the lights. Soft
+and colorful, the haunted room sprang into view.
+The writing-table and piano gleamed bare without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+their usual burdens of scattered papers and music,
+removed that afternoon. For lack of familiar occupation,
+when I sat down in my favorite place, I
+took up the gold pomander and fell to studying the
+intricate designs worked in the metal.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called
+Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with vervain,
+and cedar, and secret simples&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Vervain, which is powerful against evil
+spirits&mdash;&mdash;</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The strange fragrance, heady as the bouquet
+of rich wine, never cloying, exquisite, might well
+have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused.
+It should stay by me tonight, like a promise of
+her coming.</p>
+
+<p>After I had sat there a while, I turned out
+the lights.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"An excellent way to get a fayrie&mdash;and when you have her,
+bind her!"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ancient Alchemist's Recipe.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled
+thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the
+monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes, likened
+by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board
+for furtive noises that grew up like fungi
+in the moist atmosphere. The thought of Phillida
+and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted
+me almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring
+up, to rush out of the room; to fling myself into my
+car and drive full speed until strength failed and
+gasoline gave out.</p>
+
+<p>Was that the lake which stirred in the windless
+night? The lake, under which lay the fire-blackened
+ruins of the house where the first Desire Michell
+flung open an awful door that her vengeance might
+stride through!</p>
+
+<p>Was it too late for my Desire to come, and time
+for the coming of that Other?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>The step of Vere sounded on the gravel path
+where he walked beneath the window. He was
+making a trip of inspection, and would find no light
+shining from the room. I was about to rise and
+call down a word of reassurance to him, when a
+current of spiced air passed by me. I sat arrested
+in hope and expectancy.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, after my warning, after last night?"
+her soft voice panted across the dark. "Will you
+die, then? Cruel to me, and wicked to come here
+again! Oh, must I wish you were a coward!"</p>
+
+<p>Every vestige of her calmness gone, she was sobbing
+as she spoke. I could imagine she was wringing
+the little hands that once had left a betraying print
+upon my table's surface.</p>
+
+<p>"I was cruel to you last night, Desire; yet afterward
+you saved my life by sending Ethan Vere to
+wake me. Would you have had me leave without
+meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking
+your forgiveness?"</p>
+
+<p>I thought she came nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"For so little, you would brave the Dread One
+in Its time of triumph? O steadfast soldier, who
+faces the Breach even in the hour of death, in all
+that you have done you have remembered me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+Why speak of anger or forgiveness? Have I not
+injured you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never. I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not that an injury? Even though I hid
+my ill-omened face from you, reared as I was to sad
+knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has
+been done. Weak as water in the test, I kept the
+letter of my promise and broke the intent. Yet go;
+keep life at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Desire, I do not understand you," I answered.
+"No matter for that, now! I am content to share
+whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge
+as I asked you last night, but earnestly and with
+humility I ask you to come away with me now. If
+trouble comes to my wife and me, I do not doubt
+we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the
+attempt. Come."</p>
+
+<p>"I, to take happiness like that?" she marveled
+in desolate amazement. "No. At least I will go
+to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to me.
+Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere
+you are living. Out of my sight, out of my knowledge,
+but living in the same world with me. Each
+moment you stay here is a risk."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was
+time to act, but action must be certain. If my groping
+movements missed her in the dark there might
+be no second chance.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to
+meet again as we have done, you shall let me touch
+you before I go," I said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why, would you have me live all the
+years to come in doubt whether you were a woman or
+a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom
+of my own sick brain to which faithfulness
+would be folly? Here across the table I stretch
+my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may
+die tonight."</p>
+
+<p>Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve
+drew obedience, I do not know. But a vague
+figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand
+settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting
+bird. I closed my hand hotly upon that one. I
+sprang a step aside from the table between us, found
+her, and drew her to me.</p>
+
+<p>What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance,
+draperies beneath which beat life and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath
+curled against my cheek. So with that guide I turned
+my head, and set my lips on the lips I had never seen.</p>
+
+<p>Did Something uprear Itself out there in the
+black fog? A cold air rushed across the summer heat
+of the fog; air foul as if issued from the opened
+door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered
+through the house. The hanging chains of the
+lamps swung with a faint tinkling sound.</p>
+
+<p>I snatched Desire Michell off her feet and sprang
+for the door. Somehow I found and opened it at
+the first essay. We were out into the hall. With
+one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then
+carried her on to the head of the stairs. There I
+set her down, but stood before her as a bar against
+any attempt at escape.</p>
+
+<p>A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked
+at my captive. Never again after that kiss could
+she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom.
+So far my victory was complete. The lady might
+be angry, but it must be woman's anger. I knew
+she had not suspected my intention until I lifted
+her in my arms. She had struggled then, after her
+defenses had fallen.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>She was quiet now, as though the light had
+quelled her resistance. She stood drooped and
+trembling; not the old-time witch, not the dazzling
+adventuress, only a small fragile girl wound and
+wrapped in some gray stuff that even covered the
+brightness of her hair. Her face was held down
+and showed no more color than a water-lily.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," she whispered, just audibly. "I
+thought you&mdash;would say, good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," I stammered. "But I could not.
+That way was impossible for us."</p>
+
+<p>She did not contradict me. She was so very
+small, I saw, that her head would reach no higher
+than where the bright spot had rested above my heart
+when I had last stood at the Barrier. One hand
+gripped the veils beneath her chin, and seemed the
+clenched fist of a child.</p>
+
+<p>The crash of my door had startled the household.
+I had heard Phillida cry out, and Vere's running
+steps upon the gravel path. Now he came springing
+up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped,
+staring at us.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire," I spoke as naturally as I could manage,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+"this is Mr. Vere. Vere, my fianc&eacute;e, Miss Michell.
+Shall we go down to Phillida?"</p>
+
+<p>And Desire Michell did not deny my claim.</p>
+
+<p>I am not very sure of how we found ourselves
+downstairs. Nor do I remember in what words
+we made the two girls known to one another. Presently
+we were all in the living room, and Phillida had
+possession of Desire Michell while Vere and I looked
+on stupidly at the proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor-lamp
+and gently drew off the draperies that hooded
+her. With little murmurs of compassion, she unbound
+and shook free her guest's hair.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, you are all damp! This awful fog!
+You must have been out a long time? You shall
+drink some tea before we start. Drawls, will you
+light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table? The kettle
+is filled."</p>
+
+<p>Now I could understand how Desire had
+appeared amid a drift of fireshot smoke in the beam
+of my electric torch, the night before. Her hair
+was a garment of flame-bright silk flowing around
+her, curling and eddying in rich abundance. Over
+this she had worn the gray veils to smother all that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and
+shadows. No wonder her face had seemed wraith-like
+when her startled shrinking away from the light
+had set all that drapery billowing about her.</p>
+
+<p>She was the voice that had been my intimate
+comrade through weeks of strange adventure. She
+was the woman of the faded, yellow book, and the
+painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all
+the Desires of whom I had ever dreamed; and she
+was none of them, for she was herself. Her long
+dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by
+that ancestral blending of drowsiness with watchfulness;
+yet were akin to the eyes of youth in all
+times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the
+soft mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid
+life. But her forehead, the noble breadth between
+the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the student
+whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often
+abashed my ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me
+across the room, all self-confidence trickled away
+from me. What distinguished me from a thousand
+men she might meet on any city street? What had
+I ever said worth note in the hours we had spent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+together? Now she saw me in the light, plainly
+commonplace; and remembering myself lame, I stood
+amazed at the audacity with which I had laid
+claim to her.</p>
+
+<p>She was rising from the chair, gently putting
+aside Phillida's detaining hands. She had not spoken
+one word since her faltered speech to me, upstairs.
+Neither Vere nor Phillida had heard her voice. She
+had given her hand to each of them and submitted
+to Phil's care with a docility I failed to recognize in
+my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement
+now was more like the Desire Michell I knew. Only,
+what was she about to do? Repudiate my violence
+and me&mdash;perhaps go back to her hiding-place?</p>
+
+<p>She came straight to where I stood, not daring
+even to advance toward her. We might have been
+alone in the room. I rather think we were, to
+her preoccupation.</p>
+
+<p>"You must go away," she said. "If there is any
+hope, it is in that. Nothing else matters, now; nothing!
+If you wish, take me with you. It would be
+wiser to leave me. But nothing really matters except
+that you should not stay here. I will obey you in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+everything if you will only go. Take your car and
+drive&mdash;drive fast&mdash;anywhere!"</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency
+and fervor of her low voice. Phillida uttered an
+exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and left
+the room. The front door closed behind him. The
+gravel crunched under his tread on the path to the
+garage, and the rate at which the light he carried
+moved through the fog showed that he was running.
+He obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was
+given. After the briefest indecision, Phillida hurried
+out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p>For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I
+had made discovery of two places where I was not
+the "lame feller." And if the first place was the
+dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich
+Land of Promise in Desire Michell's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>What we said in our brief moment of solitude
+is not part of this account.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of
+garments. With little murmurs of explanation by
+way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest
+Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat
+rather like an artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+that the girl wore a plain frock of gray stuff, long
+of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her throat
+with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness
+of tint and contour. Nothing farther from the
+fashion of the day or the figure of my cousin could
+be imagined.</p>
+
+<p>"You must wear the coat because it is always
+cool motoring at night," Phillida was murmuring.
+"And of course you will want it at a hotel; until
+you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your
+gorgeous, scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I
+know I haven't enough hairpins to put it up without
+wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them in
+the morning. We are going to take the very best care
+of you every minute, so you must not worry."</p>
+
+<p>"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously.
+"No one was ever so kind! It does not
+matter about me, or what people think of me, if he
+will only go from here quickly."</p>
+
+<p>"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband
+has gone for the car. I hear him coming now!"</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps.
+His hand was on the knob of the outer door, fum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>bling
+with it in a manner not usual to him, then the
+knob yielded and he was inside.</p>
+
+<p>"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called,
+with an accent of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze
+seeking mine. He was pale, and drops of fog moisture
+pearled his dark face like sweat.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me,
+ignoring the others. "Perhaps you felt that
+shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake,
+or the kick from a big explosion a long ways
+off? It didn't seem very strong to me. It was too
+strong for that old tree by the garage, though! Must
+have been decayed clear through inside. Willows
+are like that, tricky when they get old."</p>
+
+<p>"Ethan, what <i>are</i> you talking about?" cried
+Phillida, aghast.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to look at me.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it must have fallen just about when you
+slammed your door upstairs. Seems I do remember
+a sort of second crash following the noise you made.
+I was too keen on finding out what was happening
+up there to pay much heed."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Vere?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>"Tree smashed down through the roof of the
+garage," he reluctantly gave his report. "Everything
+under the hood of the automobile is wrecked.
+There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk,
+mixed up with broken wood and leaves and pieces of
+the stucco and tiles of the garage."</p>
+
+<p>So there was to be no going tonight from the
+house beside the lake. A frustrated group, we stood
+amid our preparations; the two girls wearing cloaks
+and hats for the drive that would never be taken.
+Had we ever really expected to go? Already the
+project was fading into the realm of fantastic ideas,
+futile as the pretended journeys of children who
+are kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands
+and took off the blue velvet cap with a resignation
+more expressive than words. Only my practical
+little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried
+protest. "Cousin Roger? Ethan? <i>You</i> cannot
+mean to give up. Why&mdash;'phone to the nearest
+garage to send us another car. If we pay them
+enough they will drive anywhere. Or if they cannot
+take us to New York, they will take us to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+railroad station where we can get a train for some
+place. Can't we, Drawls?"</p>
+
+<p>"We could," Vere admitted. "I'd admire to
+try it, anyhow. But the telephone wire came across
+the place right past the garage, you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The tree tore the wire down, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Phil."</p>
+
+<p>"We&mdash;we might walk," she essayed.</p>
+
+<p>But even her brave voice trailed into silence as
+she glanced toward the black, dripping night beyond
+the windows.</p>
+
+<p>"Or if we found a horse and wagon," she murmured
+a final suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>Vere shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Come!" I assumed charge with a cheerfulness
+not quite sincere. "None of us are ready for such
+desperate efforts to leave our cozy quarters here.
+Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the
+tremor of an approaching thunderstorm. I felt it,
+myself. Let us light all the lamps and draw the
+curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's
+nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought
+beyond reason. Suppose we sit here<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until
+daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough.
+Tomorrow we will do all we had planned for tonight.
+Come in, Vere, and close the door."</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed me at once. Desire Michell passively
+suffered me to unfasten and take off the coat she
+wore, too heavy for such a night. She had uttered
+no word since Vere announced the destruction of the
+car. She did not speak now, when I put her in the
+low chair beneath the lamp. I had a greed of light
+for her, as a protection and because darkness had
+held her so long.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems as if we should do something!"
+Phillida yielded unwillingly.</p>
+
+<p>Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing
+the last curtain. We were both thinking of
+the force that had driven the frail old willow tree
+through tile and cement of the new building to flatten
+the metal of motor and car into uselessness. The
+mere weight of the tree would not have carried it
+through the roof. To "do something" by way of
+physical escape from that&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+as if the vital, resilient mass resentfully freed itself
+from restraint by the bit of satin. Now she put up
+her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad
+strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders,
+veiling her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly.
+"I must be sure&mdash;quite sure! I must think.
+If you will&mdash;wait."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Oh, little booke&mdash;how darst thou put thyself in press for
+drede?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Chaucer.</span></p></div>
+
+
+<p>We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near
+Desire. Phillida and Vere were together, chairs
+touching, her right hand curled into his left. Bagheera
+the cat had slipped into the room before the
+door was closed, and lay pressed against his mistress's
+stout little boot. Our small garrison was assembled,
+surely for as strange a defense as ever sober moderns
+undertook. For my part, it was wonder enough to
+study that captive who was at once so strange yet so
+intimately well known to me.</p>
+
+<p>The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed
+midnight. Soon after, we began to experience the
+first break in the heavy monotony of heat and fog
+that had overlaid the place for three days. The
+temperature began to fall. The fog did not lift.
+The flowered cretonne curtains hung straight from
+their rods unstirred by any movement of air. But
+the atmosphere in the room steadily grew colder. I
+saw Phillida shiver in the chill dampness and pull<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+closer the collar of her thin blouse. When Desire
+finally spoke, we three started as if her low tones had
+been the clang of a hammer.</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried to judge what is best," she said,
+not raising her face from its shadowing veil of hair.
+"I am not very wise. But it seems better that there
+should be no ignorance between us. If I had been
+either wise or good, I should never have come down
+from the convent to draw another into danger and
+horror without purpose or hope of any good ending."</p>
+
+<p>"The convent?" I echoed, memory turning to
+the bleak building far up the hillside. "You came
+from there?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is a path through the woods. I am very
+strong and vigorous. But I had to wait until all
+there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I
+could not come at all. For this house, I had my
+father's old key. It was only for this little time
+while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a nun's
+dress and cut my hair, and&mdash;and never&mdash;never leave
+there any more."</p>
+
+<p>Stupefied, I thought of the black loneliness of the
+wooded hillside behind us. No wonder the fog was
+wet upon her hair! Her slight feet had traversed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+path night after night, had brought her to the door
+her key fitted, had come through the dark house to
+the door of the room upstairs. When she left me, she
+had toiled that desolate way back. For what? Humility
+bent me, and bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" Phillida gasped. "Why? Cousin
+Roger hunted everywhere to find you. He would
+have gone anywhere you told him to see you. Didn't
+you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never meant him to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am Desire Michell, fourth of that name; all
+women who brought misfortune upon those who
+cared for them," she answered, her voice lower still.
+"How shall I make you understand? I was brought
+up to know the wrath and doom upon me, yet I myself
+can scarcely understand. My father knew all, yet he
+fell in weakness."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father?" I questioned, recalling Mrs.
+Hill's positive genealogy of the Michells in which
+there was no place for this daughter of the line.</p>
+
+<p>"He was the last of his family. When he was
+very young the conviction came to him that his duty
+was never to marry, so our race might cease to exist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+He lived here and preached against evil. He studied
+the ancient learning that he might be fitted to wrestle
+with sin. But in the end horror of what was here
+gained upon him so that he closed the house and
+went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a
+girl; the daughter of the clergyman who was leaving
+the mission. My father&mdash;fell in love. He forgot all
+his convictions and married her. He knew it was a
+sin, but it was stronger than he was. She only lived
+one year. When I was born, she died. He prayed
+that I would die, too. But&mdash;I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice died into silence. I ventured to lean
+nearer and take her hand into mine.</p>
+
+<p>"Desire," I said, "why should you be a sufferer
+for the actions of a woman who died over two centuries
+ago? What is the long dead Desire Michell
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>A strange and solemn hush followed my question.
+The words seemed to take a significance and importance
+beyond their simple meaning. The hand I
+held trembled in my clasp. She answered at last,
+just audibly:</p>
+
+<p>"You know. You said that you had read
+her book."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>"But the book tells so little, Desire. Just such
+a chronicle of superstition as may be found in a
+hundred old records."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slightly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that! Bring me the book."</p>
+
+<p>The book was upstairs in the room from which I
+had carried her half an hour before in something
+very like a panic flight. Before I could release her
+hand and rise, before I comprehended his intention,
+Vere was out of the living room and upon the stairs.
+It was too late to overtake him. The man who had
+been a professional skater covered the stairs in a few
+easy, swinging strides. We heard his light tread on
+the floor overhead, heard him stop beside the table
+where the book lay. Then, he was returning. My door
+closed. His step sounded on the stairs again; in a
+moment he was back among us, and quietly offering
+the volume to our guest. His dark eyes met mine
+reassuringly, deprecating the thoughts I am sure my
+face expressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Lights burning and all serene up there," he
+announced.</p>
+
+<p>Desire touched the book with a curious repugnance.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>"I was looking for this, the first night I came
+here," she murmured. "That is why I came to
+America after my father died. I had promised him
+to destroy this record. When I heard that the house
+was sold to a gentleman from New York, I came
+down from the convent on the hill to find the bookcase
+holding the old history. I did not know anyone
+was here, that night, until you touched my hair."</p>
+
+<p>I remembered the bookcase near the bed, where I
+stood my candle and matches. Unaware, I had prevented
+her finding the thing she sought, and so forced
+her to return. Afterward, the house had been full
+of workmen making alterations and improvements,
+until later still Phillida had transferred the bookcase
+and its contents to her sewing room. If I had not
+taken the whim to sleep in the old house on the night
+of my purchase, or if I had chosen another room, the
+existence of Desire Michell might never have been
+known to me.</p>
+
+<p>Would the creature from the Barrier have appeared
+to me, if I had not known her?</p>
+
+<p>She was drawing something from behind the
+portrait of the first Desire Michell; a thin, small
+book that had lain concealed between the cover of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+larger volume and the page bearing the woodcut,
+where a sort of pocket was formed that had escaped
+our notice. Laid upon the table, the little book
+rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled
+upon itself in the lamplight. The limp morocco cover
+was spotted with mildew and half-revealed pages of
+close, fine writing blotched in places with rusty stains.
+It gave out an odor of mould and age in an atmosphere
+made sweet by Desire's presence.</p>
+
+<p>Phillida, who had been silent even when Vere left
+her to go upstairs, shrank away from the book on the
+table. She darted a glance over her shoulder at
+the curtained windows behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Drawls, I cannot help what everybody thinks of
+me," she said plaintively. "I am cold. The fire is
+ready laid in the grate. Will you put a match to
+it, please?"</p>
+
+<p>No one smiled at the request. Her husband
+uttered some soothing phrase of compliance. We all
+looked on while the flame caught and began to creep
+up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed
+his position to one before the hearth. When Vere
+stood erect, Desire leaned toward him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>"Will you read, aloud, sir?" she asked of him,
+and made a gesture toward the morocco book.</p>
+
+<p>She surprised us all by that choice. I was unreasoning
+enough to feel slighted, although the task
+was one for which I felt a strong dislike. I fancied
+Vere liked the idea no better, from his expression.
+However, he offered no demur, but sat down at the
+table and began to flatten the warped pages that
+perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers.
+Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that
+looked by gift of nature as if their long corners had
+been brushed with kohl. She said nothing, yet somehow
+conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood
+that she did not wish to hear me read those pages;
+that it was painful to her that they should be read
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>Vere was ready. He glanced around our circle,
+then began with the simple directness that gave him a
+dignity peculiarly his own.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mistress Desire Michell, her booke, Beginning
+at the nineteenth year of her Age,'" he read, in
+his leisurely voice.</p>
+
+<p>The living Desire Michell and I were regarding
+one another. I smiled at the quaint wording, but she
+shuddered, and put her hands across her eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>Yet there was nothing in those first pages except
+a girl's chronicle of village life. This book evidently
+carried on a diary kept from early childhood; a diary
+written out of loneliness. Apparently the bare colonial
+life pressed heavily upon the writer; who, having
+no companions of the intellect, turned to this record
+of her own mind as a prisoner might talk to his reflection
+in a mirror rather than go mad from sheer
+silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the
+lines like fluttering wings. She wrote of her own
+beauty with a cool appraisal oddly removed from
+vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she
+could not use.</p>
+
+<p>"Like a man who finds treasure in a desert isle,
+I am rich in coin that I may not spend," she wrote.
+"I stand before my mirror and take a tress of my
+hair in either hand; I spread wide my arms full
+reach, yet I cannot touch the end of those tresses.
+Nor can my two hands clasp the bulk of them. There
+have been other women who had such hair, who were
+of body straight and white, and had the eyes&mdash;but I
+cannot read that they stayed poor and obscure."</p>
+
+<p>There followed some quotations from the classics
+of which I was able to give but vague translations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+when Vere passed the book to me, both because my
+knowledge was scanty and because of their daring
+unconventionality. There were allusions, too, to
+ladies of later history who had found fairness a
+broad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the
+writer's learning, there could be no question; a learning
+amazing in one so young and so situated. The
+source of this became apparent. Her father was
+consumed with the passion of scholarship, and the
+girl's hungry mind fed in the pastures where he
+led the way.</p>
+
+<p>Here crept into view an anomaly of character.
+The austere Puritan divine, whose life was open and
+blank, bare and cold as a winter field, cherished a
+secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a
+book on the errors of magic. So laboring, he became
+snared by the thing he denounced. He believed
+in the hidden lore while he condemned it.
+Deeper and deeper into forbidden knowledge his
+eagerness for research led him. Unsanctioned by
+any church were the books Dr. Michell starved his
+body to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in
+unusual wares. The titles in his library comprehended
+the names of more charlatans than bishops.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+He could define the distinctions between necromancy,
+sorcery, and magic. The marvelous calculations of
+the Pythagoreans engaged him, and the lost mysteries
+of the Cabiri.</p>
+
+<p>From such studies he would arise on the Sabbath
+to preach sermons that held his dull flock agape.
+Bitter draughts of salvation he poured for their spiritual
+drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might
+escape hell-fire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft
+and tampering with Satan's agents he was eloquent.
+He rode sixty miles in midwinter to see a Quaker
+whipped and a woman hung who had been convicted
+as a witch.</p>
+
+<p>Of all this, his daughter wrote with an elfin
+mockery. Her brilliant eye of youth saw through
+the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to reconcile.
+She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded
+his doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>"I study with him, but I think alone," she set
+down her independence.</p>
+
+<p>Without his knowledge, she proceeded to actual
+experiment with rude crucible and alembic in her
+own chamber. She essayed some age-old recipes
+of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+handled at certain hours of the night and phases of the
+moon. All were innocent enough, it seemed. She
+cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial
+blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume
+which she named Rose of Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>But the experiments were not fortunate, she
+made obscure complaint. The dog, cured, lived only
+a few weeks. The perfume, in which she revelled
+with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich
+hair in it and her severely dull garments, awoke many
+whispers in a community where sweet odors were
+unknown and disapproved. She alluded, with a
+mingling of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young
+men who followed after her&mdash;"seeking a wife who
+would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as that fair
+woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great,
+whose honey breath was deadly poison to who so
+kissed there."</p>
+
+<p>Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from
+the colonial world of fashion who was to fix the fate
+of Desire Michell and his own.</p>
+
+<p>From this point on, the diary was a record of
+the same story as the "History of Ye foule Witch,
+Desire Michell."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>The love affair that followed Sir Austin's visit
+to the clergyman's house leaped hot and instant as
+flame from oil and fire brought together. The girl
+was parched with thirst for life, yet despised all
+around her. The man was dazzled by a beauty and
+mentality foreign as a bird of paradise found nested
+in Connecticut snow. A mad, wild passion linked
+them that was more than half a duel. For Sir Austin
+was already betrothed. Honor might not have
+chained him for long, but his need of his betrothed's
+fortune proved more enduring. He was a man bred
+to wealth, who did not possess it. He offered Desire
+Michell his left hand.</p>
+
+<p>He was turned out of her father's house with a
+red weal struck across his face like a brand.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he returned. The arrow was firmly
+fixed. He asked her to marry him, and was refused
+with savage contempt. He would not take the refusal.
+Her heart and ambition were hidden traitors
+to his cause. In the end she surrendered and the
+marriage day was set.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Austin rode away to set his house in order,
+while Desire turned from alchemy to make her wedding
+garments.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>The entries during this interval were sweetly gentle
+and feminine. Her Rose of Jerusalem fragrance
+was all her own, and was kept so, but she made less-rare
+essences and sold them through a pedlar in
+order to buy fine linen and brocade for a trousseau
+not designed to be worn in a Puritan village. She
+was happy and at rest in expectation.</p>
+
+<p>On her wedding day the destroying news fell.
+Sir Austin hid a weak spirit within a strong and
+handsome body. Away from Desire's glamour, back
+in New York, he had not broken his engagement to
+the heiress. Instead, he had married her on the day
+arranged before he met the clergyman's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>There was never again a connected record in the
+diary. Pages were torn out in places, entries were
+broken off, half-made. But the story Vere's slow,
+steady voice conveyed to us was the one we knew;
+the one my Desire had told to me the first night I
+slept in this house. The half-mad girl turned to
+her father's deadly books. Sir Austin died as his
+waxen image dissolved before the fire, where the
+girl sat watching with merciless hate. He died,
+raving and frothing, on her door-sill. She never
+saw him after the day he rode away to prepare for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+their marriage. She set open her window that she
+might hear his progress to that hard death, but never
+deigned to turn her glance upon him.</p>
+
+<p>The clergyman was dead, now; of shame, or
+perhaps of terror at the child he had reared. The
+girl was alone.</p>
+
+<p>The diary grew wilder, with gaps of weeks where
+there were no entries. More frequently, pages were
+missing and paragraphs obliterated by the reddish
+blotches like rust or blood. There were accounts of
+weird, half-told experiments ranging through the
+three degrees of magic set forth by Talmud and
+Cabala. She wrote of legions of kingdoms between
+earth and heaven, and the twelve unearthly worlds of
+Plato. She alluded to a Barrier between men and
+other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt Those
+whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil
+and incantation.</p>
+
+<p>"Those of whom Vertabied, the Armenian, says:
+'<i>Their orders differ from one another in situation and
+degree of glory, just as there are different ranks
+among men, though they are all of one nature.</i>' They
+cannot cross nor overthrow this Wall, nor can
+man alone; but if they and man join together&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>&mdash;One
+there beyond whispers to me of power, splendor,
+victory&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Days later, there was entered a passage of mad
+triumph and terror. The Barrier was broken
+through. Out of the breach issued the One whom
+she had invited to her silver lamps; colossal, formless,
+whose approach froze blood and spirit. Eyes of unspeakable
+meaning glared across the dark, whispers
+unbearable to humanity beat upon her intelligence and
+named her comrade.</p>
+
+<p>Now as Vere read this, I felt again that quiver
+of the house or air he had likened to an earth shock
+and held responsible for the fall of the willow tree
+that had destroyed our hope of escape by automobile.
+I looked at my companions and saw no evidence of
+anyone having noticed what I had seemed to feel.
+Vere indeed was pale; while Phillida, who sat beside
+him, was highly flushed with excitement and wonder
+as she listened. Desire had not stirred in her chair,
+except to bend her head so her face was shaded by
+the loosened richness of her hair. Seeing them so
+undisturbed, I kept silence. A storm might be
+approaching, but I made no pretense to myself of
+believing that shock either thunder or earthquake.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>The tone of the diary altered rapidly. At first,
+the unknown from beyond the wall appalled the
+woman only by its unhuman strangeness, the repugnance
+of flesh and blood for its loathly neighborhood.
+Fear emanated from its presence, seen yet
+unseen, a blackness moving in the black of night when
+it visited her. Yet she had courage to endure those
+awful colloquies. She listened. She strove by the
+spell and incantation to subdue This to her service,
+as the demon Orthone served the Lord of Corasse,
+as Paracelsus was served by his Familiar, or Gyges
+by the spirit of his ring.</p>
+
+<p>Alas for the sorceress, misguided by legend and
+fantasy! She had evoked no phantom, but a fact
+actual as nature always is even if nature is not
+humanly understood. The Thing was real.</p>
+
+<p>The awe of the magician became the stricken
+panic of the woman. She had unloosed what she
+could not bind. She had called a servant, and gained
+a master. Gone forever were the dreams of power
+and splendor and triumph. Now she learned that
+only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has summoned,
+nor could a murderess attain that lofty art.</p>
+
+<p>We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+crouched in the useless pentagram traced on the floor
+for her protection, covering her beauty with the
+cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon
+her between the overturned silver lamps.</p>
+
+<p>A deepening horror gathered about the house of
+Mistress Desire Michell. The old dame who had
+been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place and
+fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child
+would come near the garden, though fruit and nuts
+rotted away where they dropped from overripeness.
+No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin
+had died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By
+night she waged hideous battle against her Visitor;
+using woman's cunning, essaying every expedient and
+art her books suggested to her desperate need.</p>
+
+<p>With each conflict, her strength and resource
+waned, while That which she held at bay knew no
+weariness. Time was not, for it, nor change
+of purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"I faint, I fail!" she wrote. "The Sea of
+Dread breaks about my feet. It is midnight. The
+pentagram fades from the floor&mdash;the nine lamps
+die&mdash;the breath of the One at the casement is
+upon me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>Vere stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"A handful of pages have been torn out here,"
+he stated. "The next entry that I can read is in the
+middle of a stained page, and must be considerably
+later on."</p>
+
+<p>Phillida made an odd little noise like a whimper,
+clutching at his sleeve. The third shock for which
+I had been waiting shuddered through the house,
+this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of
+wind went through the wet trees outside like a gasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Ethan, what was that?" she stammered.
+"Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin Roger&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>I had no voice to answer her. In my ears was
+the rush and surge of that sea whose waters had
+gripped me in the past night. I felt the icy death-tide
+hiss around me in its first returning wave, rise to
+my knee's height, then sink away down its unearthly
+beach. What I had dimly known all day, underlying
+Vere's sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and efforts,
+was the truth. Through those intervening hours of
+daylight I had remained my enemy's prisoner, bound
+on that shore we both knew well, until It pleased or
+had power to return and finish with me. No doubt
+It was governed by laws, as we are.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>As before, the cold struck a paralysis across my
+senses. Vere's reassurance sounded faint and distant.</p>
+
+<p>"The thunder is getting closer," he said. "That
+was a storm wind, all right! Would you rather go
+upstairs and lie down, and not hear any more of this
+stuff tonight?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Oh, no! I could not bear to be alone,"
+she refused. "Just, just go on, dear. Of course it is
+the coming storm that makes the room so cold."</p>
+
+<p>He put his left arm around her as she nestled
+against him. His right hand held the diary flattened
+on the table under the light.</p>
+
+<p>"The next entry is just one line in the middle
+of a page where everything else is blotted out,"
+Vere repeated. "It reads: 'The child is a week
+old today.'"</p>
+
+<p>The wave crashed foaming in tumult up the
+strand, flowing higher, drenching me in cold sharp as
+fire. The tide rose faster tonight. The silence that
+held the others dumb before the significance of that
+last sentence covered my silence from notice. Desire's
+face was quite hidden; lamplight and firelight wavered
+and gleamed across her bent head. I wanted to
+arise and go to her, to take her hands and tell her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+to have patience and courage. But when this wave
+ebbed, my strength drained away with the receding
+water. Moreover, the darkness curdled and moved
+beyond the window opposite me. The curtains hung
+between were no bar to my vision, as the light and
+presence of my companions were no bar to the Thing
+that kept rendezvous with me. Since last night, we
+were nearer to one another.</p>
+
+<p>A breath of chill foulness crept across the pungent
+odor of the burning apple-log in the fireplace.
+A whisper spoke to my intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Man conquered by me, fall down before me.
+Beg my forbearance. Beg life of me&mdash;and take
+the gift!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," my thought answered Its.</p>
+
+<p>"You die, Man."</p>
+
+<p>"All men die."</p>
+
+<p>"Not as they die who are mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not yours. You kill me, as a wild beast
+might. But I am not yours; not dying nor dead am
+I yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you not live, pygmy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not as your pensioner."</p>
+
+<p>The logs on the hearth crackled and sank down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+with a soft rustle, burned through to a core of glowing
+red. Phillida spoke with a hushed urgency,
+drawing still closer to her husband, so that her forehead
+rested against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Ethan. Finish and let us be done."</p>
+
+<p>Vere bent his head above the book on the table to
+obey her. Across the dark I suddenly saw the Eyes
+glare in upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"On the next page, the writing begins again,"
+he said. "It says:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am offered the kingdoms of earth. But I
+crave that kingdom of myself which I cast away.
+The child is sent to England. The circle is drawn.
+The names are traced and the lamps filled. Tonight
+I make the last essay. There remains untried one
+mighty spell. This Mystery&mdash;&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>A clap of thunder right over the house
+overwhelmed the reader's voice. Phillida screamed as a
+violent wind volleyed through the place with a crashing
+of doors and shutters, upstairs and down. The
+diary was ripped from beneath Vere's hand and
+hurled straight to the center of that nest of fire
+formed by the settling of the logs. A long tongue of
+flame leaped high in the chimney as the spread leaves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+of the book caught and flared, fanned by wind and
+draft. Vere sprang up, but Phillida's clinging arms
+delayed him. When he reached the fire-tongs there
+was nothing to rescue except a charring mass half-way
+toward ashes.</p>
+
+<p>He turned toward me, perhaps at last surprised
+by my immobility.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he apologized.</p>
+
+<p>Desire had started up with the others when the
+sudden uproar of the storm burst upon them. Now
+she cried out, breaking Vere's excuse of the loss.
+Her small face blanched, she ran a few steps
+toward me.</p>
+
+<p>"It has come! He will die&mdash;he is dying.
+Look, look!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Behold! Where are their abodes?<br />
+Their places are not, even as though they had not been."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Tomb of King Entef.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>Desire Michell was beside me, and I could not
+rise or answer her. She bent over me, so that the
+Rose of Jerusalem fragrance inundated me and drove
+back the sickening air that was the breath of
+our enemy.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she sobbed, her head beside my
+head. "If you can hear me, listen and leave me as
+It wills. You know now that I belong to It by
+heritage? You know why we can never be together
+as you planned? Try to feel horror of me. Put
+me away from you. No evil can come to me unless
+I seek evil. But It will not suffer you to take me.
+Live, dear Roger, and let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Yield to me, Man, what you may not keep," the
+whisper of the Thing followed after her voice.
+"Would you take the witch-child to your hearth?
+Cast her off; and taste my pardon."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you hear, Roger? Roger, let me go."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span>With an effort terrible to make as death to meet,
+I broke from the paralysis that chained me. As
+from the drag of a whirlpool, I tore myself from the
+tide-clutch, from the will of the Thing, from the
+numb weakness upon me. For a moment I thrust
+back the hand at my throat. I stood up and drew
+Desire up with me in my arms, both of us reeling
+with my unsteadiness.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not give you up," I said, my speech hoarse
+and difficult. "I claim you, now, and after. And
+my claim is good, because I pay."</p>
+
+<p>Desire exclaimed something. What, I do not
+know. Her voice was lost in the triumphant conviction
+that I was right. She was free, and the freedom
+was my gift to her. I was not vanquished, but victor.
+The life I paid was not a penalty, but a price.</p>
+
+<p>Her face was uplifted to mine as she clung to
+me; then my weight glided through her arms and I
+fell back in my chair.</p>
+
+<p>I was alone amid blackness and desolation that
+poured past me like the wind above the world.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>For the last time, I opened my eyes on the gray
+shore at the foot of the Barrier. I, pygmy indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+stood again before the colossal wall whose palisades
+reared up beyond vision and stretched away beyond
+vision on either side.</p>
+
+<p>I was alone here. No whisper of taunt or menace,
+no presence of horror troubled me. Opposite me, the
+Breach that split the cliff showed as a shadowed
+ca&ntilde;on, empty except of dread. Far out behind me
+the sea that was like no sea of earth gathered itself
+beneath its eternal mists as a tidal wave draws and
+gathers. With folded arms I stood there, waiting
+for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm
+me in their flood. I waited in awe and solemn
+expectancy, beyond fear or hope.</p>
+
+<p>But now I became aware of a new doubleness of
+experience. Here on the Frontier, I was between the
+worlds, yet I also saw the room in the house left
+behind. I saw myself as an unconscious body reclined
+in a chair beside the hearth. Desire Michell
+knelt on the floor beside me, her hands grasping my
+arms, her gaze fixed on my face, her hair spilling its
+shining lengths across my knees. Phillida was huddled
+in a chair, crying hysterically. Vere apparently
+had been trying to force some stimulant upon the
+man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+I watched he reluctantly rose from bending above the
+figure and set a glass upon the table. I echoed his
+sigh. Life was good.</p>
+
+<p>The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable
+distances. The roar of the waters' thunderous
+approach blended with the heat and flash of storm all
+about the house into which I looked.</p>
+
+<p>"He dies," Desire spoke, her voice level and
+calm. "Has it not been so with all who loved the
+daughters of my race these two centuries past? Yet
+never did one of those die as he dies&mdash;not for passion,
+but for protection of the woman&mdash;not as a madman
+or one ignorant, but facing that which was not meant
+for man to face, his eyes beating back the intolerable
+Eyes. Oh, glory and grief of mine to have seen this!"</p>
+
+<p>Phillida cowered lower in her chair, burying her
+face in the cushions. But Vere abruptly stood erect,
+his fine dark face lifted and set. Just so some
+ancestors of his might have risen in a bleak New
+England meeting-house when moved powerfully to
+wrestle with evil in prayer. But it is doubtful if any
+Maine deacon ever addressed his Deity as Vere
+appealed to his.</p>
+
+<p>"Almighty, we're in places we don't understand,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+he spoke simply as to a friend within the room, his
+earnest, drawling speech entirely natural. "But
+You know them as You do us. If things have got to
+go this way, why, we'll make out the best we can.
+But if they don't, and we're just blundering into
+trouble, please save Roger Locke and this poor girl.
+Because we know You can. Amen."</p>
+
+<p>Now at this strange and beautiful prayer&mdash;or so
+it seemed to me&mdash;a ray of blinding light cleaved up
+from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow speeding
+straight through house and night into inconceivable
+space. Then the room vanished from my sight as the
+great wave burst out of the mist upon me.</p>
+
+<p>I went down in a smother of ghastly snarling
+floods cold as space is cold. Something fled past me
+up the strand, shrieking inhuman passion; the Eyes
+of my enemy glared briefly across my vision.</p>
+
+<p>One last view I glimpsed of that dread Barrier,
+amid the tumult and welter of my passing. The
+breach was closed! Unbroken, majestic, the enormous
+Wall stood up inviolate.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Fancy, like the finger of a clock,<br />
+Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 14em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Cowper.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The uproar of rushing waters was still in my
+ears. But I was in my chair before the hearth in the
+living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was the
+din of a tempest outside.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite me, Phillida and Desire were clinging
+together, watching me with such looks of gladness
+and anxiety that I felt myself abashed before them.
+Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp,
+yellow eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning
+and thunder, while he sleeked his recently wetted
+fur. Wondering where that wet had come from, I
+discovered presently that the fire was out, and the
+hearth drenched with soot-stained water. I looked
+toward the windows, from which the curtains had
+been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the
+panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Drink some of this, Mr. Locke," urged Vere,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span>
+whose arm was about me. "Sit quiet, and I guess
+you'll be all right in a few moments."</p>
+
+<p>I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me,
+as inexplicably as it had flowed away from me a while
+past. How can I describe the certainty of life that
+possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly
+enough, for all of us. None of my companions
+asked, and I myself never doubted whether the
+danger might return. The experience was complete,
+and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had
+been our enemy, the horror that had been Its atmosphere,
+the mystery that haunted Desire&mdash;all were
+fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised,
+and the house purified of fear.</p>
+
+<p>But there was something different from ordinary
+storm in this tempest. The tumult of rain and wind
+linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The house
+quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over
+which a train is passing. Pulling myself together
+I turned to Vere.</p>
+
+<p>"What is happening outdoors?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"The cloudburst was too much for the dam,"
+he answered regretfully. "It went off with a noise
+like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+flooding the whole place and messing up everything
+from our cellar to the chickenhouse. Daylight is due
+pretty soon, now, and the storm is dying down.
+We'll be able to add up the damage, after a bit."</p>
+
+<p>"The water came down the chimney and drowned
+Bagheera," Phillida bravely tried to summon nonchalance.
+"Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not
+get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out
+in that!"</p>
+
+<p>Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave
+her quota to the shelter of commonplace speech we
+raised between ourselves and emotions too recently felt.</p>
+
+<p>"It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where
+I lived until this year," she said. "Once, one blew
+down the mission house."</p>
+
+<p>Vere's weather prediction proved quite right. In
+an hour the storm had exhausted itself, or passed
+away to other places. Sunrise came with a veritable
+glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air
+washed limpidly pure by the rain. The east held a
+troop of small clouds red as flamingoes flying against
+a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.</p>
+
+<p>We stood on the porch together to survey an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+unfamiliar scene in the rosy light. Water overlay
+lawns and paths, so the house stood in a wide, shallow
+lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement
+steps and the pillars of the porte-coch&egrave;re. Phillida's
+Pekin ducks floated and fed on this new waterway as
+contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures. Small
+objects sailed on the flood here and there; Bagheera's
+milk-pan from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a
+fleet of apples shaken down in the orchard,
+while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk
+canoe-cushion.</p>
+
+<p>In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the
+real lake had been there now lay some acres of ugly,
+oozing marsh; its expanse dotted with the bodies of
+dead water-creatures and such of Vere's young trout
+as had not been swept away by the outpouring flood.
+The dam was a mere pile of d&eacute;bris through which
+trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the
+sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun's
+rays were drawing a rank, unwholesome vapor from
+the long-submerged surface.</p>
+
+<p>We contemplated the ruin for a while, without
+words.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>"Poor Drawls!" Phillida sighed at length. "All
+your work just rubbed out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, Vere," I exclaimed impulsively.
+"We will put it all back in the same shape as it was."</p>
+
+<p>But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness
+and recoil from my own proposition. I did not
+want the lake to be there again; or to hear the unaccountable
+sounds to which it gave birth and the
+varying fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the
+others share my repugnance? I seemed to divine that
+they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break out
+in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed
+her sober gray dress in some feminine fashion and
+stood like Marguerite or Melisande with a great
+braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then
+changed her intention. A faint distress troubled
+her expression.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, Vere himself quietly lifted us out
+of unrest.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr.
+Locke," he demurred. "That is if you liked, of
+course! That marsh could be cleaned up and
+drained into pretty rich land, I guess. And down
+there beyond the barn, on the other side where the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I
+should think might be the spot for a smaller,
+cleaner lake."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't it seem to you, Ethan," I said, "that
+we have progressed rather past the <i>Mr. Locke</i> stage?"</p>
+
+<p>A little later, when Desire and I were alone on
+the porch, we walked to the end nearest the vanished
+lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging couch there,
+and sat down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Point out the path down the hill by which you
+used to come," I asked of her.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. There are no words to
+paint how she looked in the clear morning, except that
+she seemed its sister.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only the end of a path that matters," she
+said. "Look instead at the marsh. Do you see
+nothing there stranger than a path through the woods
+even when trodden by a wilful woman?"</p>
+
+<p>Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long
+mounds out there in the muddy floor not far from
+the dam. Not high, two or three feet at most, the
+mounds formed an irregular square of considerable
+area.</p>
+
+<p>"The old house!" I exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>"It was set on fire by the second Desire Michell
+one night deep in winter. Her father built this house
+of yours and put in the dam that covered the ruins
+with water. I think he hoped to wash away the
+horror upon the place."</p>
+
+<p>"I know so little of your history."</p>
+
+<p>"You can imagine it." She turned her head
+from me. "The first child came back from England
+when it was a man grown, and claimed the house and
+name of the first Desire. He settled and married
+here. For two generations only sons were born to the
+Michells. I do not know if the Dark One came to
+them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere
+men who beat off evil. Then, a daughter was born.
+She looked like the first Desire and she was&mdash;not
+good. She was a scandal to the family. She listened
+to It&mdash;&mdash;! The tradition is that she set fire to the
+house after a terrible quarrel with her people, but
+herself perished by some miscalculation. There
+were no more girls born for another while after that.
+Not until my father's time. He had a sister who
+resembled the two Desires of the past. My grandfather
+brought her up in harshness and austerity,
+holding always before her the wickedness to which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+she was born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his
+house with a man no one knew, and died in Paris
+after a life of great splendor and heartlessness.
+Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is
+why I&mdash;covered myself from&mdash;you."</p>
+
+<p>I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and
+feel flutter in mine.</p>
+
+<p>"But what of me, Desire? The darkness covered
+no beauty in me, but a defect. You never saw me
+until last night and now in the morning. Now that
+you know, can you bear with a man who&mdash;limps?
+You, so perfect?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward me. Her kohl-dark eyes,
+vivid as a summer noon, opened to my anxious
+scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>"But I have seen you often," she said, the heat
+of confession bright on cheek and lip. "I never
+meant you to know, but now&mdash;&mdash;! After the first
+time you spoke to me so kindly and gayly&mdash;I was so
+very sorrowfully alone&mdash;and the convent was so dull!
+My father's field-glasses were in my trunk."</p>
+
+<p>"Desire?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fear I have no vocation for a nun. I&mdash;there
+is a huge rock half-way down the hill with a clear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+view of this place. I have spent hours there, watching
+these lawns and verandas, and the things you all
+did. It all seemed so amusing and, and happy. You
+see, where I lived there were almost no white people
+except my father and a priest at the Catholic mission.
+So I learned to know Phillida and Mr. Vere and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, all this time, Desire&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The glasses brought you very close," she whispered.
+"I knew you by night and by day."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+"Life hath its term, the assembly is dispersed,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And we have not described Thee from the first."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 16em;">&mdash;</span><span class="smcap">Gulistan.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+
+<p>I have come to the end of this narrative and with
+the end, I come to what people of practical mind
+may call its explanation. Of the four of us who were
+joined in living through the events of that summer,
+my wife and I and Ethan Vere agree in one belief,
+while Phillida holds the opinion of her father, the
+Professor. I think Bagheera, the cat, might be added
+to our side also, if his testimony was available.</p>
+
+<p>The press reports of the cloudburst and flood
+brought the Professor up to Connecticut to verify
+with his own eyes his daughter's safety. Aunt Caroline
+did not come with him, but I may here set down
+that she did come later. They found their son-in-law
+by no means what their forebodings menaced,
+so reconciled themselves at last to the marriage; to
+Phillida's abiding joy.</p>
+
+<p>But first the little Professor arrived alone, three
+days after the storm. Characteristically, he had sent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+no warning of his coming, so no one met him at the
+railway station. He arrived in one of those curious
+products of a country livery stable known as a rig,
+driven by a local reprobate whom no prohibition
+could sober.</p>
+
+<p>I shall never forget the incredulous rapture with
+which Phillida welcomed him, nor the pride with
+which she presented Vere.</p>
+
+<p>The damages to the place were already being repaired,
+although weeks of work would be needed to
+restore a condition of order and make the changes
+we planned. The automobile had been disentangled
+from the wreckage of garage and willow tree and
+towed away to receive expert attention. We were
+awaiting the arrival of the new car I had ordered
+for the honeymoon tour Desire and I were soon to
+take. Phillida had declared two weeks shopping a
+necessary preliminary to the wedding of a bride who
+was to live in New York "and meet everybody."
+Nor would I have shortened the pretty orgy into
+which the two girls entered, transforming my sorceress
+into a lady of the hour; happiness seeming to
+me rather to be savored than gulped.</p>
+
+<p>Needless to say, there was no more talk of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+convent whose iron gates were to have closed between
+the last Desire Michell and the world. She had been
+directed there by the priest whose island mission was
+near her father's. In her solitude and ignorance of
+life, the sisterhood seemed to offer a refuge in which
+to keep her promise to her father. But she had to
+learn the principles of the Church she was about to
+adopt, and during that period of delay I had come to
+the old house.</p>
+
+<p>On the second day of his visit, we told all the
+story to the Professor. We could not have told
+Aunt Caroline, but we told him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is perfectly simple," he pronounced at the
+end. "Interesting, even unique in points, but simple
+of explanation."</p>
+
+<p>"And what may be the explanation?" I inquired
+with scepticism.</p>
+
+<p>"Marsh gas," he replied triumphantly. "Have
+none of you young people ever considered the singular
+emanations from swamps and marshes where rotting
+vegetation underlies shallow water? Phillida, I
+am astonished that you did not enlighten your companions
+on this point. You, at least, have been carefully
+educated, not in the light froth of modern music<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+and art, but in the rudiments of science. I do not
+intend to wound your feelings, Roger!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not wounded, sir," I retorted. "Just
+incredulous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah?" said the Professor, with the bland superiority
+of his tribe. "Well, well! Yet even you know
+something of the evils attending people who live in
+low, swampy areas; malaria, ague, fevers. In the
+tropics, these take the form of virulent maladies that
+sweep a man from earth in a few hours. Your lake
+<i>was</i> haunted, so was the house that once stood in its
+basin, as some vague instinct strove to warn the
+generations of Michells as well as you. Haunted by
+emanations of some powerful form of marsh gas
+given forth more plentifully at night, which lowered
+the heart action and impeded the breathing of one
+drawing the poison into his lungs through hours of
+sleep, producing&mdash;nightmare. Science has by no means
+analyzed all the possibilities of such phenomena."</p>
+
+<p>"Nightmare!" I cried. "Do you mean to account
+by nightmare for the wide and repeated experiences
+that twice brought me to the verge of death? And
+Desire? What of her knowledge of that same nightmare?
+What of the legend of her family so exactly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+coinciding with all I felt? And why did not Phillida
+and Ethan suffer the nightmare with me?"</p>
+
+<p>He held up a lean hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Gently, gently, Roger! Consider that of all the
+household you alone slept in the side of the house
+toward the lake. I know that you always have your
+windows open day and night&mdash;a habit that used to
+cause great annoyance to your Aunt Caroline when
+you were a boy. Thus you were exposed to the full
+effect of the water gases. That you did not feel
+the effects every night I attribute to differences in
+the wind, that from some directions would blow the
+fumes away from the house, thus relieving you. I
+gather from your account that the phenomena were
+most pronounced in close, foggy weather, when the
+poisonous air was atmospherically held down to the
+earth. You have spoken of miasmic mists that hung
+below the level of the tree-tops. When Mr. Vere
+experienced a similar unease and depression, he was
+on the shore of the lake at dawn after precisely such
+a close, foggy night as I have described as most
+dangerous. The symptoms confirm this theory.
+You say you awakened on each occasion with a sense
+of suffocation. Your heart labored, your limbs were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>
+cold and mind unnaturally depressed, owing to slow
+circulation of the blood. You were a man asphyxiated.
+After each attack you were more sensitive to
+the next, as a malaria patient grows worse if he
+remains in the swamp districts. It is remarkable
+that you did not guess the truth from the smell of
+decaying vegetation and stagnant damp which you
+admit accompanied the seizures! However, you did
+not; and in your condition the last three days of
+continuous fog brought on two attacks that nearly
+proved fatal. Now as to the character of your hallucinations,
+and their agreement with the young lady's
+ideas. That is a trifle more involved discussion, yet
+simple, simple!"</p>
+
+<p>He put the tips of his fingers together and surveyed
+us with the benign condescension of one instructing
+a class of small children.</p>
+
+<p>"The first night that you passed in your newly
+purchased house, Roger, you accidentally encountered
+Miss Michell; or she did you!" He smiled
+humorously. "While your feelings were excited by
+the unusual episode, the strange surroundings and
+the dark, she related to you a wild legend of witchcraft
+and monsters. Later, when you suffered your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+first attack of marsh-gas poisoning, your consequent
+hallucination took form from the story you had just
+heard. Later conversations with your mysterious
+lady fixed the idea into an obsession. Recurrent
+dreams are a common phenomenon even in healthy
+persons. In this case, no doubt the exact repetition
+of the physical sensations of miasmic poisoning
+tended to reproduce in your mind the same sequence
+of ideas or semi-delirious imaginings. These were
+of course varied or distorted somewhat on each occasion,
+influenced by what you had been hearing or
+reading in advance of them. This mental condition
+became more and more confirmed as you steeped
+yourself more deeply in legendary lore and also&mdash;pardon
+me&mdash;in the morbid fancies of the young
+lady; whose ghostly visits in the dark and whose
+increasing interest for you put a further bias upon
+your thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"What were the noises I heard from the lake,
+and the shocks we all felt?" I demanded.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded amiably toward Vere.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Vere has mentioned the large bubbles which
+formed and burst on the surface of the lake. That
+is a common manifestation of ordinary marsh gas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>
+Possibly the singular and unknown emanation that
+took place at night came to the surface in the form of
+a bubble or bubbles huge enough to produce in bursting
+the smacking sound of which you speak. But I
+am inclined to another theory, after a walk I took
+about your place this morning. When you put up
+your cement dam instead of the old log affair that held
+back only a part of the stream, you made a greater
+depth and bulk of water in the swamp basin than
+it has contained these many years, if ever. As a
+result, I believe the sloping mud basin began to slip
+toward the dam. Oh, very gradually! Probably not
+stirring for weeks at a time. Just a yielding here, a
+parting there, until the cloudburst precipitated the
+disaster. You had, my dear Roger, a miniature
+landslide, which would account for sounds of shifting
+mud and water in your lake, and for the shocks
+or trembling of your house when the earth movements
+occurred."</p>
+
+<p>The rest of us regarded one another. I think
+Vere might have spoken, if he had not been unwilling
+to mar Phillida's contentment by any appearance of
+dispute with her father.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very cleverly worked out, sir," I conceded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+"But how do you explain that Desire knew what I
+experienced with the Thing from the Barrier, if my
+experiences were merely delirious dreams?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have not yet understood that she did know,"
+said the Professor dryly. "She put the suggestions
+into your head; innocently, of course. When you
+afterward compared notes and found they agreed,
+you cried 'miraculous'! How is that, Miss Michell?
+Did you actually know what Roger experienced in
+these excursions before he told you of them?"</p>
+
+<p>Desire gazed at him with her meditative eyes,
+so darkly lovely, yet never quite to lose their individual
+difference from any other lovely eyes I have ever
+seen. The eyes, I thought then and still think, of one
+who has seen more, or at least seen into farther
+spaces, than most of treadmill-trotting humanity.
+She wore one of the new frocks for which Phillida
+and she had already made a flying trip to town; a
+most sophisticated frock from Fifth Avenue, with
+frivolous French shoes to correspond. Her hair of a
+Lorelei was demurely coiled and wound about her
+little head. Yet some indescribable atmosphere closed
+her delicately around, an impalpable wall between her
+and the commonplace. Even the desiccated, material<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+Professor was aware of this influence and took off
+his spectacles uneasily, wiped them and put them on
+again to contemplate her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sure," she answered him with careful
+candor. "I believe that I could always tell when the
+Dark One had been with him. I could feel that,
+here," she touched her breast. "I knew what its
+visits were like, because I was brought up to know
+by my father and was told the history of the three
+Desire Michells. My father had studied deeply and
+taught me&mdash;I shall not tell anyone all he taught me!
+I do not want to think of those things. Some of
+them I have told to Roger. Some of them are quite
+harmless and pleasant, like the secret formula for
+making the Rose of Jerusalem perfume; which has
+virtues not common, as Roger can say who has felt it
+revive him from faintness. But there are places into
+which we should not thrust ourselves. It is like&mdash;like
+suicide. One's mind must be perverted before
+certain things can be done. And that is the true
+sin&mdash;to debase one's soul. All men discover and
+learn of science and the universe by honest duty and
+effort is good, is lofty and leads up. Nothing is
+forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+door which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we
+step outside. I am unskilful; I do not express
+myself well."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, young lady," the Professor condescended.
+"Unfortunately, your theories are wild
+mysticism. The veritable fiend that has plagued the
+house of Michell is the mischievous habit of rearing
+each generation from childhood to a belief in doom
+and witchcraft. A child will believe anything it is
+told. Why not, when all things are still equally
+wonderful to it? Let me point out that your theory
+also contradicts itself, since Roger certainly did not
+enter upon any path of crime, yet he met your unearthly
+monster."</p>
+
+<p>"Because he chose to link his fate with mine, who
+am linked by heredity with the Dweller at the Frontier,"
+she said earnestly. "He was in the position of
+one who enters the lair of a wild beast to bring out
+a victim who is trapped there. It may cost that
+rescuer his life. Roger nearly paid his life. But he
+mastered It and took me away from It, because he
+was not afraid and not seeking his own good. I
+never imagined anyone so brave and strong and unsel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>fish
+as Roger. I suppose it is because he thinks
+of others instead of himself, which gives the strongest
+kind of strength."</p>
+
+<p>"The Thing nearly had me, though," I hastily
+intervened to spare my own modesty. "And It did
+have me worse than afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>"I seem to be arguing against an impenetrable
+obstinacy," snapped the Professor. "Do you, Roger,
+who were educated under my own eye, in my house,
+have the effrontery to tell me that you believe Miss
+Michell is descended from the union of an evil spirit
+and a human being; as the Eastern legends claim
+for Saladin the Great?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your own theory, sir, being&mdash;&mdash;?" I evaded.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no theory about the matter," he declared.
+"Excuse me, Miss Michell! The child was
+undoubtedly Sir Austin's son. Which accounts for
+the madness of the first Desire Michell."</p>
+
+<p>We were all silent for a while. Whatever
+thoughts each held remained unvoiced.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Phillida, you take my sane point of view,
+I hope?" the Professor finally challenged his
+daughter, with a glance of scorn and compassion at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+the rest of our group. "You observe that I have
+explained every point raised, Miss Michell's testimony
+being of the vaguest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Papa," Phillida agreed hesitatingly. "I
+do believe you have solved the whole problem. Only,
+if Cousin Roger was suffering from marsh-gas poisoning
+last night when he seemed to be dying, I
+do not quite see why Ethan's prayer should have
+cured him."</p>
+
+<p>The Professor was momentarily posed. He
+looked disconcerted, took off his glasses and put them
+on again, and at length muttered something about
+storm-wind dissipating the miasma in the air and
+events being mere coincidence.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The house was never again visited by the Dark
+Presence. Phantom or fancy, the horror was gone
+as if it never had brooded about the place. Desire
+Locke is a fatal companion only to my heart.</p>
+
+<p>But whether all this is so because the lake is
+drained and the Shetland pony of a young Vere
+browses over the green pasture that was once a
+miasmic swamp; or whether it is so for more subtle,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+wilder reasons, no one can say. I, recalling that
+colossal Barrier I visioned as closed and a certain
+cleaving arrow of light, must at least call the coincidence
+amazing.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, my wife and I, Ethan Vere and
+Bagheera the cat have an understanding between us.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THING FROM THE LAKE***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Thing from the Lake, by Eleanor M. Ingram
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Thing from the Lake
+
+
+Author: Eleanor M. Ingram
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 4, 2007  [eBook #23738]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THING FROM THE LAKE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Nick Wall, Suzanne Shell, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE THING FROM THE LAKE
+
+by
+
+ELEANOR M. INGRAM
+
+Author of "From the Car Behind", "The Unafraid", etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1921, by J. B. Lippincott Company
+Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
+at the Washington Square Press
+Philadelphia, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+     "As well give up the Bible at once, as our belief in
+     apparitions."--WESLEY.
+
+
+The house cried out to me for help.
+
+In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there, that
+impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of
+the place. Let me at once set down that this is not the story of a
+haunted house. It is, or was, a beleaguered house; strangely besieged as
+was Prague in the old legend, when a midnight army of spectres unfurled
+pale banners and encamped around the city walls.
+
+Of course, I did not know all this, the day that my real-estate agent
+brought his little car to a stop before the dilapidated farm. I believed
+the house only appealed to be lived in; for deliverance from the
+destroying work of neglect and time. A spring rain was whispering down
+from a gray sky, dripping from broken gutters and eaves with a patter
+like timid footsteps hurrying by, yet even in the storm the house did
+not look dreary.
+
+"There, Mr. Locke, is a bargain," the agent called back to me, where I
+sat in my car. "Finest bit in Connecticut for a city man's summer home!
+Woodland, farm land, lake and a house that only needs a few repairs to
+be up-to-date. Look at that double row of maples, sir. Shade all summer!
+Fine old orchard, too; with a trifle of attention."
+
+I nodded, surveying the house with an eagerness of interest that
+surprised myself. A box-like, fairly large structure of commonplace New
+England ugliness, it coaxed my liking as had no other place I had ever
+seen; it wooed me like a determined woman. And as one would long to
+clothe beautifully a beloved woman, I looked at the house and foresaw
+what an architect could do for it; how creamy stucco; broad white
+porches and a gay scarlet roof would transform it.
+
+"Come inside," my agent urged, hope in his voice as he observed my face;
+"let me show you the interior. I brought the keys along. Of course, the
+rooms may seem a bit musty. No one has lived in it for--some time. It's
+the old Michell property; been in the family for a couple of hundred
+years. Last Michell is dead, now, and it's being sold for the benefit of
+some religious institute the old gentleman left it to. Trifle wet to
+walk over the land today! But I've a plan and measurements in my
+portfolio."
+
+I said that we would go in. If he had but known the fact, the place was
+already sold to me; before I left my car, before I entered the house,
+before I had seen the hundred-odd acres that make up the estate.
+
+There was a narrow, flagged path to the veranda, where the planking
+moved and creaked under our weight while my companion unlocked the front
+door. Rather astonishingly, the air of the long-closed place was neither
+musty nor damp, when we stepped in. Instead, there was a faint, resinous
+odor, very pleasant and clean; perhaps from the cedar of which the
+woodwork largely consisted.
+
+The house was partially furnished. Not, of course, with much that I
+would care to retain, but a few good antiques stood out among their
+commonplace associates. A large bedroom on the north side, which I
+appointed as my own at first sight, held an old rosewood set including a
+four-posted, pineapple-carved bed. I threw open the shutters in this
+room and looked out.
+
+I received the first jar to my satisfaction. On this side of the place,
+the grounds ran down a slight slope for perhaps half a block to the
+five-acre hollow of shallow water and lush growth which the agent called
+a lake. From it flowed a considerable creek, winding behind the house
+and away on its journey to the Sound. For that under-water marsh I felt
+a shock of violent dislike.
+
+"You don't care for the lake?" my companion deprecated, at my elbow.
+"Fine trout in that stream, though! I'd like you to see it in the
+sunshine."
+
+"I should care more for it if it was a lake, not a swamp," I answered.
+
+"Oh, but that is only because the old dam is down," he exclaimed
+eagerly. "That lets all the water out, you see. Why, if the dam were put
+back, you'd have as pretty a lake for a canoe as there is in the State!
+Its natural depth is four or five feet all over, and about eight or ten
+where the stream flows through to the dam. Even yet, a few wild duck
+stop there spring and fall, and when I was a boy I've seen heron. Put
+back the dam, Mr. Locke, and I'll guarantee you'll never say swamp
+again!"
+
+"We will try it," I said. "Now let us find a lawyer and see how quickly
+I can be put in possession."
+
+We drove back to the little town from which we had that morning started
+out, and where my agent lived; my sleek car following his small one with
+somewhat the effect of a long-limbed panther striding behind an agitated
+mouse.
+
+It appeared that the sale was simply consummated. I do not mean that all
+the formalities were completed in a day. But by nightfall I could feel
+myself the owner of the place.
+
+Perhaps it was the giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time,
+or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that
+inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent
+one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return
+to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several
+contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, to discuss the
+alterations I wanted made. Why not drive out to my new house this
+evening and sleep tonight in the rosewood-furnished bedroom?
+
+The idea gained favor as I contemplated it. I could go over the house
+tonight and sketch more clearly what I wanted done, while I would be on
+the ground when my men arrived next morning. There was an allure of
+camping out about it, too.
+
+In the end I went, of course.
+
+It was dark when I stabled my roadster in the barn that was part of my
+new possessions; where the car seemed to glitter disdain of the
+hay-littered, ragged shelter. Equipped with a flashlight, suitcase and
+bundle, I followed a faint path that wound its way to the house through
+wet blackberry vines whose thorns had outlived the winter. My steps
+broke the blank silence that brooded over the place. At this season
+there was no insect life; nor any other stirring thing within hearing or
+sight. But just as I stepped upon the veranda, I heard a vague sound
+from the lake that lay a few hundred feet to the north. There was no
+wind, yet the water had seemed to move with a sound like the smacking of
+soft, glutinous lips. Or as if some soft body drew itself from a bed of
+clinging mud. I wondered idly if the tide could run this far back from
+Long Island Sound.
+
+The house reiterated the impression of welcoming me. I shut and locked
+the old door behind me, and went up to the room I had chosen as my own.
+There I unshuttered and opened the windows, lighted one of the candles I
+had brought and set it on a little bookcase filled with dingy volumes,
+and threw my blankets on the bed. I had moved in!
+
+My pleasant sense of proprietorship continued to grow. Before I thought
+of sleep, I had been through the house several times from cellar to
+attic and accumulated a list of things to be done. Back in my room, an
+hour passed in revising the list, by candle-light.
+
+Near ten o'clock, I rolled myself in a dressing-gown and my blankets,
+spread an automobile robe over the four-posted bed, and fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+     "Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
+     All women in the magic of her locks."
+                              --SHELLEY (_Trans._).
+
+
+It trailed suavely through my fingers, slipping across my palm like a
+belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight.
+Quite naturally, even in the dazed moment of awakening I closed my hand
+upon it. It was soft in my grasp, yet resilient; solid, yet supple. If I
+may speak irrationally, it felt as if it must be fragrant. It was a
+strange visitor to my experience, yet I recognized its identity
+unerringly as a blind man gaining sight might identify a flower or a
+bird. In brief, it was--it only could be an opulent braid of hair.
+
+When I grasped it, it ceased to move.
+
+In the dense darkness of my bedroom, I lay still and considered. I was
+alone, or rather, should have been alone in the old house I had bought
+the day before. The agent assured me that it had been unoccupied for
+years. Who, then, was my guest? A passer-by seeking refuge in a
+supposedly deserted house would hardly have moved about with such silent
+caution. A tramp of this genus would be a rarity indeed. I had nothing
+with me of value to attract a thief. The usual limited masculine
+jewelry--a watch, a pair of cuff-links, a modest pin--surely were not
+sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a bird of prey as one wearing
+such plumage as I held. I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a
+generous handful. How did it come to trail across my bed, in any case?
+And why was its owner locked in silence and immobility? Surely startled
+innocence would have cried out, questioned my grasp or struggled against
+it! My captive did neither.
+
+I began to paint a picture against the darkness; the picture of a
+crouching woman, fear-paralyzed; not daring to stir, to sob or pant or
+shiver lest she betray herself. Or, perhaps, a woman who was not hushed
+by panic, but by deliberation. A woman who slowly levelled a weapon,
+assuring her aim in the blank darkness by such guides as my breathing
+and the taut direction of her imprisoned tresses. An ugly woman could
+not have such hair as this. Or, could she? I had a doubtful recollection
+of various long-haired demonstrators glimpsed in drugshop windows, who
+were not beautiful. Yes, but they would never have found themselves in
+such a situation as this one! Only resolve or recklessness could bring a
+woman to such a pass; and with spirit and this hair no woman could be
+ugly.
+
+How quiet she was! I suddenly reflected that she must be thinking the
+same thing of me, since neither of us had moved during a considerable
+space of time. Possibly she fancied me only half-aroused, and hoped that
+I would relapse into sleep without realizing upon what my drowsy grasp
+had closed. No doubt it would have been the course of chivalry for me to
+pretend to do so, but it was not the course of curiosity.
+
+The deadlock could not last indefinitely. Apparently, though, it must be
+I who should break it. As quietly as possible, I brought my left hand
+forward to grope along that silken line which certainly must guide me to
+the intruder herself. My hand slipped along the smooth surface to the
+full reach of my arm; and encountered nothing. Check, for the first
+attempt! The candle and matches I had bought in the village were also
+beyond my reach, unless I released my captive and rolled across the bed
+toward the little bookcase where I had placed them beside the
+flashlight. If I should speak, what would she do? And--a new
+thought!--was she alone in the house?
+
+There came a gentle draw at the braid, instantly ceasing as I
+automatically tightened my hold. The pretense that I slept was ended. I
+spoke, as soothingly and kindly as I could manage.
+
+"If you will let me strike a light, we can explain to each other. Or, if
+you will agree not to escape----?"
+
+In spite of my efforts, my voice boomed startlingly through the dark,
+still room. No reply followed, but the braid quivered and suddenly
+relaxed from its tension. She must have come closer to me. Delighted by
+so much success attained and intrigued by the novelty of the adventure,
+I moved slightly, stretching my free arm in the direction of the
+flashlight.
+
+"I am not a difficult person," I essayed encouragement. "Nor too dull, I
+hope, to understand a mistake or a necessity. Nor am I affiliated with
+the police! Permit me----"
+
+I halted abruptly. A cool edge of metal had been laid across the wrist
+of my groping hand. As the hand came to rest, palm uppermost, I could
+feel, or imagined I could feel my pulse beating steadily against the
+menacing pressure of the blade. The warning was eloquent and sufficient;
+I moved no further toward my flashlight. Of course, if I had lifted my
+right hand from its guard of the braid, I could easily have pinioned the
+arm which poised the knife before I suffered much harm. But I might have
+lost my captive in the attempt; an event for which I was not ready, yet.
+
+"Check," I admitted. "Although, it is rather near a stalemate for us
+both, isn't it?"
+
+The knife pressed closer, suggestively.
+
+"No," I dissented with the mute argument. "I think not. I do not believe
+you could do it; not in cold blood, anyway!"
+
+"You do not know," insisted the closer pressing blade, as if with a
+tongue.
+
+"No, I do not know," I translated aloud. "But I am confident enough to
+chance it. What reason have you for desperate action? I would not harm
+you. Have I not a right to curiosity? This is my house, you know. Or
+perhaps you did not know that?"
+
+A sigh stirred the silence, blending with the ceaseless whisper of the
+rain that had recommenced through the night. The braid did not move in
+my right hand, nor did the blade touching my left.
+
+"Speak!" I begged, with an abrupt urgency that surprised myself. "You
+are the invader. Why? What would you have from me? If I am to let you
+go, at least speak to me, first! This is--uncanny."
+
+"There is magic in the third time of asking," came a breathed, just
+audible whisper. "Yet, be warned; call not to you that which you may
+neither hold nor forbid."
+
+"But I do call--if that will make you speak to me," I returned, my
+pulses tingling triumph. "Although, as to not holding you----"
+
+"You fancy you hold me? It is not you who are master of this moment, but
+I who am its mistress."
+
+Her voice had gained in strength; a soft voice, yet not weak, used with
+a delicate deliberation that gave her speech the effect of being a
+caprice of her own rather than a result of my compulsion. Yet, I
+thought, she must be crouched or kneeling beside me, on the floor, held
+like the Lady of the Beautiful Tresses.
+
+"Still, I doubt if you have the disposition to use your advantage," I
+began.
+
+"You mean, the cruelty," she corrected me.
+
+"I am from New York," I smiled. "Let me say, the nerve. If you pressed
+that knife, I might bleed to death, you know."
+
+"Would you hear a story of a woman of my house, and her anger, before
+you doubt too far?"
+
+"Tell me," I consented; and smiled in the darkness at the transparent
+plan to distract my attention from that imprisoned braid.
+
+She was silent for so long that I fancied the plan abandoned, perhaps
+for lack of a tale to tell. Then her voice leaped suddenly out of the
+blackness that closed us in, speaking always in muted tones, but with a
+strange, impassioned urgency and force that startled like a cry. The
+words hurried upon one another like breaking surf.
+
+"See! See! The fire leaps in the chimney; it breathes sparks like a
+dreadful beast--it is hungry; its red tongues lick for that which they
+may not yet have. Already its breath is hot upon the wax image on the
+hearth. But the image is round of limb and sound. Yes, though it is but
+toy-large, it is perfect and firm! See how it stands in the red shine:
+the image of a man, cunningly made to show his stalwartness and strength
+and bravery of velvet and lace! The image of a great man, surely; one
+high in place and power. One above fear and beyond the reach of hate!
+
+"The woman sits in her low chair, behind the image. The fire-shine is
+bright in her eyes and in her hair. On either side her hair flows down
+to the floor; her eyes look on the image and are dreadfully glad. Ha,
+was not Beauty the lure, and shall it not be the vengeance?
+
+"The nine lamps have been lighted! The feathers have been laid in a
+circle! The spell has been spoken; the spell of Hai, son of Set, first
+man to slay man by the Dark Art!
+
+"The man is at the door of the woman's house. Yes, he who came in pride
+to woo, and proved traitor to the love won--he is at her door in
+weakness and pain.
+
+"As the wax wastes, the man wastes! As the mannikin is gone, the man
+dies!
+
+"On her doorstep, he begs for life. He is coward and broken. He suffers
+and is consumed. He calls to her the love-names they both know. And the
+woman laughs, and the door is barred.
+
+"The door is barred, but what shall bar out the Enemy who creeps to the
+nine lamps?
+
+"See, the fire shines through the wax! The image is grown thin and wan.
+Three days, three nights, it has shrunk before the flames. Three days,
+three nights, the woman has watched. As the fire is not weary, she is
+not weary. As the fire is beautiful, she is beautiful.
+
+"The man is borne to her door again. He lifts up his hands and cries to
+her. But now he begs for death. Now he knows anguish stronger than fear.
+And the woman laughs, and the door is barred.
+
+"The fire shines on a lump of wax. The man is dead. From her chair the
+woman has arisen and stands, triumphant.
+
+"_But what crouches behind her, unseen? The lamps are cast down! The
+pentagram is crossed! The Horror takes its own._"
+
+The impassioned speech broke off with the effect of a snapped bar of
+thin metal. In the silence, the steady whisper of rain came to my ears
+again, continuing patiently. I became aware of a rich yet delicate
+fragrance in the air I breathed. It was not any perfume I could
+identify, either as a composition or as a flower scent. If I may hope to
+be understood it sparkled upon the senses. It produced a thirst for
+itself, so that the nostrils expanded for it with an eagerness for the
+new pleasure. I found myself breathing deeply, almost greedily, before
+answering my prisoner's story.
+
+"'Sister Helen,'" I quoted, as lightly as I could.
+
+"And do you think Rossetti had no truth to base his poem upon?" her
+quiet voice flowed out of the darkness, seeming scarcely the same speech
+as the swift, irregular utterance of a moment before. "Do you think that
+all the traditions and learning of the younger world meant--nothing?"
+
+"Are you asking me to believe in witchcraft and sorcery?"
+
+"I ask nothing."
+
+"Not even to believe that you will press the knife if I refuse to free
+you?"
+
+"Not even that; now!"
+
+Compunction smote me. Her voice sounded more faint, as if from fatigue
+or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had
+relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position. I seemed to
+read my lady's weariness in the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was
+really frightened, now that her brave attempt to lull me into incaution
+had failed.
+
+"Listen, please," I spoke earnestly. "I am going to set you free. I
+apologize for keeping you captive so long! But you will admit the
+provocation to my curiosity? You will forgive me?"
+
+A sigh drifted across the darkness.
+
+"I ask no questions," I urged. "But will you not trust me to make a
+light and give what help I can? You are welcome to use the house as you
+please. Or, if you are lost or stormbound, my car is in the old barn and
+I will drive you anywhere that you say. Let us not spoil our adventure
+by suspicion. In good faith----"
+
+I opened my hand, releasing the lovely rope by which I had detained my
+prisoner. Then, with a quickening pulse, I waited. Would she stay? Would
+she spring up and escape? Would she thank me, or would she reply with
+some eccentricity unpredictable as her whim to tell me that tale?
+
+She did none of these things. The braid of hair, freed entirely,
+continued to lie supinely across my open palm. The coolness of the blade
+still lightly touched my wrist. She might be debating her course of
+action, I reflected. Well, I was in no haste to conclude the episode!
+
+When the silence had lasted many moments, however, I began to grow
+restive. Anxiety tinged my speculations. Suppose she had fainted? Or did
+she doubt my intentions, and was her quietness that of one on guard? I
+stirred tentatively.
+
+Two things happened simultaneously with my movement. The braid glided
+away from me, while the knife slipped from its position and tinkled upon
+the floor. I started up, perception of the truth seizing my slow wits,
+and reached for my flashlight.
+
+There was no one in the room except myself. Down my blanket was slipping
+a severed braid of hair, perhaps a foot in length, jaggedly cut across
+at the end farthest from my hand. Leaning over, I saw on the floor
+beside the bed a paper-knife of my own; a sharp, serviceable tool that
+formed part of my writing kit. Before going to bed, I had taken it from
+my suitcase to trim a candle-wick, and had left it upon the bookstand.
+
+Now I understood why her voice had sounded more distant than seemed
+reasonable while I held her beside me. No doubt she had hacked off the
+detaining braid almost as soon as I grasped it. The knife she had
+pressed against my wrist to keep me where I lay while she made ready for
+flight; or amused herself with me. Flight? Say rather that she had
+leisurely withdrawn! Perhaps she had not even heard my magnanimous
+speech offering her the freedom that she already possessed. If she had
+stayed to hear me, probably she had laughed.
+
+Perhaps she was still in the house.
+
+I rose and lighted a candle, under the impulsion of that idea, reserving
+my flashlight for the search. But there was no one in any of the dusty,
+sparsely furnished rooms and halls through which I hunted. The ancient
+locks on doors and windows were fastened as I had left them, although my
+lady certainly had entered and left at her pleasure. Puzzled and amused,
+I finally returned to my bedchamber.
+
+There was some difference in that room. I was conscious of the fact as
+soon as I entered and closed the door behind me. The candle still burned
+where I had left it, flickering slightly in some current of air. There
+was no change that the eye could find, no sound except the rain, yet I
+felt an extreme reluctance to go on even a step from where I stood. What
+I wanted to do was to tear open the door behind me, to rush out into the
+hall and slam the door shut between this room and myself.
+
+Why? I looked around me, sending the beam of the flashlight playing over
+the quiet place. Nothing, of course! I walked over to the bookcase, took
+up the braid I had left there, and sat down in an old armchair to study
+my trophy. On principle and by habit I had no intention of being
+mastered by nerves. It was humiliating to discover that I could be made
+nervous by the mere fact of being in an unoccupied farmhouse after
+midnight.
+
+The braid was magnificent. It was as broad as my palm, yet compressed so
+tightly that it was thick and solid to the touch. If released over
+someone's shoulders, it would have been a sumptuous cloak, indeed! In
+what madness of panic had the girl sacrificed this beauty? How she must
+hate me, now the panic was past! The color, too, was unique, in my
+experience; a gold as vivid as auburn. Or was it tinged with auburn? As
+I leaned forward to catch the candle-light, a drift of that fragrance
+worn by my visitor floated from her braid.
+
+At once I knew what had changed in the room. The air that had been so
+pure when the house was opened, now was heavy with an odor of damp and
+mould that had seeped into the atmosphere as moisture will seep through
+cellar walls. One would have said that the door of some hideous vault
+had been opened into my bedchamber. This stench struggled, as it were,
+with the volatile perfume that clung about the braid; so that my senses
+were thrust back and forth between disgust and delight in the strangest
+wavering of sensation.
+
+I made the strongest effort to put away the effect this wavering had
+upon me. I forced myself to sit still and think of normal things; of the
+men whom I was to see next morning, of the plans I meant to discuss with
+them.
+
+Useless! The stench was making me ill. A wave of giddiness swept over
+me, and passed. My heart was beating slowly and heavily. Something in my
+head pulsed in unison. I felt a frightful depression, that suddenly
+burst into an attack of fear gripping me like hysteria. I wanted to
+shriek aloud like a woman, to cover my eyes and run blindly. But at the
+same time my muscles failed me. Will and strength were arrested like
+frozen water.
+
+As I sat there, facing the door of the room, I became aware of Something
+at the window behind my back. Something that pressed against the open
+window and stared at me with a hideous covetousness beside which the
+greed of a beast for its prey is a natural, innocent appetite. I felt
+that Thing's hungry malignance like a soft, dreadful mouth sucking
+toward me, yet held away from me by some force vaguely based on my own
+resistance. And I understood how a man may die of horror.
+
+Yet, presently, I turned around. Weak and sick, with dragging effort I
+turned in my chair and faced the black, uncurtained window where I felt
+It to be.
+
+Nothing was there, to sight or hearing. I sat still, and combated that
+which I knew _was_ there. In the profound stillness, I heard the wind
+stir the naked branches of the trees, the flowing water through the
+fragments of the one-time dam, the sputtering of my candle which needed
+trimming. Sweat ran down my face and body, drenching me with cold. It
+crouched against the empty window, staring at me.
+
+After a time, the presence seemed not so close. At last, I seemed to
+know It was gone. In the gush of that enormous relief my remaining
+strength was swept away like a swimmer in a torrent and I collapsed
+half-fainting in my chair.
+
+When I was able, I rose and walked through the house again. Again the
+rooms showed nothing to my flashlight except dull furniture, walls
+peeling here and there from long neglect, pictures of no merit and
+dreary subject. I had expected nothing, and I found nothing.
+
+It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom that a sentence from the
+invisible lady's story came back to my mind.
+
+"What crouches behind her, unseen? The Horror takes Its own----"
+
+The bedroom door opened quietly under my hand. The rain had ceased and a
+freshening breeze came from the west, filling the room with sweet
+country air. The candle had burned down. While I stood there, the flame
+flickered out.
+
+After a brief indecision, I made my way to the bed, rolled myself in the
+blankets, and laid down between the four pineapple-topped posts. This
+time I kept the flashlight at my hand. But almost at once I slept, and
+slept heavily far into a bright, windy March morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+     "Wide is the seat of the man gentle of speech."
+                             --INSTRUCTION OF KE' GEMNI.
+
+
+On the second day after my return to New York, my Aunt Caroline Knox
+called me up on the telephone.
+
+There are reasons why I always feel myself at a disadvantage with Aunt
+Caroline. The first of these brings me to a trifling matter that I
+should have set down before, but which I have made a habit of ignoring
+so far as possible in both thought and speech. As was Lord Byron, I am
+slightly lame. I admit that is the only quality in common; still, I like
+the romantic association. Now, my limp is very slight, and I never have
+found it interfered much with things I cared to do. In fact, I am
+otherwise somewhat above the average in strength and vigor. But from my
+boyhood Aunt Caroline always made a point of alluding to the physical
+fact as often as possible. She considered that course a healthful
+discipline.
+
+"My nephew," she was accustomed to introduce me. "Lame since he was
+seven. Roger, do not scowl! Yes; run over trying to save a pet dog. A
+mongrel of no value whatever!"
+
+Which would have left some doubt as to whether she referred to poor
+Tatters or to me, had it not been for her exceeding pride in our family
+tree.
+
+The second reason for my disadvantage before her, was her utter contempt
+for my profession as a composer of popular music.
+
+Today her voice came thinly to me across the long-distance wire.
+
+"Your Cousin Phillida has failed in her examinations again," she
+announced to me, with a species of tragic repose. "In view of her
+father's intellect and my--er--my family's, her mental status is
+inexplicable. Although, of course, there is your own case!"
+
+"Why, she is the most educated girl I know," I protested hastily.
+
+"I presume you mean best educated, Roger. Pray do not quite lose your
+command of language."
+
+I meant exactly what I had said. Phillida has studied since she was
+three years old, exhaustively and exhaustedly. A vision of her plain,
+pale little face rose before me when I spoke. It is a burden to be the
+only child of a professor, particularly for a meek girl.
+
+"She has studied insufficiently," Aunt Caroline pursued. "She is
+nineteen, and her position at Vassar is deplorable."
+
+"Her health----" I murmured.
+
+"Would not have hampered her had she given proper attention to
+athletics! However, I did not call up to hear you defend Phillida in a
+matter of which you are necessarily ignorant. Her father and I are
+somewhat better judges, I should suppose, than a young man who is not a
+student in any true sense of the word and ignores knowledge as a purpose
+in life. Not that I wish to wound or depreciate you, Roger. There is, I
+may say, a steadiness of moral character beneath your frivolity of mind
+and pursuit. If my poor brother had trained you more wisely; if you had
+been _my_ son----"
+
+"Thank you, Aunt," I acknowledged the benevolent intention, with an
+inward quailing at the clank of fetters suggested. "Was there something
+I can do for you?"
+
+"Will you meet Phillida at the Grand Central and bring her home? I
+cannot have her cross New York alone and take a second train out here.
+Her father has a lecture this afternoon and I have a club meeting at the
+house."
+
+"With pleasure, Aunt! What time does her train get in?"
+
+"Half after four. Thank you, Roger. And, she looks on you as an elder
+brother. I believe an attitude of cool disapproval on your part might
+impress upon her how she has disappointed the family."
+
+"Leave it to me, Aunt. May I take her to tea, between trains, and get
+out to your place on the six o'clock express?"
+
+"If you think best. You might advise her seriously over the tea."
+
+"A dash of lemon, as it were," I reflected. "Certainly, Aunt, I could."
+
+"Very well. I am really obliged!"
+
+"The pleasure is mine, Aunt."
+
+But that it was going to be Phillida's, I had already decided. She would
+need the support of tea and French pastry before facing her home. As for
+treating her with cool disapproval, I would sooner have spent a year at
+Vassar myself. It was my intention to meet her with a box of chocolates
+instead of advice. Phil was not allowed candy, her complexion being
+under cultivation. On the occasions when we were out together it had
+been my custom to provide a box of sweets, upon which she browsed
+luxuriously, bestowing the remnants upon some street child before
+reaching her home.
+
+From the telephone I turned back to that frivolous pursuit of which my
+aunt had spoken with such tactfully veiled contempt. She was not
+softened by the respectable fortune I had made from several successful
+musical comedies and a number of efforts which my publishers advertise
+as "high-class parlor pieces for the home." In fact, she felt it to be a
+grievance that my lightness should be better paid than the Professor's
+learning. In which she was no doubt right!
+
+Ever since my return from my newly purchased farm in Connecticut,
+however, I had not been working for money or popular approval, but for
+my own pleasure. There was a Work upon which I spent only special hours
+of delicious leisure and infinite labor. It held all that was forbidden
+to popular compositions; depth and sorrow and dissonances dearer than
+harmony. I called it a Symphony Polynesian, and I had spent years in
+study of barbaric music, instruments and kindred things that this
+love-child of mine might be more richly clothed by a tone or a fancy.
+Aunt Caroline had interrupted, this morning, at a very point of
+achievement toward which I had been working through the usual
+alternations of enjoyment and exasperation, elevation and dejection that
+attend most workmen. Pausing only to set my alarm-clock, I hurried into
+recording what I had found, in the tangible form of paper and ink.
+
+I always set the alarm-clock when I have an engagement, warned by dire
+experiences.
+
+Aunt Caroline had summoned me about eleven in the morning. When the
+strident voice of the clock again aroused me, I had just time to dress
+and reach the Grand Central by half-past four. I recognized that I was
+hungry, that the vicinity was snowed over with sheets of paper, that the
+piano keys had acquired another inkstain, and my pipe had charred
+another black spot on the desk top. Well, it had been a good day; and
+Phillida's tea would have to be my belated luncheon or early dinner.
+Even so, it was necessary to make haste.
+
+It was in that haste of making ready that I uncovered the braid of
+glittering hair which I had brought from Connecticut. I use no
+exaggeration when I say it glittered. It did; each hair was lustrous
+with a peculiar, shining vitality, and crinkled slightly along its full
+length. With a renewed self-reproach at sight of its humbled exile and
+captivity, I took up the trophy of my one adventure. While I am without
+much experience, such a quantity seemed unusual. Also, I had not known
+such a mass of hair could be so soft and supple in the hand. My mother
+and little sister died before I can remember; and while I have many good
+friends, I have none intimate enough to educate me in such matters.
+Perhaps a consciousness of that trifling physical disadvantage of mine
+has made me prefer a good deal of solitude in my hours at home.
+
+The faint, tenacious yet volatile perfume drifted to my nostrils, as I
+held the braid. Who could the woman be who brought that costly fragrance
+into a deserted farmhouse? For so exquisite and unique a fragrance could
+only be the work of a master perfumer. There was youth in that vigorous
+hair, coquetry in the individual perfume, panic in her useless sacrifice
+of the braid I held; yet strangest self-possession in the telling of
+that fanciful tale of sorcery to me.
+
+On that tale, told dramatically in the dark, I had next morning blamed
+the weird waking nightmare that I had suffered after her visit. The
+horror of the night could not endure the strong sun and wind of the
+March morning that followed. Like _Scrooge_, I analyzed my ghost as a
+bit of undigested beef or a blot of mustard. Certainly the thing had
+been actual enough while it lasted, but my reason had thrust it away.
+That was over, I reflected, as I laid the braid back in the drawer. But
+surely the lady was not vanished like the nightmare? Surely I should
+find her in some neighbor's daughter, when my house was finished and I
+went there for the summer? She could not hide from me, with that bright
+web about her head whose twin web I held.
+
+It had grown so late that I had to take a taxicab to the Terminal, just
+halting at a shop long enough to buy a box of the chocolates my cousin
+preferred. But when I reached the great station and found my way through
+the swirl of travelers to the track where Phil's train should come in, I
+was told the express had been delayed.
+
+"Probably half an hour late," the gateman informed me. "Maybe more! Of
+course, though, she may pull in any time."
+
+Which meant no tea for Phillida; instead, a rush across town to the
+Pennsylvania station to catch the train for her home. As I could not
+leave my post lest she arrive in my absence, it also meant nothing to
+eat for me until we reached Aunt Caroline's hospitality; which was cool
+and restrained rather than festive.
+
+I foresaw the heavy atmosphere that would brood over all like a cold
+fog, this evening of Phil's disgraceful return from the scholastic
+arena. Ascertaining from the gateman that the erring train was certain
+not to pull in during the next ten minutes, I sought a telephone booth.
+
+"Aunt Caroline, Phil's train is going to be very late, possibly an hour
+late," I misinformed my kinswoman, when her voice answered me. "I have
+had nothing to eat since breakfast, and she will be hungry long before
+we reach your house. May I not take her to dinner here in town?"
+
+"Please do not call your cousin 'Phil'," she rebuked me, and paused to
+deliberate. "You had no luncheon, you say?"
+
+"None."
+
+"Why not? Were you ill?"
+
+"No; just busy. I forgot lunch. I am beginning to feel it, now. Still,
+if you wish us to come straight home, do not consider me!"
+
+I knew of old how submission mollified Aunt Caroline. She relented, now.
+
+"Well----! You are very good, Roger, to save your uncle a trip into the
+city to meet her. I must not impose upon you. But, a quiet hotel!"
+
+"Certainly, Aunt."
+
+"Phillida does not deserve pampering enjoyment. I am consenting for your
+sake."
+
+"Thank you, Aunt. I wonder, then, if you would mind if we stopped to see
+a show that I especially want to look over, for business reasons? We
+could come out on the theatre express; as we have done before, you
+remember?"
+
+"Yes, but----"
+
+"Thank you. I'll take good care of her. Good-bye."
+
+The receiver was still talking when I hung up. There is no other form of
+conversation so incomparably convenient.
+
+The train arrived within the half-hour. With the inrush of travelers, I
+sighted Phillida's sober young figure moving along the cement platform.
+She walked with dejection. Her gray suit represented a compromise
+between fashion and her mother's opinion of decorum, thus attaining a
+length and fulness not enough for grace yet too much for jauntiness. Her
+solemn gray hat was set too squarely upon the pale-brown hair, brushed
+back from her forehead. Her nice, young-girl's eyes looked out through a
+pair of shell-rimmed spectacles. She was too thin and too pale to
+content me.
+
+When she saw me coming toward her, her face brightened and colored quite
+warmly. She waved her bag with actual abandon and her lagging step
+quickened to a run.
+
+"Cousin Roger!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Oh, how good of you to
+come!"
+
+She gripped my hands in a candid fervor of relief and pleasure.
+
+"I am so glad it is you," she insisted. "I was sorry the train could not
+be later; I wished, almost, it would never get in--and all the time it
+was you who were waiting for me!"
+
+"It was, and now you are about to share an orgy," I told her. "I have
+your mother's permission to take you to dinner, Miss Knox."
+
+"Here? In town? Just us?"
+
+"Yes. And afterward we will take in any show you fancy. How does that
+strike you?"
+
+She gazed up at me, absorbing the idea and my seriousness. To my dismay,
+she grew pale again.
+
+"I--I really believe it will keep me from just dying."
+
+I pretended to think that a joke. But I recognized that my little cousin
+was on the sloping way toward a nervous breakdown.
+
+"No baggage?" I observed. "Good! I hope you did not eat too much
+luncheon. This will be an early dinner."
+
+She waited to take off the spectacles and put them in her little bag.
+
+"I do not need them except to study, but I didn't dare meet Mother
+without them," she explained. "No; I could not eat lunch, or breakfast
+either, Cousin Roger. Nor much dinner last night! Oh, if you knew how I
+dread--the grind! I should rather run away."
+
+"So we will; for this evening."
+
+"Yes. Where--where were you going to take me?"
+
+We had crossed the great white hall to street level, and a taxicab was
+rolling up to halt before us. Surprised by the anxiety in the eyes she
+lifted to mine, I named the staid, quietly fastidious hotel where I
+usually took her when we were permitted an excursion together.
+
+"Unless you have a choice?" I finished.
+
+"I have." She breathed resolution. "I want to go to a restaurant with a
+cabaret, instead of going to the theatre. May I? Please, may I? Will you
+take me where I say, this one time?"
+
+Her earnestness amazed me. I knew what her mother would say. I also
+knew, or thought I knew that Phillida needed the mental relaxation which
+comes from having one's own way. In her mood, no one else's way,
+however, wise or agreeable, will do it all.
+
+"All right," I yielded. "If you will promise me, faith of a gentlewoman,
+to tell Aunt Caroline that I took you there and you did not know where
+you were going. My shoulders are broader than yours and have borne the
+buffeting of thirty-two years instead of nineteen. Had you chosen the
+place, or shall I?"
+
+To my second surprise, she answered with the name of an uptown place
+where I never had been, and where I would have decidedly preferred not
+to take her.
+
+"They have a skating ballet," she urged, as I hesitated. "I know it is
+wonderful! Please, please----?"
+
+I gave the direction to the chauffeur and followed my cousin into the
+cab. It seemed a proper moment to present the chocolates from my
+overcoat pocket. When she proved too languid to unwrap the box, I was
+seriously uneasy.
+
+"You cannot possibly know how dreadful it is to be the only child of two
+intellectual people who expect one to be a credit," she excused her lack
+of appetite, nervously twitching the gilt cord about the package. "And
+to be stupid and a disappointment! Yes, as long as I can remember, I
+have been a disappointment. If only there had been another to divide all
+those expectations. If only you had been my brother!"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" I exclaimed hastily. "That is----"
+
+"Don't bother about explaining," she smiled wanly, "I understand. But
+you are distinguished, and you look it. I never will be, and I am ugly.
+Mother expects me to be an astronomer like Father and work with him, or
+to go in for club life and serious writing as she does. I never can do
+either."
+
+"Neither could I, Phil."
+
+"You are clever, successful. Everybody knows your name. When we are out,
+and people or an orchestra play your music, Mother always says: 'A
+trifle of my nephew's, Roger Locke. Very original, is it not? Of course,
+I do not understand music, but I hear that his last light opera----' And
+then she leans back and just _eats up_ all the nice things said about
+your work. She would never let you know it, but she does. And that is
+the sort of thing she wants from me. I--I want to make cookies, and I
+love fancywork."
+
+The taxicab drew up with a jerk before the gaudy entrance to Silver
+Aisles.
+
+I imagine Phillida had the vaguest ideas of what such places were like.
+When we were settled at a table in a general blaze of pink lights,
+beside a fountain that ran colored water, I regarded her humorously. But
+she seemed quite contented with her surroundings, looking about her with
+an air I can best describe as grave excitement. At this hour, the room
+was not half filled, and the jazz orchestra had withdrawn to prepare for
+a hard night's work.
+
+After I had ordered our dinner, I glanced up to see her fingers busied
+loosening the severe lines of her brushed back hair.
+
+"Everyone here looks so nice," she said wistfully. "I wish my hair did
+shine and cuddle around my face like those women's does. Do--do I look
+queer, Cousin? You are looking at me so----?"
+
+"I was thinking what pretty eyes you have."
+
+Her pale face flushed.
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Most truthfully. As for the hair, isn't that a matter of bottled polish
+and hairdressers? But you remind me of a question for you. Isn't a braid
+of hair this wide," I laid off the dimensions on the table, "this long,
+and thick, a good deal for a woman to own?"
+
+"Show me again."
+
+I obeyed, while she leaned forward to observe.
+
+"Not one girl in a hundred has so much," she pronounced judgment. "Who
+is she? Probably it isn't all her own, anyhow!"
+
+"It is not now, but it was," I said remorsefully.
+
+"How could you tell? Did you measure it?"--with sarcasm. "Do you
+remember the maxim we used to write in copybooks? 'Measure a thousand
+times, and cut once?' One has to be cautious!"
+
+"I cut it first, and then measured."
+
+"What? Tell me."
+
+At last she was interested and amused. There was no reason why I should
+not tell her of my midnight adventure. We never repeated one another's
+little confidences.
+
+She listened, with many comments and exclamations, to the story of the
+unseen lady, the legend of the fair witch, the dagger that was a
+paper-knife by day and the severed tresses. She did not hear of the
+singular nightmare or hallucination that had been my second visitor. My
+reason had accounted for the experience and dismissed it. Some other
+part of myself avoided the memory with that deep, unreasoning sense of
+horror sometimes left by a morbid dream.
+
+The dinner crowd had flowed in while we ate and talked. A burst of
+applause aroused me to this fact and the commencement of the first show
+of the evening. The orchestra had taken their places.
+
+"They will hardly begin with their best act," I remarked, surprised by
+Phillida's convulsive start and rapt intentness upon the stretch of ice
+that formed the exhibition floor. "Your ballet on skates probably will
+come later."
+
+"I did not come to see the ballet," she answered, her voice low.
+
+"No? What, then?"
+
+"A--man I know?"
+
+Once when I was a little fellow, I raced headlong into the low-swinging
+branch of a tree, the bough striking me across the forehead so that I
+was bowled over backward amid a shower of apples. I felt a twin
+sensation, now.
+
+"Here, Phillida?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Someone from your home town or your college town?" I essayed a casual
+tone.
+
+"Neither. He belongs here, and they call him Flying Vere. He--Look!
+Look, Cousin!"
+
+I turned, and saw that the first performer was upon the ice floor.
+
+He came down the center like a silver-shod Mercury. In the silence, for
+the orchestra did not accompany his entrance, the faint musical ringing
+of his skates ran softly with him. My first unwilling recognition of his
+good looks and athletic grace was followed by an equally reluctant
+admission of his skill. Reluctant, because my anger and bewilderment
+were hot against the man. My little cousin, my pathetic, unworldly
+Phillida--and this cabaret entertainer! At the mere joining of their
+names my senses revolted. What could they have in common? How had she
+seen him? Having seen him, it was easy to understand how he had
+fascinated her inexperience. Only, what was his object?
+
+He had seen us, where we sat. I saw his dark eyes fix upon her and flash
+some message. Her plain little face irradiated, her fingers
+unconsciously twisting and wringing her napkin, she leaned forward to
+watch and answer glance for glance.
+
+I would rather not put into words my thoughts. Yet, I watched his
+performance. In spite of myself, he held me with his swift, certain
+skill, his vitality and youth.
+
+He was gone, with the swooping suddenness of his appearance. The jazz
+music clattered out. Phillida turned back to me and began to speak with
+a hushed rapture that baffled and infuriated me.
+
+"You understand, Cousin Roger? Now that you have seen him, you do
+understand? No! Let me talk, please. Let me tell you, if I can. It began
+last summer, at the school where I was cramming for college work. Oh,
+how tired I was of study! How tired of it I am, and always shall be! I
+think that side of me never will get rested. Then, in the woods, I met
+him. He was stopping at a hotel not far away. I--we----"
+
+I waited for her to go on. Instead, she abruptly spread wide her hands
+in a gesture of helplessness.
+
+"After all, I cannot tell you. Not even you, Cousin! He--he liked me. He
+treated me just as a really, truly girl who would have partners at
+dances and wear fluffy frocks and curl her hair. He thought I was
+pretty!"
+
+The naive wonder and triumph of her cry, the challenge in her brown
+eyes, to my belief, were moving things. I registered some ugly mental
+comments on the rearing of Phil and the kind of humility that is _not_
+good for the soul.
+
+"Why not?" I demanded. "Of course!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No. Thank you, but--no! Not pretty, except to him. Only to him, because
+he loves me."
+
+I do not know what impatience I exclaimed. She checked me, leaning
+across the table to grasp my hand in both hers.
+
+"Hush! Oh, hush, dear Cousin Roger! For it is quite too late. We were
+married six months ago; last autumn."
+
+When I could, I asked:
+
+"Married legally, beyond mistake? Were you not under eighteen years
+old?"
+
+"I was eighteen years and a half. There is no mistake at all. We walked
+over to the city hall in the nearest town, and took out our license, and
+were married."
+
+"Very well. I will take you home to your father and mother, now; then
+see this man, myself. If there is indeed no flaw in the marriage and it
+cannot be annulled, a divorce must be arranged. Any money I have or
+expect to have would be a small price to set you free from the miserable
+business. But the first thing is to get you home. We will start now."
+
+She detained my hand when I would have signalled our waiter. Her eyes,
+shining and solemn as a small child's, met mine.
+
+"No, Cousin, please! I am not going home any more. At least, not alone.
+I asked you to bring me here where he is, because I am going to stay
+with my husband."
+
+"Never," I stated firmly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not if I have to send for your father and take you home by force."
+
+"You cannot. I am of age."
+
+"Phillida, I am responsible for you to your parents tonight. Let me take
+you home, explain things to them, and then decide your course."
+
+"But that is what I most do not want to do!" she naively exclaimed.
+
+"You will not?"
+
+"I'm sorry. No."
+
+"Then I must see the man."
+
+"Not--hurt----?"
+
+I recalled the man we had just seen on the skating floor, with a qualm
+of quite unreasonable bitterness. That anxiety of Phillida's had a
+flavor of irony for me.
+
+"Hardly," I returned. "There are fortunately other means of persuasion
+than physical force."
+
+"Oh! But you cannot persuade him to give me up."
+
+I was silent. At which, being a woman, she grew troubled.
+
+"How could you?" she urged.
+
+"You have had no opportunity of judging what influence money has on some
+people, Phil."
+
+She laughed out in relief.
+
+"Is that all? Try, Cousin."
+
+"You trust him so much?"
+
+"In everything, forever!"
+
+"Then if I succeed in buying him off, promise me that you will come home
+with me."
+
+"If he takes money to leave me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I should die. But I will promise if you want me to, because I know it
+never will happen. Just as I might promise to do anything, when I knew
+that I never would have to carry it out."
+
+"Very well," I accepted the best I could get. "I will go find him."
+
+"There is no need. He is coming here to our table as soon as he is
+free."
+
+"I will not have you seen with him in this place."
+
+"But I am going to stay here with him," she said.
+
+Her eyes, the meek eyes of Phillida, defied me. My faint authority was a
+sham. What could be done, I recognized, must be done through the man.
+
+We sat in silence, after that. Presently, her gaze fixed aslant on me as
+if to dare my interference, she drew up a thin gold chain that hung
+about her neck and ended beneath her blouse. From it she unfastened a
+wedding ring and gravely put the thing on her third finger, the
+school-girl romanticism of the gesture blended with an air of
+little-girl naughtiness. She looked more fit for a nursery than for this
+business.
+
+I could tell from the change in her expression when the man was
+approaching. I rose, meaning to meet him and turn him aside from our
+table. But Phillida halted me with one deftly planted question.
+
+"You would not leave me alone in this place, Cousin?"
+
+Certainly I would not leave her alone at a table here; not even alone in
+appearance while I had my interview with the man close at hand. Yet it
+seemed impossible to speak before her. She calmly answered my
+perplexity.
+
+"You must talk to him here, of course. I--want to listen to you both.
+Indeed, I shall not interfere at all, or be angry or hurt! I know how
+good you mean to be, dear; only, you do not understand."
+
+I sat down again, perforce. When the man's shadow presently fell across
+our table, it did not soothe me to see Phil thrust her hand in his, her
+small face enraptured, her fingers locking about his with a caress plain
+as a kiss. She said proudly, if tremulously:
+
+"Cousin Roger, this is my husband. Mr. Locke, Ethan dear."
+
+He said nothing. His hesitating movement to offer his hand I chose to
+ignore. I admit that my spirit rose against him to the point of loathing
+as he stood there, tall, correct in attire--the focus of admiring
+glances from other diners--in every way the antithesis of my poor
+Phillida.
+
+"Sit down," I bade curtly, when he did not speak. "Miss Knox insists
+that we have our interview here. I should have preferred otherwise, but
+her presence must not prevent what has to be said."
+
+"It won't prevent anything I want to say, Mr. Locke," he answered.
+
+He spoke with a drawl. Not the drawl of affectation, nor the drawl of
+South or West so cherished by the romantic, but the slow, deliberate
+speech of New England's upper coasts. It had the oddest effect, that
+honest, homely accent on the lips of a performer in this place. Phil
+drew him down to the third chair at the table. After which, she folded
+her hands on the edge of the cloth as if to signify to me how she kept
+her promise of neutrality, and looked fixedly at her glass of water
+instead of at either of us. Plainly, all action was supposed to proceed
+from me.
+
+"My cousin has just told me of her marriage," I opened, as dryly concise
+as I could manage explanation. "It is of course impossible that she
+should adopt your way of living, as she seems to have in mind. You may
+not understand, yet, that it also is impossible for you to adopt hers.
+No doubt you have supposed her to be the daughter of wealthy people, or
+at least people of whom money could be obtained. You were wrong.
+Professor Knox has nothing but his modest salary. Her parents are of the
+scholarly, not of the moneyed class. She has no kin who could or would
+support her husband or pay largely to be rid of him. Of all her people,
+I happen to be the best off, financially. It happens also that I am not
+sentimental, nor alarmed at the idea of newspaper exploitation for
+either of us. It is necessary that all this be plainly set forth before
+we go further.
+
+"Now, for your side: you have involved Miss Knox to the extent of
+marriage. To free her from this trap into which her inexperience has
+walked is worth a reasonable price. I will pay it. I shall take her home
+to her father and mother tonight, and consult my lawyer tomorrow. He
+will conduct negotiations with you. The day Miss Knox is divorced from
+you without useless scandal or trouble-making, I will pay to you the sum
+agreed upon with my lawyer. If you prefer to make yourself
+objectionable, you will get nothing, now or later."
+
+He took it all without a flicker of the eyelids, not interrupting or
+displaying any affectation of being insulted. I acknowledge, now, that
+it was an outrageous speech to make to a man of whom I knew nothing. But
+it was so intended; summing up what I considered an outrageous situation
+brought about by his playing upon a young girl's ignorance of such
+fellows as himself. Phillida's usually pale cheeks were burning. Several
+times she would have broken in upon me with protests, if Vere had not
+silenced her by the merest glances of warning. A proof of his influence
+over her which had not inclined me toward gentleness with him!
+
+When I finished there was a pause before he turned his dark eyes to
+mine, and held them there.
+
+"Honest enough!" he drawled, with that incongruous coast-of-Maine tang
+to his leisureliness. "I'll match you there, Mr. Locke. I don't care
+whether you make fifty thousand a year with your music writing, or
+whether you grind a street-piano with a tin-cup on top. It's nothing to
+me. I guess we can do without your lawyer, too. Because, you see, I
+married Mrs. Vere because I wanted her; and I figure on supporting her.
+If her folks are too cultivated to stand me, I'm sorry. But they won't
+have to see me. So that's settled!"
+
+He was honest. His glance drove that fact home to me with a fist-like
+impact. There was nothing I was so poorly prepared to meet.
+
+Phillida's hands went out to him in an impulsive movement. He covered
+them both with one of his for a moment before gently putting them in her
+lap with a gesture of reminder toward the revellers all about us. The
+delicacy of that thought for her was another disclosure of character,
+unconsciously made. Worthy or unworthy, he did love Phil.
+
+I am not too dully obstinate to recognize a mistake of my own. Whatever
+my bitterness against the man, I had to accord him some respect. I sat
+for a while striving to align my forces to attack this new front.
+
+"I don't blame you for thinking what you said, Mr. Locke," his voice
+presently spoke across my perplexity. "I can see the way things came to
+you; finding me here, and all! I'm glad to have had this chance to talk
+it out with one of my wife's relations. I'd like them to know she'll be
+taken care of. Outside of that, I guess there is nothing we have to say
+to each other."
+
+"I suppose I owe you both an apology," I said stiffly.
+
+"Oh, that's all right--for both of us! I can see how much store you set
+by her."
+
+"But what are you going to do with her, man?" I burst forth. "Do you
+expect to keep her here; sitting at a table in this place and watching
+you do your turn, making your fellow performers her friends, seeing and
+learning----?" I checked my outpouring of disgust. "Or do you propose to
+shut her up in some third-class boarding house day and night while you
+hang around here? Good heavens, Vere, do you realize what either life
+would be for an nineteen-year-old girl brought up as she has been?"
+
+He colored.
+
+"As for bringing up," he retorted, "I guess she couldn't be a lot more
+miserable than her folks worried her into being. But--you're right about
+the rest. That's why I was going to leave her with her folks yet a
+while, until I had a place for her. I mean, while I saved up enough to
+get the place."
+
+"But I wrote to him when I failed in my exams, Cousin Roger," Phillida
+broke in. "I told him that I would not go home. I could not bear it. I
+was coming to him, and he would just have to keep me with him or I
+should _die_. Indeed, I do not care about places. I think it will be
+lovely fun to sit here and watch him, or go behind the scenes with him
+and make friends with the other people. I--I am surprised that you are
+so narrow, Cousin Roger, when all your own best friends are theatrical
+people and artists and you think so highly of them."
+
+I answered nothing to that. The distance between the stage and this
+class of cabaret show was not to be traversed in a few seven-league
+words. I looked at Vere, who returned my look squarely and soberly.
+
+"You needn't worry about her being here, Mr. Locke," he said. "I know
+better than that! But she has to come to me; it's her right, don't you
+think? I'll promise you to take her to a better place as soon as I can
+manage."
+
+"What kind of a place?"
+
+"I'm saving to get a place in the country," he answered diffidently.
+"I'm a countryman, and Phillida thinks she'd like it."
+
+"You?" I exclaimed, unable to smother my derision and unbelief. My
+glance summed up his fastidious apparel and grooming, the gloss on his
+curling dark hair and the dubious diamond on his little finger.
+
+He reddened through his clear, dark skin, but his eyes were not those of
+a man taken in a lie.
+
+"Did you take notice of what I do here?" He asked me, with the first
+touch of humility I had seen in him. "I couldn't dance or sing or do
+parlor tricks. I wasn't bred to parlors or indoors. But I learned to
+skate pretty fancy from a boy up. My folks' farm was on one side of a
+lake and the schoolhouse on the other. About November that lake used to
+freeze solid. My brother and I used to skate five miles to school, and
+back again, before we were six years old. We lived on skates about half
+the year, I guess. Well--you don't care about the rest; how the farm was
+just about big enough to support my elder brother and his family, and I
+came to New York. Nor how I found New York pretty well filled up with
+folks who knew considerably more than I did. It was the manager of this
+place who advertised for expert skaters, who dressed me up like this,
+and paid me the first living wages I'd had in the city. All the same, I
+was bred a farmer, and I mean to get back to it. Always have! You're a
+man, Mr. Locke, and I'd hate you to think I was a shimmy dancer on ice
+and nothing else, or I wouldn't mention it. My father would have taken
+the buggy-whip to me, I guess, if he'd lived to see me in this rig. Soon
+as I've enough put by, I'll shed this perfumed suit and the cheap
+jewelry and take my wife where she can have a chance to forget I ever
+wore them."
+
+"But I _like_ them," put in Phillida ardently. "Please do not fuss so,
+Ethan; because I really do."
+
+"Do you?" I turned upon her. "Are you sure, then, that it is not all
+this cabaret glamour you really are in love with? Would you care for him
+as an ordinary, hard-working fellow in a pair of overalls and a flannel
+shirt? No applause, no lights, no stage?"
+
+She laughed up at me.
+
+"You have forgotten that I met Ethan while he was on a vacation from his
+work here, and roughing it. When I married him, I had hardly seen him in
+anything except his Navy flannel shirt, scrubby trousers, and funny
+blunt-toed shoes."
+
+"You served in the war?" I asked him.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Yes. On a submarine chaser. Got pneumonia from exposure and was
+invalided home just before the Armistice."
+
+"And you came back here?"
+
+"I came here," he corrected me. "I enlisted from Maine. I was discharged
+in New York. That was when I couldn't find anything I could do, until
+this skating trick came along."
+
+I sat thinking for a time; as long thoughts as I could command. The
+obvious course was to send for Phillida's father. Yet what could that
+vague and learned gentleman do that I could not? I visioned the
+Professor standing in this riotous, gaudy restaurant, swinging his
+eye-glasses by their silk ribbon and peering at Vere in helpless
+distaste and consternation. It was practically certain that Phil would
+refuse to go home with him.
+
+What if she did go home? I could picture the scene there, when the truth
+came out. The mortification of her people, the gossip in the little
+town, her outcast position among the girls and boys with whom she had
+grown up--what a martyrdom for a sensitive spirit! Of course, the only
+possible thing considered by Aunt Caroline would be a prompt divorce.
+
+If Phillida refused to consent to a divorce, how could she live at home
+as the wife of a man her parents had pronounced unfit to receive? If she
+yielded and gave up Vere, would she be much better off? An embarrassment
+to her family, the heroine of a stolen marriage and Reno freedom, what
+chance of happiness would she have in her conventional circle?
+Especially as she neither was a beauty nor the dashing type of girl who
+might make capital of such a reputation. Probably she would bury herself
+in nunlike seclusion, stay in her room when callers came, and wear a
+veil when she went out to walk.
+
+Meanwhile, she would break her heart for Vere.
+
+Could matters be any worse if she tried life with him, even if the
+experiment eventually proved a failure and ended in a divorce instead of
+beginning there? Might not her parents be spared much they most dreaded,
+if their friends could be told simply that Phillida had made a love
+match and was with her husband?
+
+Finally, Phillida was a human creature with the right to manage her own
+life. Had any of us the right to lay hands upon her existence and mould
+it to our fancy?
+
+I looked up from my revery to find the eyes of both of them fixed on me
+as if I held their doom balanced upon my palm. Perhaps, in a sense, I
+did.
+
+"Phil, will you come home to your father and mother, and consider all
+this a bit more before you decide?" I asked her.
+
+I thought I knew the answer to this, and I did.
+
+"No, Cousin Roger," she refused firmly. "Please forgive me. I know how
+kind you mean to be, but--no! I shall stay with Ethan. If ever you love
+anyone, you will understand."
+
+I accepted the decision. There was no reason why I should think of the
+woman who had spoken to me across the darkness in a voice of melody and
+power, or why I should seem to feel again the exquisite, live softness
+of her braid within my hand. But it was so.
+
+"Very well," I said. "Vere, it is to you, then, as Phillida's husband,
+that I must address any plans. I do not pretend to like the course she
+has taken. I do not know what action her parents may take, although I
+believe they will listen to my advice. Putting all that aside, she
+refuses to come with me and you agree that she cannot stay here.
+
+"I have just bought a farm in Connecticut, intending to use it as a
+summer home. There are some alterations and repairs being made, but
+little is to be changed inside the house and it is in perfectly livable
+shape. Here is my offer. Take Phillida there, and I will make you
+manager of the place. I will pay all reasonable expenses of putting the
+land into proper condition and getting such stock and equipment as you
+judge best; all expenses and up-keep of the house and whatever salary
+usually is drawn by such managers of small estates. I shall be there, on
+and off, but you and Phillida must take charge of everything. I am
+neither a farmer nor a housekeeper, and do not wish to be either. I
+bought the place only because New York is too hot to work in during
+three months of the year, and I hate summer resorts. Keep my room ready,
+and you will find I disturb you little. Of course, hire what servants
+are necessary.
+
+"Now, if you make the place self-supporting inside of five years, I will
+deed the whole thing to you two. To put it better, if you succeed in
+making the farm pay a living for yourselves, I will make it over to you
+and withdraw. If you fail--well, I suppose you will be no worse off than
+you are now!"
+
+They were stricken speechless. Perhaps my attitude had not pointed to
+such a conclusion of our interview. Phillida told me long afterward that
+she expected me to bid them good-evening and abandon them forever, as my
+mildest course; with alternative possibilities such as summoning a
+policeman and having Vere haled to prison. Seeing their condition, I
+rose.
+
+"I will stroll about and leave you a chance to talk it over," I
+declared; although there are few ordeals I dislike more than displaying
+my limp about such public rooms.
+
+Vere stopped me, rising as I rose.
+
+"No need of that, for us," he answered, facing me across the little
+table. "About giving us your farm, Mr. Locke, that's for the future!
+Just now, the manager's job is plenty big enough to thank you for. I
+wish I could say it better. If you'll stay here with Phillida for ten
+minutes, until I can get back, I'll be obliged."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"To resign here, and get my outfit into a suitcase."
+
+He had taken up my challenge like a man, at least. There were none of
+the hesitations and excuses to stay in town that I had half expected. It
+pleased me that he decided for Phil as well as himself. Some of my ideas
+about marriage are antiquated, I admit. I nodded to him, and sat down
+again.
+
+It is unnecessary to record the childish things Phillida tried to say to
+me, while he was gone.
+
+"I am so happy," was her apology for threatened tears. "I never knew
+anyone--except Ethan--could be so kind. And--and, will you tell Father
+and Mother?"
+
+"Yes." I winced, though, at that prospect. "Give me that little bag you
+carry on your wrist."
+
+She obeyed, wide-eyed.
+
+"You do tote a powder-puff. I did not know whether Aunt Caroline
+permitted it. Rub it on your nose," I advised, passing the bit of fluff
+to her.
+
+While she complied, almost like a normally frivolous girl, I used the
+moment to transfer a few banknotes to the bag, so some need might not
+find her penniless.
+
+Vere came back in not much more than the promised ten minutes. He had
+changed to gray street clothes and carried a suitcase. I noted that the
+diamond had disappeared from his finger and his curly head looked as if
+it had been held under a water-faucet and vigorously toweled to lessen
+the brilliantine gloss.
+
+"If you'll tell us where your farm is, Mr. Locke, we'll start," he
+volunteered.
+
+Phillida looked up at him with eyes of adoring trust.
+
+"I had the porter at the Terminal check my suitcase to be called for. We
+shall have to get it, dear."
+
+In spite of myself, I smiled at their amazing promptitude. There was
+both reassurance and pathos in its unconscious youth. All this eagerness
+pressing forward--where? They did not know, nor I. Certainly we did not
+dream how strange a goal awaited one of us three, or on what weird,
+desolate path that traveler's foot was already set.
+
+"You had better go to a good hotel for tonight," I modified their plan.
+"Tomorrow is time enough to go out to the farm, by daylight. Phil has
+had enough excitement for one day. I will write full directions for the
+trip, Vere, on the back of this timetable of the railroad you must
+take."
+
+They were enchanted with this suggestion. Indeed, they were in a state
+of mind to have assented if I advised them to sit out on a park bench
+until morning.
+
+Yet, when I had put them and their scanty luggage into a taxicab, I
+suffered a bad pang of misgiving. What responsibility was I assuming in
+letting my little-girl cousin go like this? What did I know of this man,
+or where he would take her? I think Phillida divined something of my
+trouble, for she leaned out the door to me and held up her face like a
+child's to be kissed.
+
+"I am so _happy_," she whispered.
+
+I turned to Vere; who had a long envelope in readiness to put in my
+hand.
+
+"I guess you might like to have these for a while, Mr. Locke," he said,
+with one of his slow, straightforward glances.
+
+With which farewells I had to be content, and watch their taxi swing out
+into the bright-dark flow of traffic where it was lost from my sight.
+After which, I entered another taxicab by my unromantic self and was
+driven to that railroad station where I would find a train bound to the
+college town that was the home of Aunt Caroline and her husband. One
+always thought of Phil's parents in that order, although the Professor
+was a moderately distinguished scientist and his spouse merely masterful
+in her own limited circle.
+
+The envelope Vere had given me contained their marriage certificate, his
+release from the Navy, and his membership card in the American Legion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+     "Fair speech is more rare than the emerald found by slave maidens
+     on the pebbles."--PTAH-HOTEP.
+
+
+At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned from my sleep by the bell
+of the telephone beside my bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I
+had not returned to my apartment until dawn. Nightmare doubts galloped
+ruthless hoofs over any repose.
+
+Phillida's voice came over the wire to me like the morning song of a
+bird.
+
+"Good-morning, Cousin Roger. We are going to take the train in a few
+moments. But I could not leave New York without telling you how happy I
+am. Are you--did I wake you up? I was afraid that I might, but Ethan
+said you would like me to call, even so."
+
+"My dear, it was the kindest thought you ever had," I told her
+fervently.
+
+"Was it?" she hesitated. "Then--were they pretty dreadful to you at
+home?"
+
+"Quite!"
+
+"Do you suppose they will _do_ anything dreadful about us?"
+
+"No. Nothing."
+
+It did not seem necessary to tell her that Aunt Caroline did not know
+where the runaways had gone, and was thereby debarred from hasty action.
+Phillida's father had privately agreed with me in this.
+
+"I am so very happy, Cousin Roger!"
+
+"I am glad, Phil."
+
+"And you will come to the farm soon?"
+
+"Soon," I promised.
+
+So the nightmares of immediate anxiety for her galloped themselves away,
+routed for that time. Like my gold-fish when their bowl has been unduly
+shaken, I sank down again into the quieted waters of my little world and
+absorption in my own affairs. There have been hours when I wondered if I
+was of more importance than they, as a matter of cosmic fact.
+
+A month passed before I kept my promise to go to the farm in
+Connecticut.
+
+As a first reason, I wanted to leave my young couple alone for a period
+of adjustment. Also, I was curious to see how they would handle the
+business left to them. I held telephone conversations with Phillida, and
+with various contractors now and then. I sent out the furnishings for my
+own room. Everything else I purposely left to the experimenters.
+
+There was a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while
+the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the
+dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic
+age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I
+relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was not quite ready to
+find her in the matter-of-fact daughter of some neighbor, who had sought
+shelter from the storm in that supposedly empty house and probably
+mistaken me for a tramp.
+
+Perhaps I was equally reluctant to go back and prove that the adventure
+was ended, that she had been a bird of passage who had gone on with no
+thought of return.
+
+With all these delays, and the fact that my work really kept me busy in
+town, April was verging toward May when I finally saw the last of my
+luggage put into the car and started on my fifty-mile drive to the house
+by the lake. I did not take this first visit very seriously, or intend
+it to be over long. To be a constraint upon the household I had
+established, or assume a right there, was far from the course I planned.
+It was not certain Vere and I would be comfortable housemates. But to
+stay away altogether would have hurt Phillida as much as to stay too
+long, I considered. Probably a week would be about enough for this time.
+
+So lightly, so ignorantly, I stepped from the first great division of my
+life into the second; not hearing the closing of the gate through which
+there was no turning back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+     "The very room, coz she was in,
+     Seemed warm from floor to ceilin'."
+                         --THE COURTIN'.
+
+
+I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with
+motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even
+the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with
+yellow sparkles.
+
+The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely
+walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow
+affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been--all
+united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel
+drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochere, inviting the wheels of my
+car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The
+new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If
+the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its
+arms to me and laughed an invitation.
+
+As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around
+the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly
+realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house!
+After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
+
+She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little
+mouth turned up instead of down and developed--I looked twice--yes,
+developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly
+back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead
+and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired
+in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite
+daringly, for Phillida.
+
+"Why, Phil, how pretty we are!" I admired.
+
+She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I
+noticed she wore above her wedding ring that "diamond" which once had
+adorned Vere's finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the
+sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her
+hand for me to see.
+
+"Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we have not very much money
+yet, and I do not care about all the engagement rings that ever were
+thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might notice that I had
+none and think slightingly of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a
+jeweler, who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you
+know. It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the biggest
+diamond."
+
+"Then you are still happy?"
+
+"Forever and ever, world without end," she answered solemnly.
+
+We went in.
+
+Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house.
+Quaint furniture, no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness
+and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful
+tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness
+everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the
+atmosphere of home and cheer was established.
+
+"Come see your rooms," Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration.
+"They are so pretty!"
+
+She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room
+of graceful adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the
+threshold.
+
+I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this
+side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached,
+occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious
+room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs'
+smoke-blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and
+writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar
+comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had
+slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The
+windows were opened, and white curtains with their over-draperies of
+blue silk were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the Horror of
+my dream had seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly,
+I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night!
+
+"See how nice?" Phillida was urging appreciation at my side. "We swung
+those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the
+bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why you
+_should_ like, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came
+safely, and all your darling lamps. And--and I hope you like it so well,
+Cousin Roger, that you will stay here always!"
+
+When she left me alone, I walked to the different windows, contemplating
+the stretches of lawn dotted with budding apple trees and the lake that
+lay beyond shining in the sun. Was Phillida's charming wish to become a
+fact, I wondered? Could this rest and calm hold me content here, where I
+had meant merely to pause and pass on? I looked at the yellow country
+road meandering past the lake into unseen distance. Should I ever see my
+Lady of the Beautiful Tresses come that way, or travel that road to
+where she lived? If I did meet her, would she forgive me the loss of her
+braid? There would be a test for the sweetness of her disposition!
+
+When a chiming dinner-gong summoned me downstairs, I found Vere awaiting
+me beside Phillida. We shook hands, and he made some brief, pleasant
+speech about their having expected me sooner. If pale, timid Phil had
+become a surprising butterfly, Vere had taken the reverse progress
+toward the sober grub. I like him better in outing clothes, although he
+showed even more the unusual good looks which so unreasonably prejudiced
+me against him. If he felt any strain in our meeting, his slow, tranquil
+trick of speech and manner covered it. I hope I did as well! It was then
+I discovered that his wife's pet name for him fitted like a glove. She
+called him "Drawls."
+
+The luncheon was good; cooked and served by a middle-aged Swedish woman
+named Cristina. Afterward, I was conducted into the kitchen by the lady
+of the house, to view the new fittings and improvements. Most odd and
+pretty it was to see Phillida in that role of housewife, and to watch
+her pride in Vere and deference to him. Let me record that I never saw
+the daughter of Aunt Caroline fail in this settled course toward her
+husband. Whether it was born of revulsion from her mother's hectoring
+domestic methods, or of consciousness that outsiders might rate Vere
+below his wife in station and education, so her respect for him must
+forbid their slight, I do not know. But I never saw her oppose him or
+speak rudely to him before other people. I suppose they may have had the
+usual conjugal differings, neither of them being angelic. If so, no
+outsider ever glimpsed the fact.
+
+We spoke of nothing serious on that first day. They both showed me the
+various improvements finished or progressing, indoors or out.
+
+We dined as agreeably as we had lunched. Quite early, afterward, I
+excused myself, and left together the two who were still on their
+honeymoon.
+
+At the door of my room, I pushed a wall-switch that lighted
+simultaneously three lamps. In this I had repeated the arrangement used
+by me for years in my city apartment. I have a demand for light
+somewhere in my make-up, and no reason for not indulging it. There
+flashed out of the dusk a large lamp upon my writing-table, a tall
+floor-lamp beside the piano, and a reading-lamp on a stand beside my bed
+at the far end of the room. All three were shaded in a smoke-blue and
+rose-color effect that long since had caught my fancy for night work;
+the shades inset with imitation semi-precious stones, rough-cut things
+of sapphire, tourmaline-pink and baroque pearl.
+
+I lay emphasis upon this, to make clear how normal, serene and even
+familiar in effect was the room into which I came. Yet, as I closed the
+door behind me and stood in that softly brilliant radiance, a shudder
+shook me from head to foot with the violence of an electric shock. A
+sense of suffocation caught at my throat like an unseen hand.
+
+Both sensations were gone in the time of a drawn breath, leaving only
+astonishment in their wake. Presently I went on with the purpose that
+had brought me upstairs; lifting a portfolio to the table and beginning
+to unpack the work which I had been doing in New York. As I laid out the
+first sheets of music, there drifted to my ears that vague sound from
+the lake I had heard on my first night visit here, while I stood on the
+tumble-down porch. The sound that was like the smack of glutinous lips,
+or some creature drawing itself out of thick, viscid slime. As before, I
+wondered what movement of the shallow waters could produce that result.
+Not the tide, now, for the new dam was up and the lake cut off from Long
+Island Sound. The pouring of the waterfall flowed on as a reminder of
+that fact.
+
+The sound was not repeated. The dusk outside the windows offered nothing
+unusual to be seen. I finished my unpacking and sat down at my
+writing-table.
+
+I am not accustomed to heed time. There never has been anyone to care
+what hours I kept, and I work best at night. Midnight was long past when
+I thought of rest.
+
+I declare that I thought of nothing more; not even recalling the vague
+unease felt on entering the room. A day spent in the fresh air, followed
+by an evening of hard work and journeyings between the piano and table,
+had left me utterly weary. When I lay down, it was to sleep at once.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+     "I have made a story that hath not been heard;
+     A great feat of arms that hath not been seen!"
+                                        --AMENEMHE'ET.
+
+
+I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to wakefulness as a spent
+swimmer struggles toward shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep I
+dragged myself, driven by some dimly sensed necessity. Peril had stolen
+upon me in my unconsciousness, a stalking beast. I knew that with
+nightmare certainty. It was as if my soul stood affrighted beside my
+brain, wailing upon its ally to arouse and stand with it against the
+menace. And my brain answered, but with infinite difficulty; like a
+drugged warrior who hears the clang of battle and forces numbed limbs to
+stir, arise and grasp the sword.
+
+I was awake. Suddenly; the swimmer reaching the surface!
+
+How shall I describe Fear incarnate? The Horror was at the open window
+opposite the foot of my bed, staring in upon me with slavering
+covetousness of the prey It watched. I lay there, and felt It seek for
+me across the darkness with tentacles of evil that groped for some part
+of me upon which It might lay hold.
+
+The room was still. Between the draperies, the window showed nothing to
+the eye except a dark square faintly tinged with the night luminance of
+the sky. There was nothing to see; nothing to hear. But gradually I
+became aware of a hideous odor of mould and mildew, of must and damp
+decay that loaded the air with disgust.
+
+I lay there, and opposed the approach of the Thing with all the will of
+resistance in me. The sweat poured from my whole body, so that I lay as
+in water and the drenched linen of my sleeping-suit clung coldly to me.
+
+It could not pass the defense of my will. I felt the malevolent fury of
+Its striving. Like the antennae of some monstrous insect brushing about
+my body, I felt Its evil desires wavering about my mental self,
+examining, searching where It might seize. It had not yet found the
+weakness It sought. If It did----?
+
+The sickening, vault-like air I must breathe fought for It. So did the
+darkness. All this time, or the time that seemed so long, I had no more
+command of my body than a cataleptic patient. Every ounce of force in me
+had rushed to support the two warriors of the battle: the brain and will
+that opposed the clutching menace. But now, as I grew more and more
+fully awake, out of very loathing and danger I drew determination.
+Slowly, painfully, I began to free my right arm and hand from this
+paralysis.
+
+As I advanced in resolution, the Thing seemed to recoil. Inch by inch, I
+moved my hand across the bed toward my reading-lamp on the stand beside
+me. In proportion as I moved, the dreadful tentacles drew back and away.
+A last effort, and the chain was in my fingers. I jerked spasmodically.
+
+Rosy light from the lamp flashed over the room. All the quiet comfort of
+the place sprang into view as if to reassure me; the piano open as I had
+left it, the table strewn with my evening's work, each bit of furniture,
+each drapery or trinket undisturbed.
+
+The Thing was gone. In the hush I heard my panting breath and the tick
+of my watch on the stand. It was two o'clock in the morning. As I
+mechanically read the hour, a cock somewhere shrilled its second call
+before dawn. The Horror had been true to the legendary time of
+apparitions.
+
+Weak and chilled, I presently made an attempt to rise. But at the
+movement, a wave of sickness swept through me. The room seemed to rock
+and swing. I had just time to recognize the grip of faintness before I
+fell back on the pillow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Vivifying sweetness was in my nostrils, which expanded avidly for this
+new air. Perfume that was a tonic, a subtle elixir; that sparkled upon
+the senses, sank suavely and healingly through me, so that I seemed to
+draw refreshment with each breath. Reluctantly, I aroused more and more
+in response to this unusual stimulant; which somehow gave delicious rest
+yet drew me from it into life.
+
+I could have sworn someone had touched me. With some exclamation on my
+lips, I started up; to find myself in darkness. The lamps I had left
+lighted burned no longer.
+
+This time there was no terror in my awakening. No Thing of nightmare
+pressed against my window-space. The fragrance persisted; the ghastly
+smell of mould and corruption was gone. But I wanted light for all that!
+Reaching for the lamp beside me on its stand, I found the little chain.
+I felt the chain draw in my fingers and heard the click that should have
+meant light; but no answering brightness sprang up.
+
+Instead, across the dark came a voice; a voice low-pitched, soft without
+weakness, keen with exultation:
+
+"Victory! Victory! You have no need of light--who conquered in darkness!
+The Enemy has fled. It has covered the Unspeakable Eyes from the eyes of
+a man. By the will of a man Its will has been forbidden. It has dragged
+Itself back to the Barrier and cowers there for this time. Oh, soldier
+on the dreadful Frontier, be proud, putting off your armor tonight! Be
+proud, and rest."
+
+Those practical people who are never unnerved by the intangible, may
+gauge if they can the weirdness of this address following my first
+experience, and then smile their contempt of me. For I confess to a
+moment of uncanny chill. The voice was that of the woman who had trailed
+her braid of hair into my grasp, the night I first slept here. But, how
+did she know of the Thing's visit to me? I had not spoken nor uttered a
+cry throughout Its visitation. How could she have knowledge of that
+silent struggle between It and me, or of my escape so narrowly won. How,
+unless she too----?
+
+I groped for a glass of water left on my stand. I drank, and felt my dry
+throat relax.
+
+"Who are you?" I asked.
+
+A sigh trembled toward me.
+
+"I am one who stands on the threshold of your beautiful world, as a
+traveler stands outside a lighted palace, gazing where she may not
+enter, and feeling the winter about her."
+
+"Do not suppose me quite a superstitious fool," I said bruskly. "You are
+a woman. The woman who left a very real braid of hair in my hands, not
+long ago, to save herself from capture!"
+
+"Yes. Yet, I am neither more nor less real than the One which came for
+you a while since."
+
+"Then my nightmare was real? A thing of flesh and blood, or clever
+mechanism? You know it. Perhaps you produced it?"
+
+The rush of my angry suspicion dashed in useless heat against her cool
+melancholy.
+
+"Real? What is real?" she challenged me. "Turn to the sciences that you
+should understand better than I, and ask. Stretch out your arm. For a
+million years men have vowed you touch empty air. They saw and felt it
+empty. But now a child knows air swarms with life. In that thin
+nothingness, crowd and move the distributors of death, disease, health,
+vigor--existence itself. The water you have just tasted is pure and
+clear in the glass? Pure? Each drop is an ocean of inhabitants clean and
+unclean. I speak commonplaces. But is there no knowledge not yet
+commonplace? Oh man, with all the unfathomed universe about us, _dare_
+you pronounce what is real?"
+
+"What is natural," I began.
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+"Doubtless what is not natural cannot and does not exist. Have you,
+then, measured Nature? He was a great thinker, one of deep knowledge,
+who compared Man to a child wandering on the shore of a vast ocean and
+picking up a pebble here and there."
+
+"Of what would you convince me? And, why?"
+
+"Of what? Danger! Why? Would you watch a man enter a jungle where some
+hideous beast crouched in ambush, while you neither warned nor armed
+him? I am here to turn you back. I am the native of that country who
+runs to cry warning to a stranger; to put into his hand the weapon of
+understanding."
+
+So solemn, so urgent a sincerity was in her voice, that again chill
+touched me. The clammy dampness of my garments hung on my limbs as a
+reminder of the Thing, real or unreal, that twice had made Its presence
+felt beyond denial. Wild as her words might be, their incredible
+suggestion was matched by my experience. I sought with my eyes for her,
+before answering. The room was dark, yet the darker bulk of furniture
+loomed out enough to be distinguishable. No figure was visible, even
+traced by the direction of her voice. I was certain that any movement to
+seek her would mean her flight.
+
+"Do you mean that you want me to go away from this place?" I questioned.
+
+The sigh came again, just audibly.
+
+"Yes. Why should you die?"
+
+Was I wrong in fancying the sigh regretful? Did I not hear a wistful
+reluctance in her tone? Excitement ran along my veins like burning oil
+on flowing water. The woman hidden in the dark, the association of her
+voice with the strange, exquisite fragrance I breathed, the thought of
+beauty in her born of that lovely braid of hair I had seized--all
+blended in a spell of human magic. I have said I was a man much alone,
+and a lame man who craved adventure.
+
+"Just now," I said, "you spoke of some victory. You called me--soldier."
+
+"Is it not victory to have driven back the Dark One? Is he not a soldier
+who, aroused in the night to meet dreadful assault, sets his face to the
+enemy and battles front to front? Before the Eyes men and women have
+died or lost reason, or fled across half the world, broken by fear. What
+are the wars of man with man, compared with a man's battle against the
+Unknown? I honor you! I salute you! But--soldier alone on the forbidden
+Frontier, go! Join your fellows in the world alloted to you; live, nor
+seek to tread where mankind is not sent."
+
+"How can there be wrong in facing a situation that I did not cause?"
+
+"There is no wrong. There is danger."
+
+"What danger?" I persisted.
+
+"Can you ask me?" she retorted with a hint of impatience. "You who have
+felt Its grope toward your inner spirit?"
+
+I shuddered, remembering the brush of those antennae, exploring,
+examining! But I persisted, beyond my every-day nature. Her speech was
+for me like that liquor distilled from honey that inflamed the Norsemen
+to war fury.
+
+"You say I came off victor," I reminded her.
+
+"Yes. But can you conquer again, and again, and again? Will you not feel
+strength fail, health break, madness creep close? Will you not be worn
+down by the Thing that knows no weariness and fall its prey at last?"
+
+"It will come--often?"
+
+"Until one conquers, It will come."
+
+I forced away a qualm of panic.
+
+"How can you know?" I demanded.
+
+"Ask me not. I do know."
+
+"But, look here!" I argued. "If as you say, this creature was not meant
+to meet mankind, how can It come after me this way?"
+
+She seemed to pause, finally answering with reluctance:
+
+"Because, two centuries ago one of the race of man here broke through
+the awful Barrier that rears a wall between human kind and those dark
+forms of life to which It belongs. For know that a human will to evil
+can force a breach in that Barrier, which those on the other side never
+could pass without such aid."
+
+I neither understood nor believed. At least, I told myself that I did
+not believe her wild, legendary explanation of the nightmare Thing that
+visited me. I did not want to believe. Neither did I wish to offend her
+by saying so!
+
+"You will go," she presently mistook my silence for surrender. "You are
+wise as well as brave. Good go with you! Good walk beside you in that
+happy world where you live!"
+
+"Wait!" I cried sharply. Her voice had seemed to recede from me, a
+retreating whisper at the last word. "No! I will not go. I must--I will
+know more of you. You are no phantom. Who are you? Where--when can I see
+you in daylight?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I came to hold a light before the dreadful path. The warning is given."
+
+"But you will come again?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"What? The Thing will come, and not you?"
+
+"What have I to do with It, who am more helpless before It than you? Go;
+and give thanks that you may."
+
+"Listen," I commanded, as firmly as I could. "I am not going away from
+this house without better reason. All this is too sudden and too new to
+me. If you have more knowledge than I, you have no right to desert me
+half-convinced of what I should do."
+
+"I can stay no longer."
+
+"Why can you not come again?"
+
+"You plan to trap me," she reproached.
+
+"No. Word of honor! You shall come and go as you please; I will not make
+a movement toward you."
+
+"Not try--to see me, even?" she hesitated.
+
+"Not even that, if you forbid."
+
+There was a long pause.
+
+"Perhaps----" drifted to me, a faint distant word on the wind that had
+begun to stir the tree-branches and flutter through my room.
+
+She was gone. There sounded a click whose meaning did not at once strike
+me, intent as I was upon the girl. Twice I spoke to her, receiving no
+reply, before judging that I might rise without breaking my promise.
+Then I recognized the click of a moment before, as that of the electric
+switch beside my door. No doubt she had turned off my lights at her
+entrance and now restored them. I pulled the chain of my reading-lamp,
+and this time light flashed over the room.
+
+I had known no one would be there, and no one was. Yet I was
+disappointed.
+
+As I drew on my dressing-gown I heard a clock downstairs strike four.
+Not a breath or a step stirred in the house. The damp freshness of
+coming dawn crept in my windows, bringing scents of tansy and
+bitter-sweet from the fields to strive against the unknown fragrance in
+my room. The melancholy depression of the hour weighed upon me. Beneath
+the gentle strife of sweet odors, my nostrils seemed to detect a lurking
+foulness of mould and decay.
+
+I sat down at my desk, to wait beside the lamp for the coming of
+sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+     "For it is well known that Peris and such delicate beings live upon
+     sweet odours as food; but all evil spirits abominate
+     perfumes."--ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.
+
+
+The breakfast bell, or rather Phillida's Chinese chimes, merrily
+summoned me to the dining-room; a homely spell to exercise the phantoms
+of the night.
+
+My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and
+blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat
+opposite her at the round table. They were holding hands across the
+rolls and bacon and eggs, their glances interlocked in a shining content
+that made my solitariness rather drab and dull to my own contemplation.
+At my clumsy step the picture dissolved, of course. Vere rose while
+Phillida welcomed me to my chair and went into a young housewife's
+pretty solicitude about my fruit and hot eggs.
+
+The sun glinted across the table. The very servant had a smiling air of
+enjoying the occasion. I never had a more pleasant breakfast. A big
+brindle cat purred on the window-sill beside Phillida; no dainty Persian
+or Angora, but a battered veteran whose nicked ears and scarred tail
+proved him a battling cat of ring experience.
+
+"I planned to have a wee white kitten," Phil explained, while putting a
+saucer of milk before the feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon,
+you know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother always forbade pets
+because she believed animals carry germs? I meant to have a puss, if
+ever I had a home of my own. This one just walked into the kitchen on
+the first day we came here. Ethan said it was a lucky sign when a cat
+came to a new home. He gave it the meat out of his sandwiches that we
+had brought for lunch, and it stayed. So I decided to keep it instead of
+a kitten. It really is more cat!"
+
+What footing was here for dreary terrors? In a mirror across the room I
+glimpsed my own countenance looking quite as usual. No over-night white
+hairs appeared; no upstanding look such as the legend gave to Sir
+Sintram after he met the Little Master.
+
+After the meal, Vere asked me to walk over to the lake with him.
+
+We strolled through the old orchard toward the dam. This was my side of
+the house. In passing, I looked up at the window against which the Thing
+had seemed to press Itself with sickening lust for me. Phillida was
+framed in the open square, and shook a dustcloth at us by way of
+greeting and evidence of her busyness.
+
+The wide, shallow lake lay almost without movement, except at the head
+of the dam. There the water poured over with foam and tumult, an
+amber-brown cataract some twenty-odd feet across, to rush on below in a
+winding stream that grew calmer as it flowed.
+
+"We must put our lake in order, Vere," I observed, as we stood on a
+knoll at the head of the dam. "All this growth of rank vegetation ought
+to be pulled up, the banks graded and turfed perhaps, the bottom cleaned
+up. Water-lilies would look better than cat-tails."
+
+To my surprise, he did not assent. Instead, he set his foot on a boulder
+and rested his arm upon his knee; looking into the clear water.
+
+"Mr. Locke, I just about hate saying what I have to," he told me in his
+sober, leisurely fashion. "I expect you won't like it; not at all.
+Well--best said before you get deeper in. I can't see my way to make
+farming this place pay."
+
+I was bitterly disappointed. Even at the worst estimate of Vere, I had
+imagined he would stick the thing out a little longer than this. Poor
+Phillida's time of happiness should have lasted more than these few
+weeks. But the call of New York, of the "lounge lizard's" ease and
+unhealthy excitement had won already, it seemed. I said nothing at all.
+The blow was too sore.
+
+"There are too few acres of arable land, and they're used up," Vere was
+continuing. "I've seen plenty of impoverished, run-out farms in New
+England. You could pour money into the soil out of a gold pitcher these
+five years to come, before it began to pay you back. And then your money
+might better have been put anywhere in bank, for profit! I saw that, the
+first week here. Since then I've been looking around for something
+better to do."
+
+"And have found it, of course," I said bitingly. "Or else you would be
+drawing your salary as manager and saying nothing to me of all this!
+Well, where does poor Phil go, and when?"
+
+He turned his dark-curled head and regarded me with calm surprise.
+
+"I didn't exactly know that my wife was going anywhere, Mr. Locke."
+
+"What? You do not mean to leave the farm?"
+
+"Not unless you're tired of our bargain. I've been calculating how to
+make it pay. That won't be by planting corn and potatoes and taking a
+wagon-load into town! If you think I'm wrong, call in any practical man
+who knows this sort of business. We've got to think closer to win here.
+That's why I'd like to set the lake to work instead of just prettying it
+up."
+
+"The lake, Vere? There isn't enough water-power over the dam to do any
+more than run a toy, is there?"
+
+He motioned me nearer to where he stood gazing down.
+
+"Notice what kind of water this is, Mr. Locke? Brown like forest water,
+sort of green-lighted because the bottom is like turf; neither mud nor
+sand, but a kind of under-water moss? You see? It's pure and clean, with
+a little fishy smell about it. Matter of fact, it is forest water! Comes
+from way off yonder, the stream does, before it spreads out into our
+lake, here. I borrowed a boat and followed back two miles before it got
+too shallow for me. Boys have caught trout here three times since I've
+been watching."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"My father was fish-warden in our district. I learned the business. If
+you're willing, I can start some trout-raising that ought to pay well.
+You know, the State is glad to help game preserving, free."
+
+He proceeded to give me a brief lecture on the subject, in his quiet,
+unpretentious manner; producing notes and diagrams from his pockets. He
+had written to various authorities and exhibited their replies. He knew
+exactly what the State would do, what he himself must do, and what
+investment of money would be required. I listened to him in admiration
+and astonishment.
+
+From fish raising, he went on to discuss each acre of the farm; its best
+use in view of its situation, condition, and our needs. We could afford
+so much labor, it appeared, and no more. We must have certain apparatus;
+methodically listed with prices. If we used a certain sheltered south
+field for a peach orchard, the trees planted should be such an age and
+have giant-powder blast deep beds for them in order that they might soon
+bear fruit.
+
+When at last he ended his deceptive speech that sounded so lazy while
+implying so much energy, and turned his black eyes from the papers on
+his knee to my face, I had been routed long since.
+
+"Vere," I said abruptly, "did you know that I thought you were going to
+desert the farm, when you began to speak?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Yes, I guess so. You don't exactly like me; haven't had any occasion
+to! You don't judge me a fit match for your cousin. Well, neither would
+anyone else, yet!"
+
+He began to gather his papers together, his attention divided with them
+while he finished his answer:
+
+"There will be plenty of time before that 'yet' runs out. Mighty
+pleasant time, thanks to you, Mr. Locke! Phillida and I expect to enjoy
+building things up as much as we'll enjoy it after they're all built.
+Meantime, I prize what you're doing all the more because I know how you
+feel. Now, if you'd be interested to look over these plans or submit
+them to someone you've confidence in, for inspection, I'll just turn
+them over to you."
+
+He had so accurately measured me that I was disconcerted. It was quite
+true that he was compelling my respect, while my first dislike of him
+still obstinately lurked in the background of my mind. I felt
+ungenerous, but I would not lie to him.
+
+"I am a queer fellow, Vere," I said. "Leave that to time, as you say! As
+for the plans, they are far beyond my scope. A city man, it has been my
+way to 'phone for an expert when anything was to be done, or to buy what
+I fancied and pay the bills. In this case, you are the expert. The plans
+seem brilliant to me. Certainly they are moderate in cost. Keep them,
+and carry them out as soon as that may be done. You are master here, not
+I."
+
+We walked back together through the sun and freshness of the early
+spring morning. As we neared the house Phillida's voice hailed us. She
+was at my window again, leaning out with her hair wind-ruffled about her
+face.
+
+"Cousin Roger," she summoned me, "I have found out what makes your room
+as sweet as a garden of spices. See what it is to be a composer
+completely surrounded by royalties, able to buy the most gorgeous scents
+to lay on one's pillow! And all enclosed in antique gold!"
+
+She held up some small object that shone in the sunlight. "Throw it
+down," I begged, startled into excitement.
+
+She complied, laughing. Vere sprang forward, but I made a quicker step
+and caught the thing.
+
+It was one of those filigree balls of gold wrought into openwork, about
+the size of a walnut, that fine ladies used to wear swung from a chain
+or ribbon and call a pomander. The toy held a chosen perfume or essence
+supposed to be reviving in case miladi felt a swoon or megrim about to
+overwhelm her; as ladies did in past centuries and do no longer.
+
+Whose gentle pity had brought this pomander to my pillow, to help me
+from that faintness which had followed my struggle with the Thing? Whose
+was the exquisite, individual fragrance contained in the ball I held? I
+had a vision of a figure, surely light and soft of movement, haloed with
+such matchless hair as the braid I had captured, stealing step by timid
+step across my room; within my reach while I lay inert. Perhaps her face
+had bent near mine in her doubt of my life or death; hidden eyes had
+studied me in the scanty starlight.
+
+Oh, for Ethan Vere's good looks and athlete's grace, to lure my lady
+from her masquerade!
+
+"Where did you buy it, Cousin Roger? 'Fess up!" Phillida's merry voice
+coaxed me.
+
+"It was given to me," I slowly answered. "I cannot offer it to you,
+Phil. But I will buy any other pretty thing you fancy, instead, next
+time I go to town."
+
+She made a gesture of disclaim.
+
+"I did not mean _that_! Only, do tell me what the perfume is?"
+
+"I was going to ask if you knew."
+
+"No. Something very expensive and imported, I suppose. Perhaps whoever
+gave it to you had it made for herself alone, as some wealthy women do.
+It is the most clinging, yet delicately refreshing scent I ever met."
+
+"Tuberose," suggested Vere.
+
+"Drawls, no. How can you? Like an old-fashioned funeral!" she cried.
+
+"Tuberose didn't always go to funerals," he corrected her teasingly, as
+she made a face at him. "I remember them growing in my Aunt Bathsheba's
+garden. Creamy looking posies, kind of kin to a gardenia, seems to me!
+Thick-petalled, like white plush, and holding their sweet smell
+everlastingly. But Mr. Locke's perfumery isn't just that, either. There
+was something else grew in that garden--I can't call to mind what I
+mean. Basil, maybe?"
+
+"The basil plant, that feeds on dead men's brains," quoted Phil with a
+mock shiver. "You _are_ happy in your ideals, Drawls!"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well, that garden smelled pretty fine when the dew was just warming up
+in the sun, mornings--and so does this little gilt ball! I'll guess Mr.
+Locke's lady never got it from France. Smells like old New England."
+
+There was no reason why a vague chill should creep over me, or the
+sunshine seem to darken as if a thin veil drifted between me and the
+surrounding brightness. Let me say again that no place could have been
+more unlike the traditional haunted house. There hung about it no sense
+of morbidity or depression. Yet, what was I to think? I was not sick or
+mad; and the Thing had come to me twice. I turned from the married
+lovers and made my way to the veranda, where I might be alone to
+consider the pomander whose perfume was like a diaphanous presence
+walking beside me.
+
+Seated there, in one of the deep willow-chairs Phillida had cushioned in
+peacock chintz and marked especially mine by laying my favorite
+magazines on its arm, I studied my new trophy of the night. There was a
+satisfaction in its material solidity. It was real enough, resting in my
+palm.
+
+Yes; but it was not ordinary among its quaint kind! As I picked out the
+design of the gold-work, that fact was borne in upon my mind. Here was
+no pattern of scroll or blossom or cupids and hearts. The small sphere
+was belted with the signs of the Zodiac, beautiful in minute perfection.
+All the rest of the globe was covered with lace-fine work repeating one
+group of characters over and over. I was not learned enough to tell what
+the characters were, but the whole plainly belonged to those strange,
+outcast academies of astrology, alchemy--magic, in short. It contained
+what appeared to be a pinkish ball; originally a scented paste rolled
+round and dried, I judged by peering through the interstices of the
+gold.
+
+Had the old-world trinket been left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom?
+What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why
+muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of
+language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from
+even the college-bred Phillida's?
+
+She urged me to leave the house. If she, or anyone associated with her
+wanted the place left vacant for some reason, why did not the Thing and
+the warning come to others of our household group? Vere, Phillida, the
+Swedish woman, Cristina--all had lived here for weeks without any
+experiences like mine. I had not been told to leave my room, but the
+house. The danger, then, was only for me?
+
+Well, was I to run away, hands over my eyes, at the first alarm?
+
+The gray cat came purring about me and presently leaped upon my knee. On
+impulse, I offered the pomander to its nostrils. The unwinking yellow
+eyes shut, the beast's powerful claws closed and unclosed with
+convulsive pleasure, it breathed with that thirsty eagerness for the
+scent so familiar to my own senses.
+
+"Better than catnip, Bagheera?" I questioned. "You wouldn't bolt from
+it, either, would you?"
+
+Phillida's battered pet relaxed luxuriously, by way of answer, sniffed
+toward the hand I withdrew, and composed itself to sleep. I put the
+pomander in my waistcoat pocket.
+
+I could not deny as mere nightmare the Thing which had visited me.
+Better confront that fact! It was real. Only, real in what sense? What
+human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so
+hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight,
+without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain?
+
+Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at
+by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and
+magnificent charlatans, these many centuries? Were there other races
+between earth and heaven; strange tribes of the middle spaces whose
+destinies were fixed and complete as our own, but between whose lives
+and ours were fixed barriers not to be crossed? Had I met one of these
+beings, inimical to man as a cobra, intelligent as man, hunting Its
+victim by methods unknown to us?
+
+Was I a cheated fool, or a pioneer on the borders of a new country?
+
+Could I meet that Thing tonight, and tomorrow night? Could I bear the
+agony of Its presence, the stench of death and corruption that was Its
+atmosphere? At the mere memory my forehead grew wet.
+
+The postman's buggy had stopped at our mailbox. Phillida ran down to
+meet the event of the morning. Her laughing chatter came back to me
+while she waited, fists thrust in middy pockets, for the old man to sort
+our letters from his bags. It did not appear so hard to make a woman
+happy, I mused. A man might attempt it with hope, if he could but
+persuade her to try him.
+
+My lady had promised to come again. Perhaps, with patience----?
+
+Phillida came across the lawn with an armful of gaudy-covered catalogues
+and a handful of letters.
+
+"Catalogues for Ethan; letters for you," she called in advance of her
+arrival. "What an important person you are, Cousin Roger! It always
+gives me a quivery thrill to realize _who_ you are as well as how nice
+you are. Now, isn't that a jumbled speech to tumble out of me?"
+
+I took her tanned little hand along with the letters; letters that were
+so many voices summoning me back to pleasant, busy Manhattan.
+
+"It is a fine speech for a humble person to answer, Phil! But does that
+sort of thing matter to you women? What do you love Vere for, at bottom?
+Because he is strong and supple and has curly hair? No?" as she shook
+her head. "Because he has worn the uniform, then; proved his courage in
+war at sea? Because he had the glamour about him of real adventure and
+cabaret glitter? Or because he took you away from a life you hated? Or,
+perhaps, because he is kind and loves you? No! For none of these
+reasons? Why, then, love Ethan Vere?"
+
+She stopped vigorously shaking her head in repeated denial, and smiled
+at me triumphantly.
+
+"Because he _is_ Ethan Vere," she promptly responded. "Oh, Cousin Roger,
+you clever people are so stupid! It would not make any difference at all
+if Drawls were ugly, or never had been a sailor, or could not skate or
+do things, or had not been able to make me happy. It is something very
+much bigger than all that!"
+
+"And all the divorce courts, Phil? The breach of promise suits, and the
+couples who make each other miserable?"
+
+"But they never had anything," she said. "Perhaps they will have it,
+some day. Don't you know, Cousin Roger, that the most important things
+in the world are those most people never know about?"
+
+I was not sure whether I knew that, or not. After last night, I was not
+sure of many things. Still, if such gifts were given as she believed, if
+it was merely a question of being Ethan Vere--or Roger Locke----?
+
+But I had never seriously considered leaving the adventure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+     "The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not
+     sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not
+     sufficient for it."--HUGO DE ANIMA.
+
+
+That evening Vere and I settled the business details of the developments
+he had planned. Also while we three were quietly together, I launched a
+discussion that had been gathering in my mind all day while I watched
+Phillida.
+
+"You are doing as efficient work as Vere," I told her. "In fact, you are
+a most moderate pair! I gave you an open bank account, Phil; and you
+have furnished the house for so little that I am amazed. And it is all
+so gay, so freshly pretty! Being an ignorant man, the details are beyond
+me. But--one servant? Aren't you working yourself too hard? I had
+expected you to need several. Of course, we are not counting Vere's
+outdoor force."
+
+She turned in her low chair beside the lamp and glanced toward the
+window behind her, before replying. I noticed the action, because a
+moment before Vere had turned precisely the same way.
+
+"It is good of you to think of those things, Cousin Roger," she
+declared. "But, I want to be a real wife to Drawls. I do, indeed! And I
+have it all to learn because I was not brought up for that. Look at this
+dish-towel I am hemming. Cristina would laugh at the stitches if she
+dared, yet they are better than when I began. Some day I shall sew fine
+things. So it is with all my housekeeping. I think we should begin as we
+mean to go on, so I have furnished the house for--us. Perhaps if it had
+been for you alone, I should have chosen satin-wood and tapestry instead
+of willow and cretonne. The same way about Cristina. If Ethan and I are
+to save and earn this lovely place, as you offered, we cannot afford
+more than one maid. You understand what I am trying to explain, don't
+you?"
+
+"Yes," I assented. "Surely! What were you looking for, just now, behind
+you?"
+
+"I? Oh, nothing! I just fancied someone had passed by the window and
+stared in. I can't imagine what made me fancy that. Unless the cat----"
+She hesitated.
+
+"Bagheera is asleep under Mr. Locke's chair," Vere observed casually.
+
+"Truly, Cousin Roger, I love the way we are living," she resumed. "It is
+very miserable of me, I daresay, not to be more intellectual after all
+Father and Mother labored with me. But it is so! I want to live this way
+all my life; to be busy, and plan things with Ethan, and make them come
+true together."
+
+Under cover of the table she put her hand into Vere's, and silence held
+us a little while. I watched Bagheera the cat, who sat beside my chair
+staring with unblinking yellow eyes toward the window across the room.
+Did I imagine a slight uneasiness in those eyes, a wary readiness in
+gathered limbs and muscles bulking under the old cat's scant fur? Now
+the tail twitched with a lashing movement.
+
+Presently Bagheera looked away and relaxed. A moment more, and he curled
+down, composing himself to sleep.
+
+"You like the place, Phil?" I questioned. "You do not find it lonely
+here, or in any way depressing?"
+
+The candor of her surprise told me that no dweller between the worlds
+had visited her.
+
+"Cousin Roger? This darling house? Why?"
+
+I passed that question safely, and after a few minutes bade them
+good-night. They had a fashion of gazing at one another that made it a
+matter of necessary kindness to leave them alone together.
+
+As I made my solitary way upstairs, I will not deny a growing
+excitement, or that dread fought with my resolution. Who would keep
+tryst with me tonight? The Horror or the lady? Both; as each time
+before? If so, which one would come first, and what might be my measure
+of success or failure? If some trick were being played upon me, I meant
+to pluck it out of the mystery.
+
+The quietly pleasant room received me without a hint of the unusual. I
+lighted the lamps and sat down to my work.
+
+The house was still by ten o'clock, all lights out except mine. At
+midnight I lay down in the dark, the pomander under my pillow. Whether I
+put the gold ball there from sentiment, or from some absurd fancy about
+its perfume and mystic carving being somehow a talisman against evil, or
+because I feared the trinket might be taken from me during the night, I
+should be troubled to answer. I did place it there, and lay lapped in
+its sweet odor while the moments dragged past; heavy, slow-footed
+moments of strain and dreadful expectation scarcely relieved by a hope
+uneasy as fear.
+
+The cock crowed for the first hour; and for the second. I slept, at
+last. When I awoke, level sun-rays were striking across the world.
+
+Nothing had happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+     "These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade
+     a spade."--PLUTARCH.
+
+
+Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the
+neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance
+where such a woman as my lady could be lodged. However, I made my
+cautious inquiries even where the quest seemed useless, resolved to
+leave no chance untried. No better plan occurred to me than exhibition
+of the pomander with a vague story of wishing to return it to a young
+lady with red-gold hair. But nowhere did a native show recognition of
+the top or the description.
+
+On my way home I overtook a familiar, travel-stained buggy that inspired
+me with a fresh disrespect for my own abilities. Why had I not put my
+question to our rural mail deliverer in the beginning? Surely here was a
+man who knew everyone and went everywhere!
+
+The old white horse rolled placid eyes toward the car that drew up
+beside it, then returned to cropping the young grass by the roadside.
+The postman looked up from the leather sack open before him, and nodded
+to me.
+
+"Morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted. "Now let me get the right stuff into
+this here box, an' I'll sort your family's right out for you. There's a
+sample package of food sworn to make hens lay or kill 'em, for Cliff
+Brown here, that's gone to the bottom of the bag. I don't know but
+Cliff's poultry'd thank me to leave it be! Up it's got to come, though!"
+
+"Will it make them lay?" I asked, watching the ruddy old face peering
+into the sack.
+
+"I guess it might, if Cliff told 'em they'd have to lay or eat it,
+judgin' from the smell that sample's put in my bag."
+
+"Not as sweet as this?" I suggested, and leaned across to lay the
+pomander in his gnarled hand.
+
+The familiar expression of acute, almost greedy pleasure flowed into his
+face. His nostrils expanded with eager intake of the perfume that seemed
+an elixir of delight. He said nothing, absorbed in sensation.
+
+"Do you know of a lady who wears that scent?" I asked. "A lady with
+bright fair hair, colored like copper-bronze?"
+
+"Not I!" he denied briefly.
+
+"No one at all like that--with hair warmer in shade than ordinary gold
+color, and a lot of it?"
+
+"No. Not around here, nor anywhere I've been! What do you call this
+perfumery, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"I have no idea," I answered, sharply disappointed. "No one knows except
+the young lady I am trying to find. Are you sure you cannot help me at
+all? There is no newcomer in the neighborhood, no visitor at any house
+who might be the one I am looking for?"
+
+He shook his head, giving back the pomander with marked reluctance.
+
+"No one who might be able to tell more than yourself?" I persisted.
+
+A gleam of humor lit his eyes. He dropped a cardboard cylinder into Mr.
+Clifford Brown's mailbox and began to sort out my letters.
+
+"Far as that goes, I guess Mis' Hill don't miss much of what goes on
+around here. When she hears a good bit of tattle, she has her husband
+hitch up, and she goes drivin' all day. Ain't a house she knows that
+don't get to hear the whole yarn! You know Mis' Royal Hill? Mis' Vere
+gets butter and cheese from her. Might ask her!"
+
+I thanked him and drove on.
+
+Mrs. Hill, garrulous wife of the farmer who owned the place next to
+ours, was on her porch when I came to a halt before the house. She
+granted me more interest than the other natives upon whom I had called
+that morning; inviting me into her parlor to "set," when she had
+identified me. But she knew nothing of the object of my quest.
+
+"I guessed you must be the new owner up to the Michell place," she
+observed, her beady, faded brown eyes busy with my appearance, picking
+up details in avid, darting little glances suggestive of a bird pecking
+crumbs. "Cliff Brown said a lame feller had bought it. I don't see as
+that little limp cripples you much, the way you can rampus 'round in
+that fast automobile of yours! Now, I'm perfectly sound, and I wouldn't
+be paid to drive the thing. You'd ought to get the other fellow to run
+it for you; the handsome one. I guess you like to do it, though? Writer,
+ain't you? Books or newspapers?"
+
+I rallied my scattered faculties to answer the machine-gun attack.
+
+"Music?" she echoed, her narrow, sun-dried face wrinkling into new lines
+of inquisitiveness. "They said you had a piano in your bedroom, but I
+thought they were just foolin' me! Seems I never heard of havin' a piano
+upstairs. Most folks like to show 'em off in the parlor. Must be kind of
+funny, takin' your company upstairs to play for 'em. But then it's kind
+of a funny thing for a man to take to, anyhow! I got a niece ten years
+old next August who can play piano so good there don't seem anythin'
+left to learn her, so----! But there ain't no use of you drivin' 'round
+here lookin' for a fair-headed girl, Mr. Locke. The Slav folk down in
+the shanties by the post road are about the only light-complected ones
+in this neighborhood. Somehow, we run mostly to plain brown. Senator
+Allen has two girls, but they're only home from a boardin' school for
+vacation. How do you like your place?"
+
+"Very much," I assured her. "Only, I do not know a great deal about it,
+yet. Its history, I mean. Are there any interesting stories about the
+house? You know, we city people like a nice legend or ghost story to
+tell our friends when they come to visit us."
+
+She chuckled, swinging in her plush-covered rocking-chair, arms folded
+on her meagre breast.
+
+"Guess you'll have to make one up! I never heard of none. The Michell
+family always owned it--and they were so stiff respectable an' upright
+everyone was scared of 'em! Most of the men were clergymen in their
+time. The last, Reverend Cotton Mather Michell, went abroad to foreign
+parts for missionary work with the heathen, twenty-odd years ago; an'
+died there. He never married, so the family's run out. The Michells were
+awful hard on women; called 'em vessels of wrath an' beguilers of Adam.
+Preached it right out of the pulpit--so I guess no girl in these parts
+could have been hired to wed with him, if he'd wanted. His mother died
+when he was born, so he'd had no softenin' influence. After news came of
+his death, the house was shut up 'till you bought it. My, how you've
+changed it, already! I'd admire to go through it."
+
+When I had invited her to call on Phillida and inspect our domicile, and
+paid due thanks for information received, she followed me out to the
+car.
+
+"All this land 'round here is old and full of Indian relics," she
+remarked. "Over to the Sound where the swamps used to be, there was lots
+of fightin' with savages. An' they say a witch was stoned to death where
+the Catholic convent stands now, on the road up above your place. So I
+guess you can figure out a story to tell your company, if you like."
+
+"A convent?" I repeated, my attention caught by a new possibility. "Do
+they, perhaps, have visitors there, ladies in retreat for a time, as
+convents often do abroad?"
+
+Mrs. Hill laughed, shaking her tightly-combed head.
+
+"No hope of your girl there," she chuckled. "They're the strictest
+sisterhood in America, folks say. Poor Clares, I think they're called.
+No one, not even their relations, ever see their faces after they join.
+They're not allowed to talk to each other, even. Just stay in their
+cells, an' pray, even in the middle of the night, an' shave their heads
+an' live on a few vegetables an' dry bread."
+
+I laughed with her. Certainly no convent would harbor my lady of
+marvelous tresses and magical perfume, of wild fancies and heretical
+theories. That thought of mine was indeed far afield. But where, then,
+was I next to seek?
+
+I made a detour and used some strategy to gain a view of the Senator's
+daughters. They proved to be brunettes who wore their locks cropped
+after the fashion of certain Greenwich villagers. My disappointment was
+not great; my lady was not suggestive of a boarding-school miss. But I
+had hoped to find somewhere a trace of the copper-bronze head whose
+royalty of hair I had shorn as the traitors shore King Childeric's
+Gothic locks.
+
+I drove home with a sense of blankness upon me. Suppose she never came
+again? Suppose the episode was ended? Not even freedom from the Thing
+could compensate for the baffled adventure.
+
+Think of the lame feller with an Adventure!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+     "Plato expresses four kinds of Mania--Firstly, the musical;
+     secondly, the telestic or mystic; thirdly, the prophetic; and
+     fourthly, that which belongs to Love."--PREFACE TO ZANONI.
+
+
+For myself, I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination.
+There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all
+within and without is lulled and calm. Perhaps I have too much calm as
+an ordinary thing! That evening, when I went to my room, lighted my
+lamps and closed my door, I stood alone for awhile breathing the mingled
+sweetness of the country air and the pomander ball. In that interval,
+there came to me, complete and whole as a gift thrust into my hand, the
+melody which an enthusiastic publisher since assured me has reached
+every ear in America.
+
+As to that extravagant statement, I can only measure by the preposterous
+amount of money the melody has brought me. Perhaps there is a magic
+about it. For myself, I cannot hear it--ground on a street-organ, given
+on the stage, played on a phonograph record or delicately rendered by an
+orchestra--without feeling again the exaltation and enchantment of that
+night.
+
+I flung myself down at my writing-table, tossing my former work right
+and left to make room for this. If it should escape before I could set
+it down! If the least of those airy cadences should be lost!
+
+At three o'clock in the morning I came back to realization of time and
+place. The composition was finished; it stood up before me like a flower
+raised over-night. Eight hours had passed since I sat down to the work,
+after dinner. I was tired. As I began to draw into a pile the sheets of
+paper I had covered with notes, weariness gripped me like a hand.
+
+Eight hours? If I had shoveled in a ditch twice that long I could have
+felt no more exhausted. Yielding to drained fatigue of mind and body, I
+dropped my head upon the arms I folded upon the table. My hot, strained
+eyes closed with relief, my stiff fingers relaxed. Rest and content
+flowed over me; my work was done, and good.
+
+Rest passed into sleep, no doubt.
+
+The sleep could not have been long, for not many hours remained before
+dawn. When I started awake and lifted my head, I found the room in
+darkness. A perfume was in the air, and the sense of a presence scarcely
+more tangible than the perfume. Even in the first dazed moment, I knew
+my lady had come again.
+
+"Do not rise!" her murmuring voice cautioned me. "Unless you wish me to
+go?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I am here because I promised to come. It was not wise of you to ask
+that of me."
+
+"Then I prefer folly to wisdom," I answered, steadying myself to full
+wakefulness. "Or, rather, I am not sure that you can decide for me which
+is which!"
+
+"Why? After all, why? Just--curiosity?"
+
+"You, who speak so learnedly of magic and sorcery," I retorted, smiling
+under cover of the darkness, "have you never heard of the white magic
+conjured by a tress of hair, a perfume ball, and a voice sweeter than
+the perfume? An image of wax does not melt before a witch's fire so
+easily as a man before these things."
+
+"My hair pleased you?" she questioned naively.
+
+"Or so easily as a woman melts before admiration!" I supplemented. "I am
+delighted to prove you human, mystic lady. Please me? Could anyone fail
+to be pleased with that most magnificent braid? But how can either you
+or I forgive the cruelty that took it from its owner? Why did you cut it
+off?"
+
+"So little of it! And I did not know you, then."
+
+"Little? That braid?"
+
+"It reached below my knee, now it is but little less," she answered with
+indifference. "We all have such hair."
+
+I gasped. My imagination painted the picture of all that shining
+richness enwrapping a slim young body. It was fantastic beyond belief to
+sit there at my desk, beneath my fingers the tools of sober, workaday
+life, and stare into the dark room that held the reality of my vision.
+She was there, but I could not rise and find her. She was opposite my
+eyes, but my promise forbade me to touch the lamp and see her.
+
+"Who are 'we'?" I slowly followed her last sentence.
+
+A sigh answered me. On the silence, a memory floated to me of the story
+she had told while I held her prisoner that first night:
+
+"_The woman sits in her low chair. The fire-shine is bright in her eyes
+and in her hair. On either side, her hair flows down to the floor._"
+
+Yes, by legend young witches had such hair; sylphs, undines and all of
+the airy race of Lilith. I thrust absurdities away from me and offered a
+quotation to fill the pause:
+
+  "'I met a lady in the meads'
+    'Full beautiful; a faery's child.'
+  'Her hair was long, her foot was light,'
+    'And her eyes were wild.'"
+
+She did not laugh, or put away the suggestion. When I had decided that
+she did not mean to reply, and was seeking my mind for new speech to
+detain her with me, she finally spoke what seemed another quotation:
+
+"'A spirit--one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither
+departed souls nor angels; concerning whom Josephus and Michael Psellus
+of Constantinople may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is
+no climate or element without one or more.' Have you read the writings
+of the learned Jew or of the Platonist, you who are so very bold?"
+
+"Neither," I meekly admitted. "But neither ancient gentleman could
+convince me that you are unhuman."
+
+Her answer was just audible:
+
+"Not I--but, It!"
+
+Now I was silenced, for dreadful and uncanny was that whisper in the
+dark to a man who had met here in this room What I had met.
+
+"Tell me more of this Thing without a name," I urged, mastering my
+reluctance to evoke even the idea of what the blood curdled to recall.
+"Why does It hate me?"
+
+"What can I tell you? Even in your world, does not evil hate good as
+naturally as good recoils from evil? But this One has another cause
+also!" She hesitated. "And you yourself? How have you challenged and
+mocked It this very night? Here, where It glooms, you have dared bring
+the high joy of the artist who creates? Oh, brave, brave!--he who could
+await alone the visit of the Unspeakable, in the chamber into which the
+Loathsome Eyes have looked, and write the music of hope and beauty!"
+
+I started, with a hot rush of surprise and pleasure. She had heard my
+work. She approved it. More than that, not to her was I the lame fellow
+who ought to get a better man to drive his car!
+
+"Nor should you, who have two worlds of your own," she added in a lower
+tone, "doubt the existence of many both dark and bright. Go, then, out
+of this haunted place where a human madness broke through the Barrier.
+Be satisfied with the victories you have had. Let the visits of the Dark
+One fade into mere nightmare; and know I am no more a living woman than
+Franchina Descartes."
+
+"Who was she?"
+
+"Have you not read that early in the seventeenth century there appeared
+in Paris the philosopher Descartes, accompanied by the figure of a
+beautiful woman? She moved, spoke, and seemed life itself; but Descartes
+declared she was an automaton, a masterpiece of mechanism he himself had
+made. Yet many refused to believe his story, declaring he had by sorcery
+compelled a spirit to serve him in this form. He called her Franchina,
+his daughter."
+
+"And the truth?"
+
+"I have told you all the record tells. She was soon lost. Descartes took
+her with him upon a journey by sea; when, a storm arising, the
+superstitious captain of the vessel threw the magic beauty into the
+Mediterranean."
+
+"Thank you. But, are you fairy or automaton?"
+
+"Do not laugh," she exclaimed with sudden passion. "You know I would say
+that I have no part in the world of men and women. Not through me shall
+the ancient dread seize a new life. A little time, now, then the doors
+will close upon me as the sea closed over Franchina. I will not take
+with me the memory of a wrong done to you. I shall never come to this
+house after tonight. If you would give me a happiness, promise me you
+will leave, too."
+
+I had known we should come to this point. After a moment, I spoke as
+quietly as I could:
+
+"Tell me your name."
+
+She had not expected that question. I think she might have withheld the
+answer, given time to reflect. But as it was, she replied docilely as a
+bidden child:
+
+"Desire Michell."
+
+The name fell quaintly on both hearing and fancy, with a rustle of early
+New England tradition. Desire! I repeated it inwardly with satisfaction
+before I answered her.
+
+"Thank you. Now, I, Roger Locke, do promise you, Desire Michell, that I
+will not leave this house until these matters are plainer to my
+understanding, whether you go or stay. But if you go and come no more,
+then I surely shall stay until I find a way to trace you or until the
+Thing kills me."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was a pause. Then, to my utter dismay, I heard her sobbing through
+the dark.
+
+"Why do you tempt me?" she reproached. "Is it not hard enough, my duty?
+For me it is such pleasure to be here--to leave for a while the
+loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things,
+free and happy--how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark
+speaks or is silent? Let me go."
+
+Wonder and exulting sense of power filled me.
+
+"I can keep you, then?" I asked.
+
+"I am--so weak."
+
+"Desire Michell, I am as alone as you can be, in my real life. I have
+gone apart from much that occupies men and women; gaining and losing in
+different ways. One of the gains is freedom to dispose of myself without
+grief or loss to anyone, except the perfunctory regret of friends. Will
+you believe there is no risk that I would not take for a few hours with
+you? Even with your voice in the dark? Come to me as you can, let us
+take what time we may, and the chances be mine."
+
+"But that is folly! You do not know. To protect you I must go."
+
+"I refuse the protection. Stay! If there is sorrow in knowing you, I
+accept it. I understand nothing. I only beg you not to turn me back to
+the commonplace emptiness of life before I found you. Indeed, I will not
+be sent away."
+
+"If I yield, you will reproach me some day."
+
+"Never."
+
+"It could only be like this--that we should speak a few times before the
+gates close upon me."
+
+"What gates?"
+
+"I cannot tell you."
+
+"Very well," I took what the moment would grant me. "That is a bargain.
+Yet, what safety lies in secrecy between us? If we are to help each
+other, as I hope, would not plain openness be best? You will tell me no
+more about yourself? Very well. Tell me something more about the enemy
+in the dark whom I am to meet. You have hinted that It has a special
+motive for fixing hate upon me beyond mere malignance toward mankind.
+What is that motive?"
+
+"Ask me not," she faintly refused me.
+
+"I do ask you. My ignorance of everything concerned is a heavy drawback
+in this combat. Arm me with a little understanding. What moves It
+against me?"
+
+The pause following was filled with a sense of difficulty and recoil,
+her struggle against some terrible reluctance. So painful was that
+effort, somehow clearly communicated to me, that I was about to devour
+my curiosity and withdraw the question when her whisper just reached my
+hearing:
+
+"Jealousy!"
+
+"Jealousy? Of what? For whom?"
+
+"For--me."
+
+The monstrous implication sank slowly into my understanding; then
+brought me erect, gripping the edge of the table lest I forget restraint
+and move toward her.
+
+"By what right?" I cried. "By what claim? Desire Michell, what has the
+Horror to do with you?"
+
+The vehemence and heat of my cry struck a shock through the hushed room
+distinct as the shattering of crystal. There was no answer, no movement;
+no rebuke of my movement. I was alone. With that confession she had
+fled.
+
+My cry had been louder than I knew. Presently I heard a door open. Steps
+sounded along the hall from the rooms on the opposite side of the house.
+Someone knocked hesitatingly.
+
+"Are you all right, Mr. Locke?" Vere's voice came through the panels.
+
+I crossed to the door and opened it. He stood at the threshold, an
+electric torch in his hand.
+
+"We thought you called," he apologized. "I thought maybe you were sick,
+or wanted something; and no light showed around your door."
+
+I found the wall switch and turned on the lamps. As on the last
+occasion, she had switched the lights off there, beyond my reach unless
+I broke my promise not to move about the room while she remained my
+guest.
+
+"Come in," I invited him. "Much obliged to you and Phillida for looking
+me up! I had been working late and dropped asleep in my chair, with a
+nightmare as the result."
+
+It was pleasant to have his normal presence, prosaic in bathrobe and
+pajamas, in my cheerfully lighted room. His dark eyes glanced toward the
+music-scrawled papers scattered about, then returned to meet my eyes
+smilingly.
+
+"We heard some of that work," he admitted. "Phil and I--well, I guess we
+were guilty of sitting on the stairs to hear you play it over. I never
+listened to a tune that took hold of me, kind of, like that one. We'd
+certainly prize hearing all of it together, sometime, if you didn't
+mind."
+
+The warmth of achievement flowed again in me. I crossed to the piano to
+assemble the finished sheets, answering him with one of those
+expressions of thanks artists use to cloak modestly their sleek inward
+vanity. I was really grateful for this first criticism that soothed me
+back to the reality of my own world.
+
+Across the top of the uppermost sheet of music, in small, square script
+quaint as the pomander, was written a quotation strange to me:
+
+"We walk upon the shadows of hills across a level thrown, and pant like
+climbers."
+
+I did not know that I had read the words aloud until Vere answered them.
+
+"So we do! I guess there is more panting over shadows and less real
+mountain-climbing done by us humans than most folks would believe. Most
+roads turn off to easy ways before we reach the hills we make such a
+fuss about. Who wrote that, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"I don't know," I replied vaguely, intent upon Desire Michell's meaning
+in leaving this to me.
+
+He nodded, and turned leisurely to go.
+
+"Kind of seems to me as if he must have felt like you did when you wrote
+that piece tonight," he observed diffidently. "As if trouble did not
+amount to much, taken right. I'll get back to Phil, now. She might be
+anxious."
+
+Could that be what Desire had meant me to understand? Was there indeed
+some quality of courage----?
+
+That is why my most successful composition from the standpoint of money
+and popularity went to the publisher under the title, "Shadows of
+Hills." Of course no one connected the allusion. The general
+interpretation was best expressed by the cover design of the first
+printing: a sketch of a mountain-shaded lake on which floated a canoe
+containing two young persons. I was well pleased to have it so.
+
+But--in what land unknown to man towered the vast mountains in whose
+shadow I panted and strove? Or was my foot indeed upon the mountain
+itself?
+
+I did not know. I do not know, now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+     "If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the
+     country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be
+     understood of the Other World."--ONEIROCRITICA ACHMETIS.
+
+
+In the morning I drove down to New York. There were affairs demanding
+attention. Also, I was pressed by an eagerness to get my over-night work
+into the hands of the publisher. To be exact, I wanted to put the
+manuscript out of reach of the Thing at the house. Without reason, I had
+awakened with that instinct strong within me.
+
+The atmosphere of the city was tonic. Merely driving through the
+friendly, crowded streets was an exhilaration. The practical employment
+of the day broomed away fantastic cobwebs. In the evening I turned
+toward Connecticut with a feeling of leaving home behind me. But I would
+not stay away from the house for a night, risking that Desire Michell
+might come and find me missing. She might believe I had been seized by
+cowardice and deserted. She might never return.
+
+I will not deny that I had lied to her. There was no intention in me of
+accepting her fleeting visits as the utmost she could give. I meant to
+snatch her out of darkness and mystery, to set her in the wholesome
+sunlight where Phillida flitted happily. If I could prevent, those gates
+of which she vaguely spoke never should close between us. But it was
+plain that I must tread warily. Once frightened away, how could she be
+found? Her home, her history, even her face, were unknown to me. Tracing
+her by a perfume and a tress of hair had been tried, and failed. Of her
+connection with the Dark Thing I refused to think too deeply. Her
+connection with me must come first.
+
+It was not until I passed the cottage of Mrs. Hill, glimmering whitely
+in the starlight, where the road made an angle toward the farm, that I
+recalled our talk in her "best room."
+
+"_The Michell family always owned it. The Reverend Cotton Mather Michell
+went to foreign parts for missionary work twenty years ago and died
+there----_"
+
+My lady of the night was Desire Michell. A clue?
+
+"_He never married, so the family's run out._"
+
+It was damp here in the hollow where the road dipped down. A chill ran
+coldly over me.
+
+Arrived at the garage which had taken the place of our tumble-down barn,
+I put the car away as quietly as possible. Ten o'clock had struck as I
+passed through the last village, and our household was asleep. Moving
+without unnecessary noise, I crossed to the house. Bagheera, the cat,
+padded across the porch to meet me and rubbed himself around my legs
+while I stooped to put the latch-key in the lock.
+
+As the key slid in place, I heard the waterfall over the dam abruptly
+change the sound of its flow, swelling and accelerating as when a gust
+of wind hurries a greater volume of water over the brink. But there was
+no wind. Immediately followed that sound from the lake which I can liken
+to nothing better than the smack of huge lips unclosing, or the suck of
+a thick body drawing itself from a bed of mud. The cat thrust himself
+violently between my feet and pressed against the house-door uttering a
+whimpering mew of urgency. Startled, I looked in the direction of the
+lake.
+
+At this distance it showed as a mere expanse of darkness, only the
+reflection of a star here and there revealing the surface as water. What
+else could be shown, I rebuked my nerves by querying of them; and turned
+the key. Bagheera rushed into the hall when the door opened wide enough
+to admit his body. I followed more sedately and closed the door behind
+us both.
+
+Now I was not acquainted with Bagheera's night privileges. Did Phillida
+allow him in the house, or not? After an instant's consideration, I bent
+and picked him up from his repose on the hall rug. He should spend the
+night shut in with me, out of mischief yet comfortable. Purring in the
+curve of my arm, he was carried upstairs without objection on his part.
+Until we reached my room! On its threshold I felt his body stiffen; his
+yellow eyes snapped open alertly. Cat antipathy to a strange place, I
+reflected, amused, as I switched on the lights.
+
+"All right, Bagheera," I spoke soothingly, and put him upon the rug.
+
+He bounded erect, fur bristling, tail lashing from side to side after
+the fashion of a miniature panther. When I stooped to stroke him, he
+eluded my hand. In a gliding run, body crouched, ears flattened, he sped
+toward the doorway, was through it and gone.
+
+Well, I decided, he could not be pursued all through the house. It would
+be easier to explain him to Phillida next morning. I was tired;
+pleasantly tired. The day had been filled with the enthusiasm and
+congratulations of my associates, with conferences and plans for
+launching the new music via theatres and advertising. It ought to "go
+big," they assured me. In my optimism of mood, I wondered if I had not
+already driven off the Dark Thing, since the girl had come to me the
+night past without It appearing before or afterward. Perhaps,
+woman-timid, she exaggerated the danger and It had retreated after the
+second failure to overpower me.
+
+I fell asleep with a tranquil conviction that nothing would disturb my
+rest this night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Stillness enveloped me, absolute, desolate. Silence contained me. Yet
+the thought of another scorched against my understanding in a burning
+communication of intelligence.
+
+"Man," It commanded, "I am here. Fear!"
+
+And I knew that which was my body did fear to the point of death, but
+that which was myself stood up in revolt.
+
+"Crouch," It bade. "Crouch, pygmy, and beg. Fear! The blood crawls in
+the veins, the heart checks, the nerves shrink and wither--man, your
+life wanes thin and faint. Down--shall your race affront mine?"
+
+My heart did stagger and beat slow. Life crept a sluggish current. But
+there was another force that stiffened to resistance, and gathered
+itself to compact strength within me.
+
+"No," my thought refused the dark intelligence. "I am not yours. Command
+your own, not me."
+
+"Weakling, you have touched that which is mine. Into my path you have
+dared step. Back--for in my breath you die!"
+
+The air my lungs drew in was foul and poisonous. With more and more
+difficulty my heart labored. Confused memories came to me of men found
+dead in their beds in haunted rooms. Would morning find me so? Better
+that way than to yield to the Thing! Better----
+
+I struggled erect; or fancied so.
+
+Now I saw myself as one who stood with folded arms fronting a breach in
+a colossal wall. Huge, immeasurably huge that cliff reared itself beyond
+the sight and ranged away on either side into unknown distances, dully
+glistening like gray ice, unbroken save in this place. The gray strand
+on which I stood was a narrow strip following the foot of the wall.
+Behind me lay a vast, unmoving ocean banked over with an all-concealing
+mist. Not a ripple stirred along that weird beach, or a ray changed the
+fixed gray twilight. And I was afraid, for my danger was not of the
+common dangers of mankind, but that which freezes the blood of man when
+he draws near the supernatural; the ancient fear.
+
+I stood there, while sweat poured painfully from me, and fronted my
+enemy who pressed me hard.
+
+The Thing was at the breach, couched in the great cleft that split the
+Barrier, darkness within darkness. Unseen, I felt the glare of Its hate
+beat upon me. From It emanated deathly cold, like the nearness of an
+iceberg in the night, with an odor of damp and mold.
+
+"Puny earth-dweller, lost here," Its menace breathed, "what keeps you
+from destruction? For you the circle has not been traced nor the
+pentagram fixed, for you no law has been thrust down. Trespass is death.
+Die, then."
+
+Only my will held It from me, and I felt that will reel in sickened
+bewilderment. I had no strength to answer, only the steadfast instinct
+to oppose.
+
+The Thing did not pass. There in the breach It ravened for me, thrust
+Itself toward me, pressed against the thin veil of separation between
+us. I saw nothing, yet knew where It raised Itself, gigantic in
+formlessness more dreadful than any shape. Its whispered threats broke
+against me like an evil surf.
+
+"Man, the prey is mine. Would you challenge me? The woman is mine by the
+pact of centuries. Save yourself. Escape."
+
+The woman? Startled wonder filled me. Was I then fighting for Desire
+Michell?
+
+Out of the air I was answered as if her voice had spoken; certainty came
+to grip me as if with her small hands. She had no help but in me. If I
+fell, she fell. If I stood firm----? Exultant resolve flared strong and
+high within me. My will to protect leaped forward.
+
+The Thing shrank. It dwindled back through the gap in the Barrier. But
+as It fled, a last venomous message drifted to me:
+
+"Again! And again! Tire but once, pygmy----!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I was sitting up in bed in my lighted room, my fingers clutching the
+chain of the lamp beside me. Was some dark bulk just fading from beyond
+my window? Or was I still dreaming?
+
+I was trembling with cold, drenched as with water so that my relaxing
+hand made a wet mark on the table beneath the lamp. This much might have
+been caused by nightmare. But what sane man had nightmares like these?
+
+When I was able, I rose, changed to dry garments and wrapped myself in a
+heavy bathrobe. There was an electric coffee service in my room kept for
+occasions when I worked late into the night. I made strong black coffee
+now and drank it as near boiling as practicable. Presently the blood
+again moved warmly in my veins.
+
+Then I knew that the chill in the room was not a delusion of my chilled
+body. I was warm, yet the air around me remained moist and cold, unlike
+a summer night. It seemed air strangely thickened and soiled, as pure
+water may be muddied by the passage of some unclean body. In this
+atmosphere persisted a fetid smell of mold and decay, warring with the
+homely scent of coffee and the fragrance of the pomander beneath my
+pillow.
+
+I was more shaken, more exhausted by this encounter with the unknown
+than by either of my former experiences. A fact which drove home the
+grim farewell of my enemy! _Tire but once, pygmy----!_ Desire herself
+had foretold that the dark Thing would wear me down.
+
+Well, perhaps! But not without fighting for Its victory. At least I
+would be no supine victim. Already I had forced my way--where? Where was
+that Barrier before which I had stood? Awe sank coldly through me at
+memory of that colossal land where I was pygmy indeed, an insolent human
+intruder upon the unhuman. What other shapes of dread stalked and
+watched beyond that titanic wall? By what swollen conceit could I hope
+to win against Them?
+
+I would not consider escape by flight, even if the end had been certain
+destruction. But my head sank to my hands beneath the weight of a
+profound depression and discouragement.
+
+It was the hour before dawn, traditionally the worst for man. The hour
+superstition sets apart for its own, when the life flame burns lowest.
+At a distance a dog had treed some little wood creature, and bayed
+monotonously.
+
+There was a weakness at the core of my strength. I waged this combat for
+the sake of Desire Michell. _But what was she to whom the Thing laid
+claim by the pact of centuries?_
+
+Darkness began to tinge with light. Pale gray filtered into the dusk
+with grudging slowness. As day approached I saw that a fog enfolded the
+house in vapor, stealing into the room in coils and swirls like thin
+smoke. The lamps looked sickly and dim. I forced away my languor, rose
+and walked to the nearest window.
+
+Something was moving up the slope from the lake; a dim shape about which
+the fog clung in steamy billows. My shaken nerves thrilled unpleasantly.
+What stirred at this empty hour? What should loom so tall?
+
+A moment later the figure was near enough to be distinguished as Ethan
+Vere, bearing several long fishing-rods over his shoulder.
+
+"Vere!" I hailed him, with mingled relief and utter disgust with myself.
+"Anything going on so early?"
+
+He looked up at me--I never saw Vere startled--and came on to stop
+beneath the window. Taking off his cap, he ran his fingers through his
+black curls, pushing their wetness from his forehead. I noticed how the
+mists painted him with a spectral pallor.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Locke," he greeted me. "Just as I've been thinking,
+there are some big snapping-turtles about the lake and creek. I guessed
+there'd be some war between them and me before that water was safe for
+use! One of the fellows dragged a duck under, drowned it and started
+feeding right before my eyes, just now."
+
+"We will have to get a canoe."
+
+He nodded placid assent.
+
+"That'll look pretty on the lake. Phillida will like it. But I guess
+I'll keep a homely old flat-bottomed punt out of sight around some
+corner for work. The other craft goes over too prompt for jobs like
+mine, and don't hold enough. I'm going to fetch my rifle, now. I'd
+admire to blow that duck-eater's ugly head off."
+
+"I will get into some clothes and be right with you," I invited myself
+to the hunt.
+
+"I'd like to have you," he replied with his quaint politeness. There
+were times when I could visualize Vere's New England mother as if I had
+known her.
+
+The human interlude had been enough to dispel the black humors of the
+night. When I was ready to go out, I opened the drawer that held the
+copper-bronze braid and took it into my hand. How vital with youth its
+crisp resilience felt in my clasp, I thought; young, too, were its
+luxuriance and shining color. Nonsense, indeed, to fancy ghostliness
+here or the passing of musty centuries over the head that had worn this
+tress! A flood of reassurance rose high in me. Whatever the Thing might
+be, I would trust the girl Desire Michell. Yes, and for her I would
+stand fast at that Barrier until victory declared for the enemy or for
+me. Until It passed me, It should not reach her.
+
+I went downstairs to join Vere. The brightening mist was cool and fresh.
+There was neither horror nor defeat in the promise of the morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+     "In vain I called on Rest to come and stay.
+     We were but seated at the festival
+     Of many covers, when One cried: 'Away!'"
+                           --ROSE GARDEN OF SA'ADI.
+
+
+Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet
+interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose
+strands are of violently contrasted colors. The rope would be
+inharmonious, startling to the eye, but strong to bind and hold. As I
+was bound and held!
+
+All day I lived in the wholesome household atmosphere evoked by Vere and
+Phillida. It is impossible to describe the sunny charm they created
+about the commonplace. Our gay, simple breakfasts where Phillida
+presided in crisp middy blouse or flowered smock; where the gray cat sat
+on the arm of Vere's chair, speculative yellow eye observant of his
+master's carving, while the Swedish Cristina served us her good food
+with the spice of an occasional comment on farm or neighborhood
+events--how perfect a beginning for the day! How stale beside our
+breeze-swept table was any board at which I had ever sat! I do declare
+that I have never seen a more winning face than the bright one of my
+little cousin whom her world had pronounced "plain." Vere and I basked
+in her sunbeams gratefully.
+
+Afterward, we each had our work. Of the three, Vere was the most
+industrious; slow, steady and unsparing of himself to a degree that
+accomplished surprising results. Phillida flitted over the place indoors
+and out, managing the house, following Vere about, driving to village or
+town with me on purchasing trips for our supplies. I did rather more of
+my own work than usual, that summer, and consequently had more of the
+commercial side to employ me.
+
+A healthy, normal life? Yes--until the hours between midnight and dawn.
+
+I never knew when I laid down at night whether I should sleep until sun
+and morning overlay the countryside; whether the whispering call of
+Desire Michell would summon me to an hour more exquisite than reality,
+less satisfying than a dream, or whether I should leap into
+consciousness of the Loathsome Eyes fixed coldly malignant upon me while
+my enemy's inhuman hate groped toward me across the darkness Its
+presence fouled.
+
+For my two guests kept their promises.
+
+If I speak briefly of the coming of the Thing during this time, I do so
+because the mind shrinks from past pain. It came again, and again. It
+craftily used the torture of irregularity in Its coming. For days there
+might be a respite, then It would haunt me nights in succession until my
+physical endurance was almost spent.
+
+I have stood before the breach in that Barrier, fighting that nightmare
+duel, until the place of colossal desolation, last frontier the human
+race might hope to keep, became as well known to me as a landscape on
+earth. Yet the effect of the Thing's assaults upon me never lessened. On
+the contrary, the horror gained in strength. A dreadful familiarity grew
+between It and me. Communication flowed more readily between us with
+use. I will not set down, perhaps I dare not set down the intolerable
+wickedness of Its alternate menaces and offered bribes. Contact with Its
+intelligence poisoned.
+
+There were nights when It was dumb, when all Its monstrous power
+concentrated and bore upon me, Its will to destroy locked with my will.
+My victory was that I lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the shadow, Desire Michell and I drew closer to one another.
+
+How can I tell of a love that grew without sight? So much of the love of
+romance and history is a matter of flower-petal complexions,
+heart-consuming eyes, satin lips, and all the form and color that make
+beauty. How can I make clear a love that grew strong and passionately
+demanding, knew delicate coquetries of advance and evasion, intimacy of
+minds like the meeting of eyes in understanding--all in the dark? The
+blind might comprehend. But the blind have a physical communication we
+had not; touch has enchantments of its own.
+
+Every night, near midnight, I switched off the lights and waited in the
+chair at my writing-table, where I was accustomed to work. If she had
+not come by two o'clock, I learned to know she would not visit me that
+night. I might sleep in that certainty. A strange tryst I kept there in
+the dark; listening to the flow of the waterfall from the lake, loud in
+that dead hour's stillness, or hearing the soft, incessant sounds of
+insect life awake in trees and fields. If she came--a drift of perfume,
+a movement slight as a curtain stirred by the wind, then an hour with
+such a companion as the ancient magician might have drawn out of the air
+to his nine mystic lamps.
+
+Strange, fantastic tales she told me, spun of fancies luminous and frail
+as threads of glass. She could not speak without betraying her deep
+learning in sciences rejected and forgotten by the modern world.
+Alchemy, astrology, geomancy furnished her speech with allusions blank
+to my ignorance; which she most gently and politely enlightened when I
+confessed. I learned that the Green Lion of Paracelsus was not a beast,
+but a recipe for making gold; that Salamandar's Feather was better known
+today as asbestos; and that the Emerald Table was by no means an article
+of furniture. I give these examples merely by way of illustration.
+
+On the other side of the shield held between us, I soon discovered that
+she knew no more of modern city life than a well-taught child who has
+never left home. She listened eagerly to accounts of theatres and
+restaurants. The history of Phillida and Ethan Vere seemed to her more
+moving and wonderful than any story she could tell me. I was amazed and
+humbled to find that she rated my ability to make music as a lofty art
+among the occult sciences.
+
+Of the evil Thing that haunted me, we came to say little. To press her
+with questions meant to end her visit, I found by experience. When I
+spoke of that strand between the Barrier and the gray mist-hidden sea,
+her passion of distress closed all intercourse with the plea that I go
+away at once, while escape was possible, while life remained mine. So
+for the most part I curbed my tongue and my consuming curiosity; not
+from consideration, but of necessity.
+
+One night I asked her how the dark Thing spoke to me, by what medium of
+communication.
+
+"Spirits of all orders can speak to man in every language, so long as
+they are face to face," she answered, with a faint surprise at my lack
+of knowledge. "'_When they turn to man, they come into use of his
+language and no longer remember their own, but as soon as they turn from
+man they resume their own language, and forget his._'
+
+"But they themselves are unaware of this fact, for they utter thought to
+thought by direct intelligence. So if angel or demon turns his back to
+you, Roger, you may not make him hear you though you call with great
+force."
+
+"How do you know that, Desire?"
+
+"But by simple reading! Do not Ennemoser and many writers record it?"
+
+"Have you spoken to such beings, Desire?"
+
+The question was rash, but it escaped me before I could check the
+impulse. To my relief, she answered without resentment:
+
+"No."
+
+"No? The Thing--the enemy that comes to me has never spoken to you?"
+
+"No."
+
+I was silent in amazement and incredulity. The dark creature claimed
+her, she declared herself helpless to escape from that dominion into
+normal life, and yet It never had spoken to her? It spoke to me, a
+stranger most ignorant, and not to the seeress who was familiar with Its
+existence and the lore which linked humanity to Its fearful kind?
+
+"You do not believe me," her voice came quietly across my thoughts.
+
+"I believe you, of course," I stammered. "I was only--astonished. You
+have described It, and the Barrier, so often; from the first night----!
+I supposed you had seen all I have, and more."
+
+"All you have seen? Now tell me with what eyes you have seen the Barrier
+and the Far Frontier? The eyes of the body, or that vision by which man
+sees in a dream and which is to the sight as the speech of spirits is to
+the hearing?"
+
+"I suppose--with the inner sight."
+
+"Then understand me when I say that I have seen with the eyes of
+another, by a sight not mine and yet my own."
+
+"You mean," I floundered in vague doubts and jealousy of her human
+associations of which I knew nothing. "You mean--hypnotism?"
+
+She laughed with half-sad raillery.
+
+"How shall I answer you, Roger? Once upon a time, the jewel called beryl
+was thought unrivaled as a mirror into which a magician might look to
+see reflected events taking place at a distance, or reflections of the
+future. But by and by magicians grew wiser. They found any crystal would
+serve as well as a beryl. Later still, they found a little water poured
+in a basin or held in the hollow of the hand showed as true a fantasm.
+So one wrote: '_There is neither crystallomancy nor hydromancy, but the
+magick is in the Seer himself._'"
+
+"Well, Desire?"
+
+"Well, Roger--if to see with the sight of another is hypnotism, then
+every man who writes a book or tells a good tale is a hypnotist; every
+historian who makes us see the past is a necromancer."
+
+"You read of the Thing----?"
+
+"No," she replied, after a long pause. "I knew It through sympathy with
+one who died as I would not have you to die, my friend Roger, of whom I
+shall think long in that place to which I go presently. Question me no
+more. When the time comes for you to throw a certain braid of hair and a
+pomander into the fire----"
+
+"I will never do that!"
+
+"No? Well, you might keep the pomander, which is pure gold engraved with
+ancient signs and the name of the Shining Dawn, Dahana, in Sanskrit
+characters. Also the perfume it contains is precious, being blent with
+the herb vervain which is powerful against evil spirits."
+
+"It is not the pomander that I should keep, nor the pomander that holds
+the powerful spell."
+
+"You--value the braid so much?"
+
+"I value only one other beauty as highly."
+
+"Yes, Roger?"
+
+"Yes, Desire. And that beauty is she who wore the braid."
+
+Now the darkness in the room was dense. Yet I thought I sensed a
+movement toward me as airy as the flutter of a bird's wing. The
+fragrance in the atmosphere eddied as if stirred by her passing. But
+when I spoke to her again, after a moment's waiting, she had gone.
+
+I am sure no housekeeper was ever more nice in her ideas of neatness
+than my little Cousin Phillida, and no maid more exact in carrying out
+orders than Cristina. Nevertheless, automobiles pass on the quietest
+roads, and my windows are always wide open. There is the fireplace, too,
+with possibilities of soot. Anyhow, there was a light gray dust
+overlaying the writing-table on the following morning. And in the dust
+was a print as if a small hand had rested there, a yard from my chair.
+
+A slim hand it must have been. I judged the palm had been daintily
+cupped, the fingers slender, smooth and long in proportion to the absurd
+size of the whole affair. My hand covered it without brushing an
+outline.
+
+I could not put this souvenir away with the braid and the pomander. But
+I could put its evidence with their witness of Desire Michell's reality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+     "For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being
+     dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts
+     whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"--KING JAMES' "DEMONOLOGY."
+
+
+Now I have to record how I walked into the oldest snare in the world.
+
+Perhaps it was the sense of her near presence brought home to me by her
+hand-print on the table so close to where my hand rested; perhaps it was
+her speech of presently leaving me to return no more. Or perhaps both
+these joined in urging on my determination to learn more of Desire
+Michell before some unknown bar fell between us. I only know that I
+passed into a mood of trapped exasperation at my helplessness and lack
+of knowledge. It seemed imperative that I should act to save us both,
+act soon and surely; yet inaction was bound upon me by my ignorance. Who
+was she? Where did she live? What bond held her subject to the Thing
+from the Barrier? What gates were to close between us? Why could she not
+put her hand in mine, any night, and let me take her away from this
+haunted place? Why, at least, not come to me in the light, and let me
+see her face to face? I was a man groping in a labyrinth while outside
+something precious to him is being stolen.
+
+For the first time I found myself unable to work, unable to share our
+household life with Phillida and Vere, or to find relaxation in driving
+about the countryside. Anger against Desire herself stirred at the
+bottom of my mind; Desire, who hampered me by the word of honor in which
+she had netted me so securely.
+
+It was then that my enemy from the unknown places began to whisper of
+the book.
+
+I encountered that enemy in a new mood. We did not meet at the breach in
+the mighty wall, confronted in death conflict between Its will and mine.
+Instead, night after night It crept to my window as at our first
+meeting. I started awake to find Its awful presence blackening the
+starlight where It crouched opposite me, Its intelligence breathing
+against mine. As always, my human organism shrank from Its unhuman
+neighborhood. Chill and repugnance shook my body, while that part of me
+which was not body battled against nightmare paralysis of horror. But
+now It did not menace or strive against me. It displayed a dreadful
+suavity I might liken to the coiling and uncoiling of those great snakes
+who are reported to mesmerize their prey by looping movements and
+figures melting from change to change in the Hunger Dance of Kaa.
+
+There was a book that held all I longed to know, It whispered to me. A
+book telling of the woman! She did not wish me to read, for fear I
+should grow overwise and make her mine. The book was here, in my house.
+I might arise and find--if I would be guided by It----!
+
+I thrust the whispers away. How could I trust my enemy? If such a book
+existed, which seemed improbable, there was a taint of disloyalty to
+Desire in the thought of reading without her knowledge.
+
+The Thing was not turned away. How could I do harm by learning what she
+was, unless she had evil to conceal? Did I fear to know the truth? As
+for the book's existence, I had only to accept guidance from It----?
+
+I persisted in refusal. But the idea of the book followed me through my
+days like a wizard's familiar dogging me. Where could such a volume be
+hidden, in what secret nook in wall or floor? How came a book to be
+written about the girl I supposed young, unknown and set apart from the
+world? Was I letting slip an opportunity by my fastidious notions of
+delicacy?
+
+Indecision and curiosity tormented me beyond rest. Phillida and Vere
+began to consider me with puzzled eyes. Cristina developed a habit of
+cooking individual dishes of especial succulence and triumphantly
+setting them before me as a "surprise"; a kindness which of course
+obliged me to eat whether I was hungry or not. I suspect my little
+cousin abetted her in this transparent ruse. I pleaded the heat as an
+excuse for all. We were in late August now. Cicadas sang their dry chant
+in the fields, where the sun glared down upon Vere's crops and painted
+him the fine bronze of an Indian. Our lake scarcely stirred under the
+hot, still air.
+
+It was after a day of such heat, succeeded by a night hardly more cool,
+that the lights in my room quietly went out. I was sitting at my table,
+some letters which required answers spread before me while I brooded,
+pen between my fingers, upon the mystery which had become my life. For
+the moment I attributed the sudden failure of light to some accident at
+the powerhouse.
+
+Not for long! The hateful cold that crept like freezing vapor into the
+room, the foul air of damp and corruption pouring into the scented
+country atmosphere, the frantic revolt of body and nerves--before I
+turned my eyes to the window I knew the monster from the Frontier
+crouched there.
+
+"Weakling!" It taunted me. "Puny from of old, how should you prevail? By
+your fear, the woman stays mine. Miserable earth-crawler, in whose hand
+the weapon was laid and who shrinking let it fall unused, the end
+comes."
+
+"The book?" I gasped, against my better judgment.
+
+"The book was the weapon."
+
+"No, or you would not have offered it to me."
+
+"Coward, believe so. Hug the belief while you may. The offer is past."
+
+Past? A madness of bafflement and frustrated curiosity gripped and shook
+me.
+
+"I take the offer," I cried in passion and defiance. "If there is such a
+book, show it to me!"
+
+The Thing was gone. Light quietly filled the lamps--or was it that I had
+opened my eyes? I gripped the arms of my chair, waiting. For what? I did
+not know. Only, all the horror I ever had felt in the presence of the
+Thing was slight compared to the fear that presently began to flow upon
+me as an icy current. There in the pleasantly lighted room, alone, I
+sank through depths of dread, down into an abyss of despair, down----
+
+A long sigh of rising wind passed through the house like a sucked breath
+of triumph. Windows and doors drew in and out against their frames with
+a rattling crash, then hung still with unnatural abruptness. Absolute
+stillness succeeded. I felt a very slight shock, as if the ground at my
+feet was struck.
+
+I fled from the terror for the first time. Yes, coward at last, deserter
+from that unseen Frontier's defense, I found myself in the hall outside
+my room, leaning sick and faint against the wall. Behind me the door
+shut violently, yet I felt no current of air to move it.
+
+From the other side of the house there sounded the click of latch, then
+a patter of soft-shod feet. Phillida came hurrying down the hall toward
+me. She was wrapped in some silky pink-flowered garment. Her short hair
+stood out around her head like a little girl's well-brushed crop. She
+presented as endearingly natural a figure, I thought, as any man could
+seek or imagine. The wisdom of Ethan Vere who had garnered his love
+here!
+
+"Cousin?" she exclaimed. "The hall light is so dim! You almost
+frightened me when I glimpsed you standing there. Did the wind wake you,
+too? I think we are going to have a thunder storm, it is so hot and
+gusty. I heard poor Bagheera mewing and scratching at the door, so I was
+just going down to let him in before the rain comes."
+
+"Yes," I achieved. Then, finding my voice secure: "I will let in the
+cat. Where is Vere?"
+
+"He did not wake up, so I tiptoed out. Why?"
+
+"I do not like to have you going about the house alone at this hour."
+
+Her eyes widened and she laughed outright.
+
+"Why, Cousin Roger! What a funny idea to have about our very own house!
+I have one of the electric flashlights you bought for us all; see?"
+
+What could I tell her of my vision of her womanly softness and timidity
+brought to bay by the Thing of horror, down in those empty lower rooms?
+How did I know It stalked no prey but me? Its clutch was upon Desire
+Michell. These were Its hours, between midnight and dawn.
+
+"Tramps," I explained evasively. "Give me the light."
+
+But she pattered down the stairs beside me, kimono lifted well above her
+pink-flowered slippers, one hand on the balustrade. The light glinted in
+the white topaz that guarded her wedding ring, a richer jewel than any
+diamond in the sight of one who knew the tender thought with which she
+had set it there. No! The horror was not for her, clothed in her
+wholesome goodness as in armor of proof. Surely for such as she the
+Barrier stood unbreached and strong.
+
+When I opened the front door, Bagheera darted in like a hunted cat. A
+drift of mist entered with him. Looking out, I saw the night was heavy
+with a low-hanging fog that scarcely rose to the tree tops; a
+ground-mist that eddied in smoke-like waves of gray where our light fell
+upon it. Such mists were common here, yet I shivered and shut it out
+with relief. While I refastened the lock, Bagheera purred around my
+ankles, pressing caressingly against me as if thanking me after the
+manner of cats. I remembered this was not the first time he had shown
+this anxiety and gratitude for shelter.
+
+"Bagheera does love you," Phillida commented, stooping to pat him.
+"Isn't it funny, though, that he never will go into your room? He is
+always petting around you downstairs. When Cristina or I are doing up
+your quarters, he will follow us right up to the door-sill, but we can't
+coax him inside. Perhaps he doesn't like that perfume you always have
+about."
+
+A qualm ran through me, recalling the night I had taken the cat there by
+force and its frantic escape. But I snapped the key fast and
+straightened myself with sharp self-contempt. Had I fallen so low as to
+heed the caprices of a pet cat? Was it not enough that I had fled from
+my enemy after accepting the knowledge It had striven so long to force
+upon me?
+
+For I had that knowledge. When I had halted in the passage outside my
+room, in the moment before Phillida had joined me, there had been
+squarely set before my mental sight the place to seek the book.
+
+"Phillida, there was a bookcase in this house when it was bought," I
+said. "I believe it stood in my room before the place was altered. A
+small stand; I remember putting my candle on its top the first night I
+slept here. Have you seen it?"
+
+Some tone in my question seemed to touch her expression with surprise as
+she lifted her eyes to mine; or perhaps it was the hour I chose for the
+inquiry.
+
+"Oh, yes," she answered readily. "I supposed you had noticed it long
+ago; I mean, where it stands. The quaintest bit, a genuine antique! And
+holding the stuffiest collection of old books, too! I believe they may
+be valuable, out-of-print, early editions. If," her voice faltered
+wistfully, "if Father ever forgives me for being happy with Ethan, and
+comes to visit us, he would love every musty old volume. Do you think
+Mother and he ever will, Cousin Roger?"
+
+"I am sure they will, Phil. Feuds and tragic parents are out of date.
+They must adjust themselves gradually when they realize Vere
+is--himself. Before you go upstairs to him, will you tell me where to
+find that bookcase?"
+
+"Now? Why, of course!"
+
+She led me across the hall to her sewing room. I cannot say that she
+sewed there very much, but she had chosen that title in preference to
+boudoir or study as more becoming a housewife. She had assembled here a
+spinning-wheel from the attic, some samplers, a Hepplewhite sewing-table
+and chairs discovered about the house. Her canaries' cage hung above a
+great punch-bowl of flowered ware in which she kept gold-fish. A pipe of
+Vere's balanced beside the bowl showed that his masculine presence was
+not excluded.
+
+In a corner stood the bookcase. Phillida pulled the chain of a lamp
+bright under a shade of peacock chintz, and watched me stoop to look at
+the faded bindings.
+
+"Thank you, Phil," I said. "It may take some time to find the book I
+want. You had better hurry back to bed before Vere comes hunting for a
+missing wife."
+
+"Are you going to stay and hunt for the book tonight, then?"
+
+"Unless you are afraid I shall disturb your canaries?"
+
+She did not laugh. Drawing nearer, she stroked my sleeve with a
+caressing doubt and remonstrance.
+
+"But you have not been to bed at all, and soon it will be morning! Do
+you have to write your lovely music at night, Cousin Roger? You have
+been growing thin and tired, this summer. Are you quite well? You are so
+good that you should be happy, but--are you?"
+
+"Good, Phil?" I wondered, touched. "Why, how did your lazy,
+tune-spinning, frivolous cousin get that reputation in this branch of
+the family?"
+
+"You are so kind," she said simply. "Ethan says so. You know, Cousin
+Roger, that I was over-educated in my childhood; my brain choked with
+little, little stupid knowledge that hardly matters at all. We went to
+church Sundays because that was the correct thing to do. But I was
+almost a heathen when Ethan married me. He doesn't trouble about church.
+He doesn't trouble about the past, or life after death, or punishment
+for sin. He believes if one tries to be kind and straight, the big
+Kindness and Straightness takes care of everything. So I have learned to
+feel that way, too. It is a--a calm sort of feeling all the time, if you
+know what I mean. And that is the way you are good, although perhaps you
+never thought of it."
+
+"Thank you, Phillida," I acknowledged; and walked with her to the foot
+of the stairs.
+
+When her pink-clad figure had vanished behind her bedroom door, I went
+back to the sewing room and drew up a chair before the case of books.
+
+Phillida had not unreasonably stigmatized them as stuffy. They were a
+sober collection. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," an ancient copy of
+the Apocrypha, and a three-volume Life of Martin Luther loaded the first
+shelf. I looked at the second shelf and found it filled with the bound
+sermons of a divine of whom I had never heard.
+
+The lowest shelf held strange companions for the sedate volumes above.
+Erudite works on theosophy, magic, the interpretation of dreams and
+demonology huddled together here. Not all of them were readable by my
+humble store of learning. There was a Latin copy of Artemidorus,
+Mesmer's "Shepherd," Mathew Paris, some volumes in Greek, and some I
+judged to be Arabian and Hebrew. At the end of the row stood a thin,
+dingy book whose title had passed out of legibility. I took it out and
+opened the covers.
+
+Fronting the first page was a faded woodcut, the portrait of a woman.
+Beneath in old long-s type, dim on the yellowed paper, was printed the
+legend:
+
+"_Desire Michell, ye foule witch._"
+
+Closing the book, I forced reason to come forward. I was resolved that
+panic should not drive me again nor my defense fall from within its
+walls. Master of my enemy I might never be; master of my own inner
+kingdom I must and should be. But I was glad to be here instead of
+upstairs while I read; glad of the interlude in Phillida's company, and
+of the presence of the three sleepy canaries who blinked down at the
+disturbing lamp.
+
+The date stamped into the back of the book in Roman numerals was of a
+year in the seventeen hundreds. What connection could its Desire Michell
+have with the girl I knew? Perhaps she had adopted the name to mystify
+me. Or at most, she might be of the family of that unfortunate woman
+branded witch by a bigoted generation.
+
+Reopening the book, I studied the dim, stiff portrait. The face was
+young, delicate of line, with long eyes set wide apart; eyes that even
+in this wretched picture kept a curious drowsy watchfulness. The
+inevitable white Puritan cap was worn, but curls clustered about the
+brow and two massive braids descended over either shoulder. The perfumed
+bronze-colored braid up in my drawer----?
+
+The volume was entitled "Some Manifestations of Satan in Witchcraft in
+Ye Colonies," by Abimelech Fetherstone. Disregarding the satanic
+manifestations set forth in the other four chronicles, I turned to "Ye
+Foule Witch, Desire Michell."
+
+As I began to read, another breath of wind sighed through the house,
+sucking windows and doors in and out with the shock of sound, instantly
+ended, that is produced by a distant explosion. I thought a flash of
+lightning whipped across my eyes. But when I glanced toward the windows
+I saw only the smoke-like fog banked in drifts against the panes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+     "Beauty is a witch--"
+             --MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
+
+
+I will tear the core out of many yellow pages of diffuse writing spiced
+with smug moral reflections.
+
+Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent;
+no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of
+Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done to neighbors' cattle or crops. Her
+father was a clergyman who brought his goods and his motherless daughter
+from England to the Colonies, and settled in "ye Pequot Marsh country."
+There he found a congregation, and they lived much respected. Their
+culture appeared to be far beyond that of their few, hard-working
+neighbors. Young Mistress Michell was reputed learned in the use of
+simples, among other arts, and to have been "of a beauty exceeding the
+custom among godly women, to so great degree that sorcery should have
+been suspected of her."
+
+However, sorcery was not suspected; not even when her fame spread among
+near-dwelling Indian tribes who gave her a name signifying _Water on
+which the Sun is Shining_. Admiration was her portion, then, with all
+the suitors the vicinity held. But from fastidiousness or ambition she
+refused every proposal made to her father for her. She walked aloof and
+alone, until another sort of wooer came to the gate of the minister's
+house.
+
+This man's full name was not given, apparently through the writer's
+cautious respect for place and influence. He was vaguely described as
+goodly in appearance, of high family, but not abundantly supplied with
+riches. However he chanced to come to the obscure settlement was not
+stated. He did come, saw Desire Michell, and fell as abjectly prostrate
+before her as any youth who never had left the village.
+
+He pressed his courtship hard and eagerly. At first he was welcome at
+the minister's house. But a day came when Master Michell forbade him to
+cross that door and rumor whispered, scandalized, that Sir Austin's suit
+had not been honorable to the maid.
+
+Sir Austin sulked a week at the village inn. Then he broke under the
+torment of not seeing Desire Michell. Their betrothal was made public,
+and he rode away to prepare his home for their marriage in the spring.
+
+Travel was slow in the winter, news trickled slowly across snowbound
+distances. With spring came no bridegroom; instead word arrived of his
+affair with an heiress recently come to New York from England. She was
+rich in gold and grants of land from the Crown. Her husband would be a
+man of weight and influence, it seemed.
+
+Sir Austin had married her.
+
+Desire Michell shut herself in her father's house. The clergyman did not
+live many months after the humiliation. Alone, the girl lived.
+"Student," wrote Abimelech Fetherstone, "of black and bitter arts. Or as
+some say, having, like Bombastus de Hohenheim, a devil's bird enchained
+to do her will."
+
+In his distant home, Sir Austin sickened. He burned with fever, anguish
+consumed him. Physicians were called to the bedside of the rich man.
+They could not diagnose his ailment or help him. He screamed for water.
+When it was brought, his throat locked and he could not swallow. He
+raved of Desire Michell, beseeching her mercy. In his times of sanity,
+he begged and commanded his wife and servants to send for the girl. In
+her pardon he saw his sole hope of life.
+
+Finally, he was obeyed. Messengers were sent to the village. They were
+not even admitted to the house they sought, or to sight of Mistress
+Michell.
+
+"Your master came himself to woo; let him come himself to plead."
+
+That was the answer they received to carry back to the sick man.
+
+Sir Austin heard, and submitted with trembling hope. Writhing in the
+anguish wasting him by day and night, he made the journey by coach and
+litter to Desire Michell's house. At her door-sill he implored entrance
+and pity. The door did not open.
+
+It never opened for him. For three days in succession he was borne to
+her threshold, calling on her in his pain and fear. His servants and
+physician clustered about staring at the house which stood locked and
+blank of response. At night fire-shine was seen from an upper room; some
+declared they heard wild, melodious laughter.
+
+On the third day Sir Austin died. A stern-faced deputation of men went
+to the house of the late clergymen. They found the door unlatched and
+open to their entrance. In the upper room they found Mistress Michell
+seated before her hearth where a dying fire fell to embers, her hair
+"flowing down in grate bewty."
+
+"What have I to do with Sir Austin, or he with me?" she calmly asked the
+men who gaped upon her. "How should I have harmed him, who came not near
+him, as ye know? Bury him, and leave me in peace."
+
+If she had been aged and ugly, she might have been hung. Gossip ran rife
+through the countryside. But indignation was strong against the man who
+had jilted the local beauty, there existed no proof of harm done, and
+the matter slept for a time.
+
+New matters came. A horror grew up around the house. The girl was seen
+flitting across the fields at dawn, a monstrous shadow following. Her
+voice was heard from the room where she locked herself alone, raised in
+unknown speech. Strange lights moved in her windows in the deep night.
+The old woman who had served in the house for years was stricken with a
+palsy and was taken away mumbling unintelligible things that iced the
+blood of superstitious hearers.
+
+There was a young man of the neighborhood whose love for Mistress
+Michell had been long and constant. One morning he was found dead on her
+doorstep, his face fixed in drawn terror. Under his hand four words were
+scrawled in the snow: "_Sara daughter of Ruel----_"
+
+There were those who could finish that quotation. Next Sabbath the new
+minister took as his text: "Ye shall not suffer a witch to live." And he
+spoke of Sara the daughter of Ruel, who was wed to ten bridegrooms, each
+of whom was dead on the wedding eve; for she was beloved by an evil
+spirit that suffered none to come to her. Authority moved at last
+against Desire Michell. But when the officers came to arrest her, she
+was found dead in her favorite seat before the hearth.
+
+"Fair and upright in her place, scented with a perfume she herself
+distilled of her learning in such matters; which was said to contain a
+rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling spikenard, with
+vervain and cedar and secret simples; in which she steeped her hair so
+that wherever she abode were sweet odours. So did she escape Justice,
+but shall not escape Hell's Damnation and Heaven's casting out."
+
+I closed the book and laid it down.
+
+Reading those dim, closely printed pages had taken time. I was
+astonished to find the window spaces gray with dawn, when I glanced that
+way. The night was past. Neither from Desire nor from the Thing without
+a name which had sent me to this book could I find out what I was
+expected to glean from the narration.
+
+My enemy had made no conditions on directing me to the book. It had
+asked no price, uttered no menace. Why, then, had I so solemn a
+certainty that a crisis in our affair had been reached. I had come to an
+end; a corner had been turned. I had opened a door that could not be
+closed. How did I know this? Why?
+
+Why was the fog against the windows this morning so like the fog that
+shrouded the unearthly sea opposite the Barrier?
+
+By and by Cristina came downstairs and busied herself in the kitchen.
+Bagheera, who had slept beside my chair all night, rose and padded out
+to the region of breakfast and saucers of milk. Next, the voices of
+Phillida and Vere drifted from above.
+
+To have Phillida find me there in her sewing-room, finishing an
+all-night vigil, involved too many explanations. I did an unwise thing.
+From the lowest shelf of the bookcase I gathered such books as were
+readable by my knowledge, and carried the armful up to my room. After a
+hot bath and breakfast I would look over these companions of the New
+England witch book.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+     "Not a drop of her blood was human,
+     But she was made like a soft sweet woman."
+                                           --LILITH.
+
+
+The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of
+a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam
+of sun pierced it. Through it sounds reached the ear distorted and
+magnified. All day I sat in my room reading.
+
+There are books which should not be preserved. I, who am a lover of
+books, who detest any form of censorship, I do seriously set down my
+belief that there exist chronicles which would be better destroyed. With
+this few people will agree. My answer to them is simple: they have not
+read the books I mean.
+
+Not all the volumes from the old bookcase were of that character, of
+course. Nearly all of them were well known to classical students, at
+least by name. Obscure, fantastic, cast aside by the world they were,
+but harmless to a fairly steady head. But there were two that clung to
+the mind like pitch. I have no intention of giving their titles.
+
+Ugly and sullen, early night closed in when I was in a mood akin to it.
+Dinner with Phillida and Vere was an ordeal hurried through. We were out
+of touch. I felt remote from them; fenced apart by a heavy sense of
+guilt and defilement left by those hateful books, most incongruously
+blended with contempt for my companions' childish light-heartedness. As
+soon as possible, I left them.
+
+Alone in my room, in my chair behind the writing-table again, I pushed
+aside the pile of books and sank into sombre thought. What should I say
+to Desire Michell if she came tonight?
+
+Who was she, who was claimed by the Unspeakable and who did not deny Its
+claim? Was I confronted with two beings from places unknown to normal
+humanity? If she was the woman that she had seemed to be throughout our
+intercourse, how could the dark enemy control her? Even I, a common man
+with full measure of mankind's common faults and weaknesses, could hold
+Its clutch from me by right of the law that protects each in his place.
+
+Was she one of those who have stepped from the permitted places?
+
+"_Sara the daughter of Ruel--who was beloved by an evil spirit who
+suffered none to come to her_."
+
+"_There was a young gentlewoman of excellent beauty, daughter of a
+nobleman of Mar, who loved a foule monstrous thing verie horrible to
+behold, and for it refused rich marriages.... Until the Gospel of St.
+John being said suddenlie the wicked spirit flue his waies with sore
+noise_."
+
+I put out my hand and thrust the pile of books aside from my direct
+sight. But I could not so easily thrust from my mind the thoughts these
+books had implanted. I could not forget that Desire Michell herself had
+alleged jealousy as the Thing's reason for attacking me.
+
+What if we came to an explanation tonight and ended this long delirium?
+Was it not time? Had not my weeks of endurance earned me this right?
+Resolution mounted in me, defiant and strong.
+
+The evening had passed to an hour when I might look for the girl to
+come. I switched off the lights, and sat down to keep our nightly tryst.
+
+In the darkness of the haunted room, the thoughts I would have held at
+bay rushed upon me as clamorous besiegers.
+
+Desire! Desire of the world! Desire of mine and of the unhuman Thing,
+did we grasp at Eve or Lilith? At the fire on the hearth or the cold
+phosphorescence of swamp and marsh?
+
+A drift of fragrance was afloat on the air. A delicate stir of movement
+passed by me. I raised my head from my hands, expectant.
+
+"I am here," her familiar voice told me.
+
+"Desire, you had to come, tonight."
+
+Some quality in my voice carried to her a message beyond the words. But
+she did not break into exclamation or question as another woman might.
+She was mute, as one who stands still to find the path before taking a
+step.
+
+"You are angry," she said at last. "Something here has gone badly for
+you; I knew that before I entered this room."
+
+"How can you say that?" I challenged. "If you are like other men and
+women, how can you know what happens when you are absent? How do you
+know what passes between the Thing from the Frontier and me?"
+
+"I do not know unless you tell me, Roger. If I feel from afar when you
+are in sorrow, why, so do many people feel with another in sympathy."
+
+"You feel more than ordinary sympathy can," I retorted.
+
+"Then, perhaps it is not an ordinary sympathy I have for you, Roger."
+
+Her very gentleness struck wrong on my perverted mood. Was she trying to
+turn me from my purpose with her soft speech? She had never granted me
+anything so near an admission of love until now.
+
+"It is not an ordinary trial that I have borne for these meagre meetings
+where I do not see your face or touch your hand," I answered. "But that
+must end. Put your hand in mine, Desire, and come with me. Let us go out
+of this room where shadows make our thoughts sickly. You shall stay with
+my cousin. Or if you choose, we will go straight to New York or Boston.
+I am asking you to be my wife. Let us have done with phantoms and
+spectres. I love you."
+
+"No," she whispered. "You do not love me tonight. Tonight you distrust
+me. Why?"
+
+"Is it distrusting you to ask you to marry me?"
+
+"Not this way would you have asked that of me when I last came! But I
+will answer you more honestly than you do me. To go with you would be
+the greatest happiness the world could give. To think of it dazzles the
+heart. But it is not for me. Have you forgotten, Roger, that my life is
+not mine? That I am a prisoner who has crept out for a little while? The
+gates soon close, now, upon me."
+
+"What gates?" I demanded.
+
+"Sacrifice and expiation."
+
+"Expiation of what?" I exclaimed, exasperated. "Desire, I have read the
+book of Desire Michell, downstairs."
+
+I heard her gasp and shrink in the darkness. Silence bound us both. In
+the hush, it seemed to me that the house suddenly trembled as it had
+done the night before, a slight shock as from some distant explosion. In
+my intentness upon the woman opposite me the tremor passed unheeded. She
+must answer me now, surely! Now----
+
+She spoke with a breathless difficulty, spacing her words apart:
+
+"How did you--find--the book?"
+
+"It told me--the Thing from out there," I admitted, sullenly defiant of
+her opinion.
+
+She cried out sharply.
+
+"You? You took Its gift? You did that fatal madness--and you are here?
+Oh, you are lost, and the guilt mine! Yet I warned you that danger
+flowed from knowing me. You accepted the risk and the sorrow--yet you
+have thrown down all for a bribe of knowledge. Do you not know what it
+means to take a gift from the Dark Ones of the Borderland? To brave the
+Loathesome Eyes so long--and fall this way at last! Yet--there may be a
+hope--since you still live. But go. Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but go
+now. By all that man can dread for soul or body, go now."
+
+"Not without you."
+
+"Me? Oh, how can I make you understand! I shall never come here again.
+Take with you my gratitude for our hours together, my prayers for all
+the years to come. There is no blame to you because you could not trust
+a woman on whom falls the shadow of the awful Watcher that stalks behind
+me. I make no reproach--if only you will go. Do not linger. I do most
+solemnly warn you not to stay alone in this room one moment after I have
+gone."
+
+"Desire!" I exclaimed. "Wait. Forgive me. I trust you. I did not mean
+what you believe. Do not leave me this way. Desire----"
+
+I can say honestly that my next action was without intention. On my
+table lay, as usual, a small electric torch. Every member of our
+household was provided with one for use in emergencies likely to occur
+in a country house, the time of candles being past. Now, rising in
+agitation and repentance, my hand pressed by chance upon the
+flashlight's button. A beam of light poured across the darkness.
+
+What did I see, starting out of the black gloom? A spirit or a woman?
+Were those a woman's draperies or part of the night fog that showed mere
+swirl upon swirl of pale gray twisting in the path of light? I glimpsed
+a face colorless as pearl, the shine of eyes dark and almond shaped,
+then a drifting mass of gray smoke, all intermingled with glittering
+gold flashes, seemed to close between us. The whole apparition sank down
+out of vision, as aghast, I lifted my hand and the torch went out.
+
+Shaken out of all ability to speak, I stood in my place. Did I hear a
+movement, or only a stirring of the orchard trees beyond the windows?
+
+"Desire?" I ventured, my voice hoarse to my ears.
+
+No answer. I felt myself alone.
+
+I would not at once turn on the lamps. My haste might seem an attempt to
+break faith with her a second time. I sat down again, folding my arms
+upon the table and resting my forehead upon them.
+
+Well, I had seen her at last--but how? A wan loveliness seemingly
+painted upon the canvas of the dark by a brush dipped in moonlight. A
+white moth caught fluttering in the ray of the torch. Seen at the
+instant of her leaving me forever; insulted by my suspicions, my love
+hurled coarsely at her like a command, my promise of security for her
+visits apparently broken. How dared I even hope for her return?
+
+Now I knew why my enemy had guided me to those books, that I might read,
+fill my mind with the poison of vile thoughts, and destroy the
+comradeship that bound me to Desire Michell. How should I find her? How
+free us both?
+
+The clock in the hall downstairs struck a single bell. With dull
+surprise I realized that considerable time had passed while I sat there.
+Still I did not move, weighed down by a profound discouragement.
+
+Suddenly, as a wave will run up a beach in advance of the incoming tide,
+impelled by some deep stir in the ocean's secret places, an icy surge
+rushed about my feet. Deathly cold from that current struck through my
+whole body. My heart shuddered and staggered in its beating from pure
+shock.
+
+"_Go! Not tomorrow, not at dawn, but now!_"
+
+The wave seeped back, receded away from me down its invisible beach.
+Desire's warning hammered at my mind, striving to burst some barred door
+to reach the consciousness within that had loitered too long. This was
+the new peril. This was what I had fled from, unknowing the source of my
+panic, the night before.
+
+This was death.
+
+A second surge struck me with the heavy shock of a veritable wave from
+some bitter ocean. This time the tide rose to my knees; boiling and
+hissing in its rush. Blood and nerves seemed to freeze. I felt my heart
+stop, then reel on like a broken thing. Flecks of crimson spattered like
+foam against my eyelids.
+
+The wave broke. The mass poured down the beach, tugging at me in its
+retreat. With the last strength ebbing away from me with that receding
+current, I dragged the chain of the lamp beside me.
+
+The comfort of light springing up in the room! The relief of seeing
+normal, pleasant surroundings! Truly light is an elixir of courage to
+man.
+
+That cold had paralyzed me. I had no force to rise. Nor did I altogether
+wish to rise and go. I had lost Desire tonight. Was I to lose my
+self-respect also? Was I to run a beaten man from this peril, after
+standing against my enemy so long?
+
+Should I not rather stand on this my ground where I was not the "lame
+feller"?
+
+Down by the lake, the snarling cry of a terrified cat broke the night
+stillness. It was Bagheera's voice. The cry was followed by sounds
+indicating a small animal's frantic flight through the thickets of
+goldenrod and willow that edged the banks of the stream below the dam.
+The series of progressive crashes passed back of the house and continued
+on, dying away down the creek.
+
+As I braced my startled nerves after this outbreak of noise, the light
+was withdrawn from every lamp in the room. At the same moment, the
+electric torch rolled off my table and fell to the floor. I heard its
+progress across the muffling softness of the rug, across the polished
+wood beyond, and final stoppage at some point out of my reach.
+
+As vapor rises from some unseen source and forms in vague growing mass
+within the curdled air, so blackening dark the hideous bulk reared
+Itself in the night and stared in upon me. As so many times, I felt the
+Eyes I could not see; the pressure of a colossal hate loomed over me,
+poised to crush, yet withheld by a force greater than either of us. The
+venom of Its malevolence flowed into the atmosphere about me, fouling
+the breath I drew. My lungs labored.
+
+"Pygmy," Its intelligence thrust against mine. "Frail and presumptuous
+Will that has dared oppose mine, you are conquered. This is the hour
+foretold to you, the hour of your weakness and my strength. Weakling,
+feel the death surf break upon you. Fall down before me. Cower--plead!"
+
+Now indeed I felt a sickness of self-doubt, for the wash of the
+invisible sea never had come to me until tonight. And there was Desire's
+saying that I had destroyed myself by accepting the Thing's gift of
+knowledge of the book. But I summoned my forces.
+
+"Never," my thought refused It. "Have we not met front to front these
+many nights? And who has drawn back, Breaker of the Law? You return, but
+I live. The duel is not lost."
+
+"It is lost, Man, and to me. Have you not taken my gift that you might
+spy meanly on the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind
+to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and
+tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks
+your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its
+pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces
+where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."
+
+Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the
+swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away
+down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining
+low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave----
+
+My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn
+filling this room of mine, shining on the figure of a man who had been
+myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden.
+On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay
+near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the
+paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to
+the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind
+the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up
+the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry
+for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I
+had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never
+lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had
+been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif
+Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!
+
+"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing.
+"Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the
+vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are
+alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."
+
+But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me
+like strength.
+
+"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own
+will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for
+with the death of my body your power ends. Back--or else face me, Thing
+of Darkness, while we stand in one place."
+
+At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap.
+Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I stood before the Barrier on the ghostly frontier; erect, arms folded,
+fronting the Breach in that inconceivably mighty wall. Above, away out
+of vision on either hand stretched the gray glimmering cliffs.
+
+This I had seen before. But behind me lay that which I had not seen. The
+mists I believed to be eternal had lifted. Naked, a vast gray sea
+stretched parallel with the Barrier; like it, without end or even a
+horizon to bound its enormous desolation. Between these two immensities
+on the narrow strand at the foot of the wall, I stood, pygmy indeed. In
+the Breach, as of old, the Thing whose home was there reared Itself
+against me.
+
+"Man," It spat, "would you see me? Would you see the Eyes once seen by
+the witch-woman, who fell blasted out of human ken? Creature of clay,
+crumbling now in the sea of mortality, do you brave my immemorial age?"
+
+It reared up, up, a towering formlessness. It stooped, a lowering
+menace.
+
+"Man, whenever man has summoned Evil since the youngest days of the
+world have I not answered? Have I not brought my presence to the
+magician's lamp? Have I not shadowed the alchemist at his crucible? When
+the woman called upon me with ancient knowledge, did I not come. I am
+the guardian of the Barrier. Whoever would pass this way must pass me.
+Have you the power? Die, then, and begone."
+
+With a long heaving sound of waters in movement, the gray sea stirred
+from its stillness. As if drawn to some center out of sight, the tide
+began to recede down that strange beach. Then realization came to me
+that here was the ocean which, invisible, had surged icy death upon me a
+while past. The ocean now gathered for the final wave that should
+overwhelm the defeated.
+
+"Braggart!" my thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was
+yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do
+with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living
+or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look
+upon you, if you have visible form."
+
+Now in the hush a sound that I had faintly heard as a continuing thing
+seemed to draw nearer. A sound of light, swift footsteps hurrying,
+hurrying; the steps of one in pitiful eagerness and haste. But I heeded
+this slightly. My gaze was upon that which took place within the cleft
+in the great wall. For there the cold darkness was writhing and turning,
+visible, yet obscure; as the rapids of a glassy, twisting river might
+look by night. And as one might glimpse beneath the smooth boil and
+heave of such a river the dim shape of crocodile or water-monster, so in
+that moving dark there seemed to lie Something from which the mind
+shrank, appalled. Now gigantic tentacles rolled about a central mass,
+groping out in unsatisfied greed. Now an ape-like shape seemed to stalk
+there, rearing up its monstrous stature until all that Breach was choked
+with it. It fell down into vagueness, where huge coils upraised and sank
+their loops. But through all change steadily fixed upon me I felt the
+eyes of the Unseen.
+
+I stood my ground. With what pain and draining cost to my poor endurance
+there is no need to say. Each instant I anticipated the surge of that
+returning sea whose flood should smother out the human spark upon its
+shore. This I had brought upon myself. Yes, and would again to help
+Desire Michell! If I had sheltered her for one hour----!
+
+The Thing halted, stooped.
+
+"Man, cast off the woman," It snarled at me. "Fool, evil goes with her.
+For her you suffer. Thrust her from your breast."
+
+I looked down. Wavering against my breast, just above my heart glimmered
+a spot of light. The little hurrying steps had ceased. I thought, if the
+bright head of Desire Michell were rested there against me, how I would
+strive to shield her from sight of the Thing yonder. In the sweep of
+that will to protect, I drew my coat about the spot of hovering
+brightness.
+
+I felt her press warm against me. I heard the roar of the death-wave far
+out in that sea. Before me----
+
+Oh Horror of the Frontier, what broke through the dread Breach. What
+formed there, more inhuman from Its likeness to humanity? What Hand
+reached for me--for--us----
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+     "I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream
+     it was."--MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+
+"Mr. Locke! Mr. Locke!"
+
+I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan Vere, who bent over me.
+Phillida was there, too, pale of face. But what was That just vanishing
+into the darkness beyond my window-sill? What malignant glare seared
+disappointment and grim promise across my consciousness? Had I brought
+with me or did I hear now a whispered: "_Pygmy, again!_"
+
+"Cousin, Cousin, are you very ill?" Phillida was half sobbing. "Won't
+you drink the brandy, please? Oh, Ethan, how cold he is to touch!"
+
+"Hush, dear," Vere bade, in his slow steadfast way. "Mr. Locke, can you
+swallow some of this?"
+
+I became aware that his arm supported me upright in my chair while he
+held a glass to my lips. Mechanically I drank some of the cordial. Vere
+put down the glass and said a curious thing. He asked me:
+
+"Shall I get you out of this room?"
+
+Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had
+not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied
+brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal.
+Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still
+numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.
+
+Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in
+the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that
+it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he
+reassured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the
+coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.
+
+It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of
+the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see
+it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before
+lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the
+page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.
+
+"_Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city--whose name is
+Hegrin. Thou hast escaped--because thou didst not fear for so terrible a
+Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may
+escape----_"
+
+What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had
+Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars
+because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to
+report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and
+set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?
+
+The fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak. A few hours
+while the sun ran its course once more for me, then night again,
+bringing completion of the menace. I recognized that this delay could
+not affect the end. Perhaps it would have been easier if all had
+finished for me tonight, easier if Vere and Phillida had not found me in
+time to bring me back.
+
+How had they found out my condition? Wonder stirred under my lethargy.
+Had I called or cried out? It did not seem that I could have done so.
+Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor an adventurer as
+that.
+
+Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee, tiptoeing in her
+anxiety and questioning Vere with her eyes. He took the cup, stooping to
+receive my glance of assent to the new medicine.
+
+The brandy had stimulated, but sickened me. The coffee revived me so
+much that I was able to take the second cup without Vere's help. When I
+had walked up and down the room a few times, leaning on his arm, life
+had taken me back, if only for a little while.
+
+The two nurses were so good in their care of me that our first words
+were of my gratitude to them. Then my curiosity found voice.
+
+"How did you happen to come in at this hour?" I asked. "How did you know
+I was--ill?"
+
+"I cannot imagine what made Ethan wake up," said Phillida, with a
+puzzled look toward her husband. "He woke me by rushing out of the room
+and letting the door slam behind him. Of course I knew something must be
+wrong to make Drawls hurry like that. Usually he does such a tremendous
+lot in a day while looking positively lazy. So I came rushing after and
+found him in here, trying to waken you. I--I thought at first that you
+were not living, Cousin Roger. It was horrible! You were all white and
+cold----" she shivered.
+
+Vere poured another cup of coffee. He said nothing on the subject,
+merely observing that the stimulant would hardly hurt me and some might
+be good for Phil. I asked her to bring cups for them both.
+
+"I am not sure I really care about the coffee, but I'll make some more,"
+she nodded, dimpling. "I love to drink from your wee porcelain cups with
+their gold holders. You do have pretty things, you bachelors from town."
+
+When she was across the room, I asked quietly:
+
+"What was it, Vere? What sent you to me?"
+
+He answered in as subdued a tone, looking at the tinted shade of the
+lamp instead of at my face.
+
+"The young lady woke me, Mr. Locke. She came to the bedside, whispering
+that you were dying--would be dead if I didn't get to help you in time.
+She was gone before Phillida roused up so she doesn't know anything
+about it."
+
+My heart, so nearly stopped forever and so lethargic still, leaped in a
+strong beat. Desire, then, had come back to save me. For all my doubt
+and seemingly broken faith, she had brought her slight power to help me
+in my hour of danger. For my sake she had broken through her mysterious
+seclusion to call Vere and send him to my rescue.
+
+Neither he nor I being unsophisticated, I understood what Vere believed,
+and why he looked at the lamp rather than at me. But even that matter
+had to yield precedence to my first eagerness.
+
+"You saw her?" I demanded. "You call her young. You saw her face, then?"
+
+"I could forget it if I had," he said dryly. "As it happened, I didn't.
+She was wrapped in a lot of floating thin stuff; gray, I guess? The room
+was pretty dark, and I was jumping out of sleep. I don't know why she
+seemed young unless it was the easy, light way she moved. By the time I
+got what she was saying and sat up, she was gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"She went out the door like a puff of smoke. I just saw a gray figure in
+the doorway, where the hall lamp made it brighter than in the room. When
+I came into the hall there wasn't a sign of anybody about. Nor
+afterward, either!"
+
+I considered briefly.
+
+"I suppose I know what you are thinking, Vere. It is natural, but wrong.
+The lady----"
+
+"Mr. Locke," he checked me, "I'm not--thinking. I guess you're as good a
+judge as I am about what goes on in this house. After the way you've
+treated us from the first, I'd be pretty dull not to know you're as
+choice of Phillida as I am; and she is all that matters."
+
+"Who is?" demanded Phillida, returning. "Me? I haven't the least idea
+what you are talking about, Drawls, but I think Cousin Roger matters a
+great deal more than I do, just now. Perhaps now he is able to tell us
+about this attack, and if he should have a doctor. I have noticed for
+weeks how thin and grave he has been growing to be. If only he _would_
+drink buttermilk!"
+
+I looked into the candid, affectionate face she turned to me. From her,
+I looked to her husband, whose New England steadiness had been tempered
+by a sailor's service in the war and broadened by the test of his
+experience in a city cabaret. A new thought cleaved through my
+perplexities like an arrow shot from a far-off place.
+
+"How much do you both trust me?" I slowly asked. "I do not mean trust my
+character or my good intentions, but how much confidence have you in my
+sanity and commonsense? Would you believe a thing because I told it to
+you? Or would you say: 'This is outside usual experience. He is
+deceiving us, or mad'?"
+
+They regarded one another, smiling with an exquisite intimacy of
+understanding.
+
+"Don't you see yourself one little, little bit, Cousin?" she wondered at
+me.
+
+"Anything you say, goes all the way with us," Vere corroborated.
+
+"Wait," I bade. "Drink your coffee while I think."
+
+"Please drink yours, Cousin Roger, all fresh and hot."
+
+I emptied the cup she urged upon me, then leaned my forehead in my hands
+and tried to review the situation. They obeyed like well-bred children,
+settling down on a cushioned seat together and taking their coffee as
+prettily as a pair of parakeets. They seemed almost children to me,
+although there was little difference in years between Vere and myself.
+But then, I stood on the brink where years stopped.
+
+With the next night, my triumphant enemy could be put off no longer.
+That I could not doubt. I cannot say that I was unafraid, yet fear
+weighed less upon me than a heavy sense of solemnity and realization of
+the few hours left during which I could affect the affairs of life. What
+remained to be done?
+
+On one of my visits to New York, I had called on my lawyer and made my
+will. There were a few pensioners for whom provision should continue
+after my death. The aged music master under whom I developed such
+abilities as I had, who was crippled now by rheumatism and otherwise
+dependent on a hard-faced son-in-law; the three small daughters of a
+dead friend, an actor, whose care and education at a famous school of
+classic dancing I had promised him to finance--a few such obligations
+had been provided for, and the rest was for Phillida.
+
+But now, what of Desire Michell?
+
+She had seemed so apart from common existence that I never had thought
+of her possible needs any more than of the needs of a bird that darted
+in and out of my windows. Until tonight, when I had seen her and she had
+proved herself all woman by her appeal to Ethan Vere. It was not a
+spirit or a seeress or "ye foule witch, Desire Michell" who had fled to
+him for help in rescuing me. It was simply a terrified girl. What was to
+become of this girl? Under what circumstances did she dwell? Had she a
+home, or did she need one? Could I care for this matter while I was
+here?
+
+Day was so far advanced that a clamor of birds came in to us along with
+a freshening air. The strangely persistent fog had not lifted, but the
+lamps already looked wan and faded in the new light. I switched them out
+before speaking to the pair who watched me.
+
+"I have a story to tell you both," I said. "The beginning of it Phillida
+has already heard. Perhaps----Have you told Vere about the woman who
+visited this room, the first night I spent in the house? Who cut her
+hair and left the braid in my hand to escape from me?"
+
+"Yes," she nodded, wide-eyed.
+
+"Will you go to my chiffonier, there in the alcove, and bring a package
+wrapped in white silk from the top drawer?"
+
+She did as she was asked and laid the square of folded silk before me. I
+put back the covering, showing that sumptuous braid. The rich fragrance
+of the gold pomander wrapped with it filled the air like a vivifying
+elixir. Phillida gathered up the braid with a cry of envious rapture.
+
+"Oh! The gorgeous thing! How do some lucky girls have hair like that? If
+it was unbound, my two hands could not hold it all. What a pity to have
+cut it! Look, Ethan, how it crinkles and glitters."
+
+She held it out to him, extended across her palms. Vere refrained from
+touching the braid, surveying it where it lay. Being a mere bachelor, I
+had no idea of Phillida's emotions, until Vere's usual gravity broke in
+a mischievous, heart-warming smile into the brown eyes uplifted to him.
+
+"Beautiful," he agreed politely.
+
+No more. But as I saw the wistful envy pass quite away from my little
+cousin's plain face and leave her content, I advanced in respect for
+him.
+
+In the beginning, it was even harder to speak than I had anticipated.
+When Phillida laid the braid back in its wrapping, I left it uncovered
+before me and looked at its reassuring reality rather than at my
+listeners. How, I wondered, could anyone be expected to credit the story
+I had to tell? How should I find words to embody it?
+
+Only at first! Whether there clung about me some atmosphere of that land
+between the worlds where I so recently had stood; or the room indeed
+kept, as I fancied, the melancholy chill of the unseen tide that had
+washed through it, I met no scepticism from the two who heard my tale of
+wild experience. They did not interrupt me. Phillida crept close to her
+husband, putting her hand in his, but she did not exclaim or question.
+
+Silence held us all for a while after I had finished. I had a
+discouraged sense of inadequacy. After all, they had received but a
+meagre outline. The color and body of the events escaped speech. How
+could they feel what I had felt? How could they conceive the charm of
+Desire Michell, the white magic of her voice in the dark, the force of
+her personality that could impress her image "sight unseen" beyond all
+time to erase? How convey to a listener that, understanding her so
+little, I yet knew her so well?
+
+"I have told you all this because I need your help," I said presently.
+"Will you give it to me?"
+
+"Go away!" Phillida burst forth. She beat her palms together in her
+earnestness. "Cousin Roger, take your car and go away--far off! Go
+where--nothing--can reach you. You must not spend another single night
+here. Ethan will go with you. I will, too, if you want us. You must not
+be left alone until you are quite safe; perhaps in New York?"
+
+"And, Desire Michell?"
+
+"She is in no danger, I suppose. She is not my cousin, anyhow. And even
+she told you to go away."
+
+"You believe my story, then? You do not think me suffering from
+delusions?"
+
+"Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come here in time to save you, I
+believe you would have died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have
+seen for weeks that something was changing you."
+
+"What does Vere say?" I questioned, studying the absorbed gravity of his
+expression. I wondered what I myself would have said if anyone had
+brought me such a story.
+
+He passed his arm around Phillida and drew her to him with a quieting,
+protective movement. His regard met mine with more significance than he
+chose to voice.
+
+"I'm satisfied to take the thing as you tell it, Mr. Locke," he
+answered. "Phil is right, it seems to me, about you not staying here. I
+don't think the young lady ought to stay, either."
+
+"She refuses to leave, Vere. What can I offer her that I have not
+offered? How can I find her? You have heard how I searched the
+countryside for a hint of such a girl's presence. No one has ever seen
+her; or else someone lies very cleverly."
+
+In the pause, Phillida hesitatingly ventured an idea:
+
+"Perhaps she is not--real. If the monster is a ghost thing, may not she
+be one, too? If we are to believe in such things at all----? She almost
+seems to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the witch girl
+in that old book."
+
+I shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying to explain some
+abstruse knowledge to a child. I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the
+solemn immensities of the place where I had set my human foot. I had
+tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that Borderland where the
+unnamed Thing and I met, each beyond his own law-decreed boundary, and
+locked in combat bitter and strong. Phillida had listened; and talked of
+ghosts the bugbears of grave-yard superstition. Did Vere comprehend me
+better? Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to legends of knight
+and dragon, as prize of which waited Desire Michell; forlornly helpless
+as white Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the Maine
+countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the truths glimpsed by
+Rosicrucians and mystics of lost cults, when the highly bred college
+girl failed?
+
+It seemed so. At least his dark eyes met mine with intelligence; hers
+held only bewilderment and fear.
+
+"They are not ghosts," I said only.
+
+"But how can you be sure?" she persisted.
+
+Beneath the braid and the pomander lay the sheet of paper on which
+Desire had written weeks before; the first page of that composition now
+pouring gold into my hands. This I passed to Phillida.
+
+"Do ghosts write?" I queried.
+
+She read the lines aloud.
+
+"'We walk upon the shadows of hills, across a level thrown, and pant
+like climbers.'"
+
+"They do write, people say, with ouija boards and mediums," she
+murmured.
+
+I looked at Vere with despair of sustaining this argument. He stood up
+as if my appeal had been spoken, drawing her with him.
+
+"Now that it's a decent hour, don't you think Cristina might give us
+some breakfast?" he suggested. "I guess bacon and eggs would be sort of
+restoring. If you feel up to taking my arm as far as the porch, Mr.
+Locke, the fresh air might be good medicine, too."
+
+I have speculated sometimes upon how civilized man would get through
+days not spaced by his recurrent meals into three divisions. Those meals
+are hyphens between his mind and his body, as it were. What sense of
+humor can view too intensely a creature who must feed himself three
+times a day? Are we not pleasantly urged out of our heroics and into the
+normal by breakfast, luncheon and dinner? Deny it as we will, when we do
+not heed them we are out of touch with nature.
+
+We went downstairs.
+
+After breakfast was over, Vere and I walked across the orchard to a seat
+placed near the lake. There I sat down, while he remained standing in
+his favorite attitude: one foot on a low boulder, his arm resting on his
+knee as he gazed into the shallow, amber-tinted water. Fog still overlay
+the countryside, but without bringing coolness. The damp heat was
+stifling, almost tropical as the sun mounted higher in the hidden sky.
+
+I watched my companion, waiting for him to speak. He appeared intent
+upon the darting movements of a group of tiny fish, but I knew his
+thoughts were afar.
+
+"Mr. Locke, I didn't want to speak before Phillida, because it would not
+do any good for her to hear what I have to say," he finally began. "It
+is properly the answer to what you asked upstairs, about our believing
+you had not imagined that story. Did anything slip out over the
+window-sill when you were waking up?"
+
+Startled, for I had not spoken of this, I met his gaze.
+
+"Yes. Did you see----"
+
+"Nothing, exactly. Something, though! Like--well, like something pouring
+itself along; a big, thick mass. Something sort of smooth and
+glistening; like black, oily molasses slipping over. Only alive,
+somehow; drawing coils of itself out of the dark into the dark. I can't
+put it very plain."
+
+"What did you think?"
+
+"The air in the room was bad and close, hard to breathe. I guessed maybe
+I was a little dizzy, jumping out of bed the way I did and finding you
+like dead, almost." He paused, and returned his contemplation to the
+fish darting in the lake.
+
+"That is what I thought," he concluded. "What I felt--well, it was the
+kind of scare I didn't use to know you could feel outside of bad dreams;
+the kind you wake up from all shaking, with your face and hands dripping
+sweat. That isn't all, either!"
+
+This time the pause was so long that I thought he did not mean to
+continue.
+
+"My excuse for speaking of such matters before Phillida is that I may
+need a woman friend for Desire Michell," I reverted to the implied
+rebuke I acknowledged his right to give. "I wanted her help, and yours.
+More than ever, since you have shared my experience so far, I want your
+advice."
+
+"I'll be proud to give it, in a minute. First, it's only fair to say
+I've felt enough wrong around here to be able to understand a lot that
+once I might have laughed at. Nothing compared to you! But--I've been
+working about the lake sometimes after dark or before daylight was
+strong, when a kind of horror would come over me--well, I'd feel I had
+to get away and into the house or go crazy. That morning when you called
+from your window to ask where I'd been so early, and I told you looking
+for turtles--that was one time. I had gone out looking for turtles, but
+that horror drove me in. When you hailed me, I had it so bad that I
+could just about make out not to run for the house like a scared cat,
+yelling all the way. Turning back to the lake with you was a poser. But
+I did; and the feeling was all gone as quick as it came. We had a nice
+morning's shooting. Once in a while I've felt it sort of driving me
+indoors when I stepped off the porch or over to the barn at night.
+That's a funny thing: the fear was always outside, not in the house. I
+thought of that while you were telling us how the Thing at the window
+kept trying to get in at you. We haven't got a haunted house, but a
+haunted place!"
+
+"Why have you not spoken of this before?" I asked, deeply stirred.
+
+He made a gesture, too American to be called a shrug. He said nothing,
+watching a large bubble rise through the pure, brown-green water, float
+an instant on the surface, then vanish with the abrupt completeness of a
+miniature explosion. I watched also, with an always fresh interest in
+the pretty phenomenon. Then I repeated my question, rather impatiently
+as I considered what a relief his companionship in experience would have
+afforded all these weeks.
+
+"Why not, Vere?"
+
+"Mr. Locke, I don't like to keep saying that you never exactly got used
+to me as your cousin's husband," he reluctantly replied. "But I can see
+it's a kind of surprise to you right along that I don't break down or
+break out in some fashion. Of course I haven't known that you were
+meeting queer times, too! If you hadn't been through any of this, what
+would you have thought if I'd come to you with stories of the place
+being haunted by something nobody could see? You would have judged I was
+a liar, trying to fix up an excuse for getting away from the work here
+and shoving off. I don't want to go away. I don't intend to go. I can't
+see any need of it for Phil and me. But--and this is the advice you
+spoke of! I think you ought to leave and leave now. It's little better
+than suicide to stay."
+
+"And abandon Desire Michell?"
+
+He turned his dark observant eyes toward me.
+
+"If I said yes, you wouldn't do it. Phil and I will take care of the
+young lady, if she will let us. Couldn't a note be left for her, telling
+her to come to us?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"She would not come. Now, less than ever----" I broke off, shot with
+sharp self-reproach at the memory of how I had driven her from me last
+night.
+
+"You won't be any help to her if you're dead," he bluntly retorted.
+
+At that I rose and walked a few paces to knock out my post-breakfast
+pipe against an apple-tree. I was not so sure that he was right,
+self-evident as his statement appeared. Ideas moved confusedly in my
+mind, convictions somehow impressed when that golden-bronze spot of
+light so gently came to rest above my heart when I last stood at the
+Barrier; the light so like the bright imagined head of Desire. To fly
+from my place now, herded like a cowardly sheep by the Thing of the
+Frontier, would that not be to thrust her away to save myself?
+
+No! Not myself, my life!
+
+I had the answer now. I walked back to Vere and took my seat again.
+
+"Both of us, or neither," I told him. "If you can help me make it both
+by any ingenuity, I shall be mighty glad. It's a pleasant world! But we
+will not talk any more of my running for New York like a kicked pup. The
+question is, will you and Phillida take care of the lady who calls
+herself Desire Michell, if tomorrow morning finds her free, but alone
+and friendless?"
+
+"As long as we live, Mr. Locke," he answered. "But I guess there isn't
+any disgrace in your going to New York, running or not, if you take her
+with you. And that is what ought to have been done long ago."
+
+"Vere?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"You've got me! Just pick the lady up, carry her out of that room, and
+have a show-down. Put her in your car and take her to town."
+
+"I gave her my word not----"
+
+"People can't stand bowing to each other when the ship's afire. If she
+is worth dying for, she doesn't want you to die for her."
+
+The simplicity of it! And, leaping the breach of faith, the temptation!
+
+What harm could I do Desire by this plan of Vere's? What good might I
+not do her? Was it mere slavishness of mind on my part not to overrule
+her timid will? She must pardon me when she realized my desperate case.
+A dying man might be excused for some roughness of haste, surely.
+Whether flight could save us I did not know. I did know absolutely that
+my enemy had crossed the Barrier last night, and I was prey merely
+withheld from It by the chance respite of a few daylight hours.
+
+Suppose our escape succeeded? A whole troup of pictures flitted across
+the screen of my fancy. Desire beside me in the city, my wife. Desire in
+those delightful shops that make Fifth Avenue gay as a garden of tulips,
+where I might buy for her frocks and hats, shoes of conspicuous
+frivolity and those long white gloves that seem to caress a woman's
+arm--everything fair and fine. Restaurants I had described for her,
+where she might dine in silken ease and perhaps hear played the music
+she had named----
+
+I aroused myself and looked at Vere.
+
+"You'll do it?" he translated my expression.
+
+"I will, if she gives me the opportunity."
+
+"Do you judge she will?"
+
+"I hope so. Since she went so far as to show herself to you in order to
+send help to me when I was in danger, I believe she will come to my room
+tonight if I wait there----"
+
+He looked at me silently. The consternation and protest in his face were
+speech enough.
+
+"If I wait there alone," I finished somewhat hurriedly. "If she comes in
+time, we will try the plan. Have the car ready. You and Phillida will be
+prepared, of course. We will waste no time in getting away as far as
+possible."
+
+"And if that Thing comes before she does, Mr. Locke?"
+
+"Is there any other way?"
+
+"I guess you haven't considered that you're inviting me to stand by
+while you get yourself killed," he said stiffly. "I'm not an educated
+man. I never heard the names you mentioned this morning of people who
+used to study out things like this. I never heard of any worlds except
+earth and heaven and hell. But then I couldn't explain how an electric
+car runs. I know the car does run; and I know you nearly died last
+night. If you go back and stay alone in that room, we both know what you
+are going to meet."
+
+I turned away from him because I sickened at the prospect he evoked. The
+memory of that death-tide was too near and rolled too coldly across the
+future. If the trial had been hard when mercifully unanticipated, what
+would it be to meet my enemy now that I knew myself conquered? Would It
+not deliberately forestall Desire's coming, tonight?
+
+"Mightn't you help the lady more if you went away now, and came back?"
+he urged.
+
+The deserter's argument, time without end! Was I to fall as low as that?
+
+Phillida's voice called to Vere from the veranda, summoning him to some
+need of farm or household.
+
+"In a moment, Pretty," he called assent.
+
+But he did not move. I guessed that he hoped much from my silence and
+would not disturb me lest my decision be hindered or changed.
+
+By and by I stood up.
+
+"Vere, in your varied experiences in peace and war, did you ever chance
+to meet a coward?"
+
+"Once," he answered briefly.
+
+"And, did you like the sight?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then," I said, "let us not invite one another to that display. Shall we
+go in to Phillida?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+     "They say--
+     What say they?
+     Let thame say!"
+              --OLD SCOTTISH INSCRIPTION.
+
+
+After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Phillida, who had some
+housewifely orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I
+had agreed to tell her nothing about the venture we planned for tonight.
+We had satisfied her by the assurance that I meant to start for New York
+before the dangerous hours after midnight. Reassured, she regained her
+usual spirits with the buoyancy of her few years and healthy nerves. I
+gathered her secret belief was that no "ghost" would dare face Ethan.
+
+Which may have been quite true!
+
+On our way home, we stopped at the shop of Mrs. Hill to add to our
+supply of eggs, Phillida's hens having unaccountably failed to supply
+their quota. I went in, leaving my companion in the car.
+
+No one else was in the shop. An impulse prompted me to put a question to
+the little woman whose life had been spent in this neighborhood.
+
+"Mrs. Hill, did you ever hear of anyone named Desire Michell?" I asked.
+
+She stopped counting eggs and blinked up at me. Her sallow, wrinkled
+face lightened with curiosity and an absurd primness.
+
+"Now, Mr. Locke! I'd like to know where a young city feller like you got
+that old story from?"
+
+"I have not got it. I want you to tell it to me. She was a witch?"
+
+"She was a hussy," said Mrs. Hill severely. "I was a little girl when
+she ran away from her father's respectable house, fifty-odd years ago.
+The disgrace killed him, being a clergyman. An' the gossip that came
+back, later, an' pictures of her in such dresses! Dear! Dear! The wicked
+certainly have opportunities."
+
+"Fifty years ago!" I echoed, dazed by this intrusion of a third Desire
+Michell.
+
+"Ah! Nearly seventy she'd be if she was alive today; which she ain't.
+Why, she changed her name to one fancier that you might have heard talk
+of? She was----"
+
+The name she gave me I shall not set down. It is enough to say it was
+that of a super-woman whose beauty, genius and absolute lack of
+conscience set Europe ablaze for a while. A torch of womanhood, quenched
+at the highest-burning hour of her career by a sudden and violent death.
+
+"There was an older house once, on your place," she added pensively.
+"Did you know that? It stood in the hollow where your lake is now.
+Two--three hundred years old, folks say it was. One night it burned down
+in a big thunderstorm. The Michells then living had your house built
+over by the orchard, then, an' had a dam built across so as to cover up
+the old site with water. All the Michells lived there till the last one
+went missionary abroad an' died in foreign parts. I mean the hussy's
+brother. He took up his father's work, feelin' a strong call. He was
+only a young boy when his sister went off, but he felt it dreadful. He
+was a hard man on the sinner. Preached hell and damnation all his days,
+he did. Lean over the pulpit, he would, his eyes flamin' fire an' his
+tongue shrivellin' folks in their pews, I can tell you!"
+
+"He left children?" I asked.
+
+"No, sir! Rev'rund never married. He felt women a snare. Land, not much
+snarin' with what farm women get to wear around here! I've kind of
+thought of one of those blue foulard silks with white spots into it
+since before I married Hill, but never came any nearer than pricin' it
+an' bringin' home a sample. He was death on sweet odors an' soft
+raiment. Only sweet odors I ever get are the ten-cent bottles Hill makes
+the pedlar throw in when we trade. I do fancy _Jockey Club_ for special
+times, an' I've got a reasonable hope of salvation, too. I notice your
+cousin, Mrs. Vere, has scent on her handkerchief week days as well as
+when she's goin' somewhere, so I guess you don't hold with the Rev'rund
+Michell in New York?"
+
+I laughed with her as I took up the bag of eggs.
+
+"Did the runaway sister leave any children?" I queried.
+
+"Not a Michell alive anywhere," she asserted positively. "Dead, all
+dead! The Rev'rund was buried at his mission in some outlandish place.
+An' if those heathen women dress like I've seen in the movin' picture
+palace in the village, I don't know how he makes out to rest with them
+flauntin' past his grave!"
+
+I went thoughtfully out to the car. Indeed, I drove home in such
+abstraction that Phillida reproved me.
+
+"'The cat has stolen your tongue,'" she teased. "Or did Mrs. Hill vamp
+you and make roast meat of your heart with her eyes?"
+
+"Phil, do you put scent on your handkerchief week days as well as
+Sundays?" I shook off thought to inquire.
+
+"No; I keep sachet in my handkerchief box. Why?"
+
+"Next time you are in town, will you buy a blue silk foulard dress with
+white spots in it and the largest bottle of Jockey Club Extract on sale,
+and give them to Mrs. Hill for a Christmas present? I'll give you a
+blank check."
+
+"Cousin Roger? Why?"
+
+So I told her why. But I did not tell her the story of the second Desire
+Michell; nor of the original house that stood in the hollow now filled
+by our lake.
+
+Why had a peculiar horror crept through me when Mrs. Hill told me what
+ruins that water covered? Why had I remembered the inexplicable,
+repugnant sound that on several occasions had preceded the coming of the
+Monster; a sound like the smack of huge lips, or some body withdrawn
+from thick slime? Was entrance into human air open to the alien Thing
+only through the ruins of the house where It had first been called by
+the sorceress of long ago?
+
+We were walking across from the garage, after putting away the car, when
+a recollection flashed upon me. The Metropolitan Museum, in New York,
+held a portrait by a famous French artist of that incendiary beauty
+whose name it now appeared cloaked the identity of Desire Michell,
+daughter and sister of New England clergymen. I had seen the portrait.
+And piled in an intricate magnificence of curls, puffs and coils about
+the haughty little head of the lady, was her gold-bronze hair; the color
+of the braid upstairs in my chiffonier drawer.
+
+I went up to my room and opened the work of Master Abimelech
+Fetherstone. Yes, there was likeness between the poor, coarse woodcut
+and the French portrait. The long, dark eyes with their expression of
+blended drowsiness and watchfulness were too individual to have escaped
+either record. Moreover, both pictures resembled that face of ivory and
+dusk I had glimpsed in the ray of the electric torch, all clouded and
+surrounded by swirls of gray vapor shot with gold.
+
+Who and what was the girl Desire Michell whom I had come to love through
+a more profound darkness than that of the sight?
+
+It seemed wisest to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. I sorted my
+music. There was the score of a musical comedy so nearly completed that
+it could be sent to those who waited for it. Vere would attend to that,
+if tonight made it necessary. I reflected with disappointment that the
+first rehearsals would begin in a couple of weeks, and I had looked
+forward to this production with especial interest. There was the
+symphony, still unfinished, that I had hoped might be more enduring than
+popular music. If I was to be less enduring than either, we must go
+glimmering on our ways. If I snatched Desire out of her path into mine,
+she and I would see all those things together.
+
+I finished at last, and set my room in order. There was a fire laid
+ready for lighting in my hearth, a mere artistic flourish in such
+weather. I kindled it, and put in the flames three of the volumes from
+the ancient bookcase. The others were oddities in occult science. Those
+three were vile and poisonous. No doubt other copies exist, but at least
+I refused to be guilty of leaving these to wreak their mischief in
+Phillida's household. They burned quietly enough, and meekly fell to
+ashes under my poker.
+
+Our round dinner-table was cheerful as usual, with yellow-shaded candles
+flanking a bowl of yellow and scarlet nasturtiums. But I found its
+mistress suffering from a nervous headache.
+
+"It is only the fog," she answered our sympathy. "It came on with the
+evening, somehow. Never mind me. Cristina has made a cream-of-lettuce
+bisque, and she will never forgive us if we do not eat every bit. Yes,
+Ethan; of course I'll take mine. I only wish every bush and tree would
+not drip, drip like a horrid kind of clock ticking; and the foghorns
+over at the lighthouses _moo_ regularly every half minute. And I never
+heard the waterfall over the dam so loud!"
+
+"We've had a wet summer," Vere observed, soothingly tranquil as ever.
+"The lake and creek are full. There is more water going over to make a
+noise."
+
+"Please do not be so frightfully sensible, Drawls. You know I mean a
+different loudness. It sort of rises up and swims all over one, then
+dies away."
+
+"Even a fountain will seem to do that if a wind shifts the spray," I
+suggested.
+
+"Yes, Cousin Roger. But there is no wind tonight."
+
+A discomfort stirred me at the simple reminder. I fancied Vere was
+similarly affected. If something moved under the water----?
+
+We changed the conversation to a pergola planned for building next
+spring, that was to be overrun by grapevines and honeysuckle.
+
+"The grapes shall hang through like an Italian picture," Phillida
+anticipated, headache forgotten in her enthusiasm. She shook her hair
+about her pink cheeks, leaning over to outline a pergola with four
+spoons. "Here in the middle we must have a birdbath. Or no! The birds
+might peck the grapes. We could have one of those big silver-colored
+looking-balls on a pedestal to reflect wee views of the garden and lake
+and sky, with people moving no bigger than dolls. Imagine a reflection
+of Ethan like a Lilliputian _so_ high!"
+
+So I was able to leave her eagerly hunting catalogues of garden
+ornaments in her sewing-room, when the time came for me to keep my
+rendezvous with Death or the lady. In spite of my warning gesture, Vere
+followed me into the hall. His dark face was distressed and anxious.
+
+"Let me go with you," he urged.
+
+"No, thanks. Stay with Phil, and keep her too busy to suspect where I
+am."
+
+"If I'm doing wrong to let you go," he began.
+
+"You cannot stop me. It is still too early for danger, I think. If you
+like, you can stroll out on the lawn from time to time and look up at my
+windows. As long as the lamps are lighted in the room, I am all right.
+Nothing is happening."
+
+"Your lamps were all three lighted when I found you last night," he
+said.
+
+The darkness had been only for my eyes, then? Certainly I had seemed to
+see light withdrawn from the lamps. I mastered a tremor of the nerves,
+and covered it by stroking Bagheera, who sat on a hall chair making an
+after-dinner toilet with tongue and paw.
+
+"Well, take care of Phil," I repeated, evading argument.
+
+He detained me.
+
+"The young lady might not come if there were two people, Mr. Locke. I
+can see that! But I'll go instead. I guess I'd be safer than you, with
+the--the----You know what I mean! It would be the first time for me. And
+if I sat waiting in the dark, the lady couldn't tell you were not there.
+Of course I'd bring her right to you."
+
+No one could appreciate the courage of that offer so well as we who had
+both felt the intolerable horror of the nearness of the Thing whose
+nature was beyond our nature to endure.
+
+"She would come to no one except me," I refused. "But, thank you. And
+Vere, if what you have said about my feeling toward Phillida's husband
+was true once, it is true no longer."
+
+His clasp was still warm on my hand when I went into my room and
+switched on the lights. Soft and colorful, the haunted room sprang into
+view. The writing-table and piano gleamed bare without their usual
+burdens of scattered papers and music, removed that afternoon. For lack
+of familiar occupation, when I sat down in my favorite place, I took up
+the gold pomander and fell to studying the intricate designs worked in
+the metal.
+
+"_Containing a rare herb of Jerusalem called Lady's Rose, resembling
+spikenard, with vervain, and cedar, and secret simples----_"
+
+"_Vervain, which is powerful against evil spirits----_"
+
+The strange fragrance, heady as the bouquet of rich wine, never cloying,
+exquisite, might well have seemed magical to the dry Puritans, I mused.
+It should stay by me tonight, like a promise of her coming.
+
+After I had sat there a while, I turned out the lights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+     "An excellent way to get a fayrie--and when you have her, bind
+     her!"--ANCIENT ALCHEMIST'S RECIPE.
+
+
+In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving,
+hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes,
+likened by Phillida to a horrid clock. The fog was a sounding-board for
+furtive noises that grew up like fungi in the moist atmosphere. The
+thought of Phillida and Vere down in the pleasant living room tempted me
+almost beyond resistance. I wanted to spring up, to rush out of the
+room; to fling myself into my car and drive full speed until strength
+failed and gasoline gave out.
+
+Was that the lake which stirred in the windless night? The lake, under
+which lay the fire-blackened ruins of the house where the first Desire
+Michell flung open an awful door that her vengeance might stride
+through!
+
+Was it too late for my Desire to come, and time for the coming of that
+Other?
+
+The step of Vere sounded on the gravel path where he walked beneath the
+window. He was making a trip of inspection, and would find no light
+shining from the room. I was about to rise and call down a word of
+reassurance to him, when a current of spiced air passed by me. I sat
+arrested in hope and expectancy.
+
+"Here, after my warning, after last night?" her soft voice panted across
+the dark. "Will you die, then? Cruel to me, and wicked to come here
+again! Oh, must I wish you were a coward!"
+
+Every vestige of her calmness gone, she was sobbing as she spoke. I
+could imagine she was wringing the little hands that once had left a
+betraying print upon my table's surface.
+
+"I was cruel to you last night, Desire; yet afterward you saved my life
+by sending Ethan Vere to wake me. Would you have had me leave without
+meeting you again, neither thanking you nor asking your forgiveness?"
+
+I thought she came nearer.
+
+"For so little, you would brave the Dread One in Its time of triumph? O
+steadfast soldier, who faces the Breach even in the hour of death, in
+all that you have done you have remembered me. Why speak of anger or
+forgiveness? Have I not injured you?"
+
+"Never. I love you."
+
+"Is not that an injury? Even though I hid my ill-omened face from you,
+reared as I was to sad knowledge of the wrath upon me, the wrong has
+been done. Weak as water in the test, I kept the letter of my promise
+and broke the intent. Yet go; keep life at least."
+
+"Desire, I do not understand you," I answered. "No matter for that, now!
+I am content to share whatever you bring. Not roughly or in challenge as
+I asked you last night, but earnestly and with humility I ask you to
+come away with me now. If trouble comes to my wife and me, I do not
+doubt we can bear it. Let us not be frightened from the attempt. Come."
+
+"I, to take happiness like that?" she marveled in desolate amazement.
+"No. At least I will go to my own place, if tardily. Roger, be kind to
+me. Give me a last gift. Let me know that somewhere you are living. Out
+of my sight, out of my knowledge, but living in the same world with me.
+Each moment you stay here is a risk."
+
+In that warning she had reason. I rose. It was time to act, but action
+must be certain. If my groping movements missed her in the dark there
+might be no second chance.
+
+"Desire, if all is as you say and we are not to meet again as we have
+done, you shall let me touch you before I go," I said firmly.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Yes. Why, would you have me live all the years to come in doubt whether
+you were a woman or a dream? Perhaps you might seem at last a phantom of
+my own sick brain to which faithfulness would be folly? Here across the
+table I stretch my arm. Lay your palm in my palm. I may die tonight."
+
+Whether she wished it also, or whether my resolve drew obedience, I do
+not know. But a vague figure moved through the dark toward me. A hand
+settled in mine with the brushing touch of an alighting bird. I closed
+my hand hotly upon that one. I sprang a step aside from the table
+between us, found her, and drew her to me.
+
+What did I hold in my arms? Softness, fragrance, draperies beneath which
+beat life and warmth. As I stooped to reassure her, her breath curled
+against my cheek. So with that guide I turned my head, and set my lips
+on the lips I had never seen.
+
+Did Something uprear Itself out there in the black fog? A cold air
+rushed across the summer heat of the fog; air foul as if issued from the
+opened door of a vault. As once before, a tremor quivered through the
+house. The hanging chains of the lamps swung with a faint tinkling
+sound.
+
+I snatched Desire Michell off her feet and sprang for the door. Somehow
+I found and opened it at the first essay. We were out into the hall.
+With one hand I dragged the door shut behind us, then carried her on to
+the head of the stairs. There I set her down, but stood before her as a
+bar against any attempt at escape.
+
+A lamp shed a subdued light above us. I looked at my captive. Never
+again after that kiss could she deny her womanhood or pose as a phantom.
+So far my victory was complete. The lady might be angry, but it must be
+woman's anger. I knew she had not suspected my intention until I lifted
+her in my arms. She had struggled then, after her defenses had fallen.
+
+She was quiet now, as though the light had quelled her resistance. She
+stood drooped and trembling; not the old-time witch, not the dazzling
+adventuress, only a small fragile girl wound and wrapped in some gray
+stuff that even covered the brightness of her hair. Her face was held
+down and showed no more color than a water-lily.
+
+"I thought," she whispered, just audibly. "I thought you--would say,
+good-bye!"
+
+"I know," I stammered. "But I could not. That way was impossible for
+us."
+
+She did not contradict me. She was so very small, I saw, that her head
+would reach no higher than where the bright spot had rested above my
+heart when I had last stood at the Barrier. One hand gripped the veils
+beneath her chin, and seemed the clenched fist of a child.
+
+The crash of my door had startled the household. I had heard Phillida
+cry out, and Vere's running steps upon the gravel path. Now he came
+springing up the stairs. At the head of the flight he stopped, staring
+at us.
+
+"Desire," I spoke as naturally as I could manage, "this is Mr. Vere.
+Vere, my fiancee, Miss Michell. Shall we go down to Phillida?"
+
+And Desire Michell did not deny my claim.
+
+I am not very sure of how we found ourselves downstairs. Nor do I
+remember in what words we made the two girls known to one another.
+Presently we were all in the living room, and Phillida had possession of
+Desire Michell while Vere and I looked on stupidly at the proceedings.
+
+Phil had placed her in a chair beside a tall floor-lamp and gently drew
+off the draperies that hooded her. With little murmurs of compassion,
+she unbound and shook free her guest's hair.
+
+"My dear, you are all damp! This awful fog! You must have been out a
+long time? You shall drink some tea before we start. Drawls, will you
+light the alcohol lamp on the tea-table? The kettle is filled."
+
+Now I could understand how Desire had appeared amid a drift of fireshot
+smoke in the beam of my electric torch, the night before. Her hair was a
+garment of flame-bright silk flowing around her, curling and eddying in
+rich abundance. Over this she had worn the gray veils to smother all
+that color and sheen into neutral sameness with night and shadows. No
+wonder her face had seemed wraith-like when her startled shrinking away
+from the light had set all that drapery billowing about her.
+
+She was the voice that had been my intimate comrade through weeks of
+strange adventure. She was the woman of the faded, yellow book, and the
+painted beauty at the Metropolitan. She was all the Desires of whom I
+had ever dreamed; and she was none of them, for she was herself. Her
+long dark eyes, suddenly lifted to me, were individual by that ancestral
+blending of drowsiness with watchfulness; yet were akin to the eyes of
+youth in all times by their innocence. Her mouth, too, was the soft
+mouth of a young girl kept apart from sordid life. But her forehead, the
+noble breadth between the black tracery of her eyebrows, expressed the
+student whose weird, lofty knowledge had so often abashed my ignorance.
+
+Only my ignorance? Now as she looked at me across the room, all
+self-confidence trickled away from me. What distinguished me from a
+thousand men she might meet on any city street? What had I ever said
+worth note in the hours we had spent together? Now she saw me in the
+light, plainly commonplace; and remembering myself lame, I stood amazed
+at the audacity with which I had laid claim to her.
+
+She was rising from the chair, gently putting aside Phillida's detaining
+hands. She had not spoken one word since her faltered speech to me,
+upstairs. Neither Vere nor Phillida had heard her voice. She had given
+her hand to each of them and submitted to Phil's care with a docility I
+failed to recognize in my companion of the dark. Her decisive movement
+now was more like the Desire Michell I knew. Only, what was she about to
+do? Repudiate my violence and me--perhaps go back to her hiding-place?
+
+She came straight to where I stood, not daring even to advance toward
+her. We might have been alone in the room. I rather think we were, to
+her preoccupation.
+
+"You must go away," she said. "If there is any hope, it is in that.
+Nothing else matters, now; nothing! If you wish, take me with you. It
+would be wiser to leave me. But nothing really matters except that you
+should not stay here. I will obey you in everything if you will only go.
+Take your car and drive--drive fast--anywhere!"
+
+It is impossible to convey the desperate urgency and fervor of her low
+voice. Phillida uttered an exclamation of fear. Vere wheeled about and
+left the room. The front door closed behind him. The gravel crunched
+under his tread on the path to the garage, and the rate at which the
+light he carried moved through the fog showed that he was running. He
+obviously accepted the warning exactly as it was given. After the
+briefest indecision, Phillida hurried out into the hall.
+
+For my part, I did nothing worth recording. I had made discovery of two
+places where I was not the "lame feller." And if the first place was the
+dreary Frontier, the second country was that rich Land of Promise in
+Desire Michell's eyes.
+
+What we said in our brief moment of solitude is not part of this
+account.
+
+Phillida was back promptly, her arms full of garments. With little
+murmurs of explanation by way of accompaniment, she proceeded to invest
+Desire in a motor coat and a dark-blue velvet hat rather like an
+artist's tam-o'shanter. I noticed then that the girl wore a plain frock
+of gray stuff, long of sleeve and skirt, fastened at the base of her
+throat with severe intent to cover from sight all loveliness of tint and
+contour. Nothing farther from the fashion of the day or the figure of my
+cousin could be imagined.
+
+"You must wear the coat because it is always cool motoring at night,"
+Phillida was murmuring. "And of course you will want it at a hotel;
+until you can do some shopping. I will just tie back your gorgeous,
+scrumptious hair with this ribbon, now. I know I haven't enough hairpins
+to put it up without wasting an awful lot of time, but we will buy them
+in the morning. We are going to take the very best care of you every
+minute, so you must not worry."
+
+"You are so kind to me," Desire began tremulously. "No one was ever so
+kind! It does not matter about me, or what people think of me, if he
+will only go from here quickly."
+
+"Right away," Phillida soothed. "My husband has gone for the car. I hear
+him coming now!"
+
+In fact, Vere was coming up the veranda steps. His hand was on the knob
+of the outer door, fumbling with it in a manner not usual to him, then
+the knob yielded and he was inside.
+
+"But how slow you are, Drawls," his wife called, with an accent of
+wonder.
+
+Vere crossed the threshold of the room, his gaze seeking mine. He was
+pale, and drops of fog moisture pearled his dark face like sweat.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he addressed me, ignoring the others. "Perhaps
+you felt that shake-up, a quarter-hour ago? Like a kind of earthquake,
+or the kick from a big explosion a long ways off? It didn't seem very
+strong to me. It was too strong for that old tree by the garage, though!
+Must have been decayed clear through inside. Willows are like that,
+tricky when they get old."
+
+"Ethan, what _are_ you talking about?" cried Phillida, aghast.
+
+He continued to look at me.
+
+"I guess it must have fallen just about when you slammed your door
+upstairs. Seems I do remember a sort of second crash following the noise
+you made. I was too keen on finding out what was happening up there to
+pay much heed."
+
+"Well, Vere?"
+
+"Tree smashed down through the roof of the garage," he reluctantly gave
+his report. "Everything under the hood of the automobile is wrecked.
+There is no motor left, and no radiator. Just junk, mixed up with broken
+wood and leaves and pieces of the stucco and tiles of the garage."
+
+So there was to be no going tonight from the house beside the lake. A
+frustrated group, we stood amid our preparations; the two girls wearing
+cloaks and hats for the drive that would never be taken. Had we ever
+really expected to go? Already the project was fading into the realm of
+fantastic ideas, futile as the pretended journeys of children who are
+kept in their nursery. Desire lifted her hands and took off the blue
+velvet cap with a resignation more expressive than words. Only my
+practical little cousin charged valiantly at all obstacles.
+
+"We aren't ever going to give up?" she cried protest. "Cousin Roger?
+Ethan? _You_ cannot mean to give up. Why--'phone to the nearest garage
+to send us another car. If we pay them enough they will drive anywhere.
+Or if they cannot take us to New York, they will take us to the railroad
+station where we can get a train for some place. Can't we, Drawls?"
+
+"We could," Vere admitted. "I'd admire to try it, anyhow. But the
+telephone wire came across the place right past the garage, you
+know----"
+
+"The tree tore the wire down, too?"
+
+"I'm afraid it snapped right in two, Phil."
+
+"We--we might walk," she essayed.
+
+But even her brave voice trailed into silence as she glanced toward the
+black, dripping night beyond the windows.
+
+"Or if we found a horse and wagon," she murmured a final suggestion.
+
+Vere shook his head.
+
+"Come!" I assumed charge with a cheerfulness not quite sincere. "None of
+us are ready for such desperate efforts to leave our cozy quarters here.
+Especially as I fancy Vere's 'earthquake' was the tremor of an
+approaching thunderstorm. I felt it, myself. Let us light all the lamps
+and draw the curtains to shut out the fog which has got on everyone's
+nerves by its long continuance. We are overwrought beyond reason.
+Suppose we sit here together, strong in numbers, for the few hours until
+daylight? I think that should be safeguard enough. Tomorrow we will do
+all we had planned for tonight. Come in, Vere, and close the door."
+
+He obeyed me at once. Desire Michell passively suffered me to unfasten
+and take off the coat she wore, too heavy for such a night. She had
+uttered no word since Vere announced the destruction of the car. She did
+not speak now, when I put her in the low chair beneath the lamp. I had a
+greed of light for her, as a protection and because darkness had held
+her so long.
+
+"It seems as if we should do something!" Phillida yielded unwillingly.
+
+Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were
+both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree
+through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of
+motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not
+have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical
+escape from that----
+
+The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost as if the vital,
+resilient mass resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of
+satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad
+strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her
+face.
+
+"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly. "I must be sure--quite
+sure! I must think. If you will--wait."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+     "Oh, little booke--how darst thou put thyself in press for
+     drede?"--CHAUCER.
+
+
+We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phillida and
+Vere were together, chairs touching, her right hand curled into his
+left. Bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was
+closed, and lay pressed against his mistress's stout little boot. Our
+small garrison was assembled, surely for as strange a defense as ever
+sober moderns undertook. For my part, it was wonder enough to study that
+captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me.
+
+The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight. Soon after, we
+began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and
+fog that had overlaid the place for three days. The temperature began to
+fall. The fog did not lift. The flowered cretonne curtains hung straight
+from their rods unstirred by any movement of air. But the atmosphere in
+the room steadily grew colder. I saw Phillida shiver in the chill
+dampness and pull closer the collar of her thin blouse. When Desire
+finally spoke, we three started as if her low tones had been the clang
+of a hammer.
+
+"I have tried to judge what is best," she said, not raising her face
+from its shadowing veil of hair. "I am not very wise. But it seems
+better that there should be no ignorance between us. If I had been
+either wise or good, I should never have come down from the convent to
+draw another into danger and horror without purpose or hope of any good
+ending."
+
+"The convent?" I echoed, memory turning to the bleak building far up the
+hillside. "You came from there?"
+
+"There is a path through the woods. I am very strong and vigorous. But I
+had to wait until all there were asleep before I could come. Sometimes I
+could not come at all. For this house, I had my father's old key. It was
+only for this little time while I am being taught. Soon I will put on a
+nun's dress and cut my hair, and--and never--never leave there any
+more."
+
+Stupefied, I thought of the black loneliness of the wooded hillside
+behind us. No wonder the fog was wet upon her hair! Her slight feet had
+traversed that path night after night, had brought her to the door her
+key fitted, had come through the dark house to the door of the room
+upstairs. When she left me, she had toiled that desolate way back. For
+what? Humility bent me, and bewilderment.
+
+"But why?" Phillida gasped. "Why? Cousin Roger hunted everywhere to find
+you. He would have gone anywhere you told him to see you. Didn't you
+know that?"
+
+"I never meant him to see me."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I am Desire Michell, fourth of that name; all women who brought
+misfortune upon those who cared for them," she answered, her voice lower
+still. "How shall I make you understand? I was brought up to know the
+wrath and doom upon me, yet I myself can scarcely understand. My father
+knew all, yet he fell in weakness."
+
+"Your father?" I questioned, recalling Mrs. Hill's positive genealogy of
+the Michells in which there was no place for this daughter of the line.
+
+"He was the last of his family. When he was very young the conviction
+came to him that his duty was never to marry, so our race might cease to
+exist. He lived here and preached against evil. He studied the ancient
+learning that he might be fitted to wrestle with sin. But in the end
+horror of what was here gained upon him so that he closed the house and
+went abroad to work as a missionary. There was a girl; the daughter of
+the clergyman who was leaving the mission. My father--fell in love. He
+forgot all his convictions and married her. He knew it was a sin, but it
+was stronger than he was. She only lived one year. When I was born, she
+died. He prayed that I would die, too. But--I----"
+
+Her voice died into silence. I ventured to lean nearer and take her hand
+into mine.
+
+"Desire," I said, "why should you be a sufferer for the actions of a
+woman who died over two centuries ago? What is the long dead Desire
+Michell to you?"
+
+A strange and solemn hush followed my question. The words seemed to take
+a significance and importance beyond their simple meaning. The hand I
+held trembled in my clasp. She answered at last, just audibly:
+
+"You know. You said that you had read her book."
+
+"But the book tells so little, Desire. Just such a chronicle of
+superstition as may be found in a hundred old records."
+
+She shook her head slightly.
+
+"Not that! Bring me the book."
+
+The book was upstairs in the room from which I had carried her half an
+hour before in something very like a panic flight. Before I could
+release her hand and rise, before I comprehended his intention, Vere was
+out of the living room and upon the stairs. It was too late to overtake
+him. The man who had been a professional skater covered the stairs in a
+few easy, swinging strides. We heard his light tread on the floor
+overhead, heard him stop beside the table where the book lay. Then, he
+was returning. My door closed. His step sounded on the stairs again; in
+a moment he was back among us, and quietly offering the volume to our
+guest. His dark eyes met mine reassuringly, deprecating the thoughts I
+am sure my face expressed.
+
+"Lights burning and all serene up there," he announced.
+
+Desire touched the book with a curious repugnance.
+
+"I was looking for this, the first night I came here," she murmured.
+"That is why I came to America after my father died. I had promised him
+to destroy this record. When I heard that the house was sold to a
+gentleman from New York, I came down from the convent on the hill to
+find the bookcase holding the old history. I did not know anyone was
+here, that night, until you touched my hair."
+
+I remembered the bookcase near the bed, where I stood my candle and
+matches. Unaware, I had prevented her finding the thing she sought, and
+so forced her to return. Afterward, the house had been full of workmen
+making alterations and improvements, until later still Phillida had
+transferred the bookcase and its contents to her sewing room. If I had
+not taken the whim to sleep in the old house on the night of my
+purchase, or if I had chosen another room, the existence of Desire
+Michell might never have been known to me.
+
+Would the creature from the Barrier have appeared to me, if I had not
+known her?
+
+She was drawing something from behind the portrait of the first Desire
+Michell; a thin, small book that had lain concealed between the cover of
+the larger volume and the page bearing the woodcut, where a sort of
+pocket was formed that had escaped our notice. Laid upon the table, the
+little book rolled away from the girl's fingers and lay curled upon
+itself in the lamplight. The limp morocco cover was spotted with mildew
+and half-revealed pages of close, fine writing blotched in places with
+rusty stains. It gave out an odor of mould and age in an atmosphere made
+sweet by Desire's presence.
+
+Phillida, who had been silent even when Vere left her to go upstairs,
+shrank away from the book on the table. She darted a glance over her
+shoulder at the curtained windows behind her.
+
+"Drawls, I cannot help what everybody thinks of me," she said
+plaintively. "I am cold. The fire is ready laid in the grate. Will you
+put a match to it, please?"
+
+No one smiled at the request. Her husband uttered some soothing phrase
+of compliance. We all looked on while the flame caught and began to
+creep up among the apple-logs. Bagheera rose and changed his position to
+one before the hearth. When Vere stood erect, Desire leaned toward him.
+
+"Will you read, aloud, sir?" she asked of him, and made a gesture toward
+the morocco book.
+
+She surprised us all by that choice. I was unreasoning enough to feel
+slighted, although the task was one for which I felt a strong dislike. I
+fancied Vere liked the idea no better, from his expression. However, he
+offered no demur, but sat down at the table and began to flatten the
+warped pages that perversely sprang back and clung about his fingers.
+Desire slowly turned her lovely eyes to me, eyes that looked by gift of
+nature as if their long corners had been brushed with kohl. She said
+nothing, yet somehow conveyed her meaning and intent. I understood that
+she did not wish to hear me read those pages; that it was painful to her
+that they should be read at all.
+
+Vere was ready. He glanced around our circle, then began with the simple
+directness that gave him a dignity peculiarly his own.
+
+"'Mistress Desire Michell, her booke, Beginning at the nineteenth year
+of her Age,'" he read, in his leisurely voice.
+
+The living Desire Michell and I were regarding one another. I smiled at
+the quaint wording, but she shuddered, and put her hands across her
+eyes.
+
+Yet there was nothing in those first pages except a girl's chronicle of
+village life. This book evidently carried on a diary kept from early
+childhood; a diary written out of loneliness. Apparently the bare
+colonial life pressed heavily upon the writer; who, having no companions
+of the intellect, turned to this record of her own mind as a prisoner
+might talk to his reflection in a mirror rather than go mad from sheer
+silence. Discontent and restlessness beat through the lines like
+fluttering wings. She wrote of her own beauty with a cool appraisal
+oddly removed from vanity, almost with resentment of a possession she
+could not use.
+
+"Like a man who finds treasure in a desert isle, I am rich in coin that
+I may not spend," she wrote. "I stand before my mirror and take a tress
+of my hair in either hand; I spread wide my arms full reach, yet I
+cannot touch the end of those tresses. Nor can my two hands clasp the
+bulk of them. There have been other women who had such hair, who were of
+body straight and white, and had the eyes--but I cannot read that they
+stayed poor and obscure."
+
+There followed some quotations from the classics of which I was able to
+give but vague translations when Vere passed the book to me, both
+because my knowledge was scanty and because of their daring
+unconventionality. There were allusions, too, to ladies of later history
+who had found fairness a broad staircase for ambition to mount. Of the
+writer's learning, there could be no question; a learning amazing in one
+so young and so situated. The source of this became apparent. Her father
+was consumed with the passion of scholarship, and the girl's hungry mind
+fed in the pastures where he led the way.
+
+Here crept into view an anomaly of character. The austere Puritan
+divine, whose life was open and blank, bare and cold as a winter field,
+cherished a secret dissipation of the mind. He labored upon a book on
+the errors of magic. So laboring, he became snared by the thing he
+denounced. He believed in the hidden lore while he condemned it. Deeper
+and deeper into forbidden knowledge his eagerness for research led him.
+Unsanctioned by any church were the books Dr. Michell starved his body
+to buy from Jews or other furtive dealers in unusual wares. The titles
+in his library comprehended the names of more charlatans than bishops.
+He could define the distinctions between necromancy, sorcery, and magic.
+The marvelous calculations of the Pythagoreans engaged him, and the lost
+mysteries of the Cabiri.
+
+From such studies he would arise on the Sabbath to preach sermons that
+held his dull flock agape. Bitter draughts of salvation he poured for
+their spiritual drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might escape
+hell-fire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft and tampering with
+Satan's agents he was eloquent. He rode sixty miles in midwinter to see
+a Quaker whipped and a woman hung who had been convicted as a witch.
+
+Of all this, his daughter wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye
+of youth saw through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to
+reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded his
+doctrine.
+
+"I study with him, but I think alone," she set down her independence.
+
+Without his knowledge, she proceeded to actual experiment with rude
+crucible and alembic in her own chamber. She essayed some age-old
+recipes of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach, handled at
+certain hours of the night and phases of the moon. All were innocent
+enough, it seemed. She cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial
+blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume which she named Rose of
+Jerusalem.
+
+But the experiments were not fortunate, she made obscure complaint. The
+dog, cured, lived only a few weeks. The perfume, in which she revelled
+with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich hair in it and
+her severely dull garments, awoke many whispers in a community where
+sweet odors were unknown and disapproved. She alluded, with a mingling
+of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young men who followed after
+her--"seeking a wife who would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as
+that fair woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great, whose honey
+breath was deadly poison to who so kissed there."
+
+Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from the colonial world of
+fashion who was to fix the fate of Desire Michell and his own.
+
+From this point on, the diary was a record of the same story as the
+"History of Ye foule Witch, Desire Michell."
+
+The love affair that followed Sir Austin's visit to the clergyman's
+house leaped hot and instant as flame from oil and fire brought
+together. The girl was parched with thirst for life, yet despised all
+around her. The man was dazzled by a beauty and mentality foreign as a
+bird of paradise found nested in Connecticut snow. A mad, wild passion
+linked them that was more than half a duel. For Sir Austin was already
+betrothed. Honor might not have chained him for long, but his need of
+his betrothed's fortune proved more enduring. He was a man bred to
+wealth, who did not possess it. He offered Desire Michell his left hand.
+
+He was turned out of her father's house with a red weal struck across
+his face like a brand.
+
+Of course he returned. The arrow was firmly fixed. He asked her to marry
+him, and was refused with savage contempt. He would not take the
+refusal. Her heart and ambition were hidden traitors to his cause. In
+the end she surrendered and the marriage day was set.
+
+Sir Austin rode away to set his house in order, while Desire turned from
+alchemy to make her wedding garments.
+
+The entries during this interval were sweetly gentle and feminine. Her
+Rose of Jerusalem fragrance was all her own, and was kept so, but she
+made less-rare essences and sold them through a pedlar in order to buy
+fine linen and brocade for a trousseau not designed to be worn in a
+Puritan village. She was happy and at rest in expectation.
+
+On her wedding day the destroying news fell. Sir Austin hid a weak
+spirit within a strong and handsome body. Away from Desire's glamour,
+back in New York, he had not broken his engagement to the heiress.
+Instead, he had married her on the day arranged before he met the
+clergyman's daughter.
+
+There was never again a connected record in the diary. Pages were torn
+out in places, entries were broken off, half-made. But the story Vere's
+slow, steady voice conveyed to us was the one we knew; the one my Desire
+had told to me the first night I slept in this house. The half-mad girl
+turned to her father's deadly books. Sir Austin died as his waxen image
+dissolved before the fire, where the girl sat watching with merciless
+hate. He died, raving and frothing, on her door-sill. She never saw him
+after the day he rode away to prepare for their marriage. She set open
+her window that she might hear his progress to that hard death, but
+never deigned to turn her glance upon him.
+
+The clergyman was dead, now; of shame, or perhaps of terror at the child
+he had reared. The girl was alone.
+
+The diary grew wilder, with gaps of weeks where there were no entries.
+More frequently, pages were missing and paragraphs obliterated by the
+reddish blotches like rust or blood. There were accounts of weird,
+half-told experiments ranging through the three degrees of magic set
+forth by Talmud and Cabala. She wrote of legions of kingdoms between
+earth and heaven, and the twelve unearthly worlds of Plato. She alluded
+to a Barrier between men and other orders of beings, beyond which dwelt
+Those whom the magicians of old glimpsed after long toil and
+incantation.
+
+"Those of whom Vertabied, the Armenian, says: '_Their orders differ from
+one another in situation and degree of glory, just as there are
+different ranks among men, though they are all of one nature._' They
+cannot cross nor overthrow this Wall, nor can man alone; but if they and
+man join together----One there beyond whispers to me of power, splendor,
+victory----"
+
+Days later, there was entered a passage of mad triumph and terror. The
+Barrier was broken through. Out of the breach issued the One whom she
+had invited to her silver lamps; colossal, formless, whose approach
+froze blood and spirit. Eyes of unspeakable meaning glared across the
+dark, whispers unbearable to humanity beat upon her intelligence and
+named her comrade.
+
+Now as Vere read this, I felt again that quiver of the house or air he
+had likened to an earth shock and held responsible for the fall of the
+willow tree that had destroyed our hope of escape by automobile. I
+looked at my companions and saw no evidence of anyone having noticed
+what I had seemed to feel. Vere indeed was pale; while Phillida, who sat
+beside him, was highly flushed with excitement and wonder as she
+listened. Desire had not stirred in her chair, except to bend her head
+so her face was shaded by the loosened richness of her hair. Seeing them
+so undisturbed, I kept silence. A storm might be approaching, but I made
+no pretense to myself of believing that shock either thunder or
+earthquake.
+
+The tone of the diary altered rapidly. At first, the unknown from beyond
+the wall appalled the woman only by its unhuman strangeness, the
+repugnance of flesh and blood for its loathly neighborhood. Fear
+emanated from its presence, seen yet unseen, a blackness moving in the
+black of night when it visited her. Yet she had courage to endure those
+awful colloquies. She listened. She strove by the spell and incantation
+to subdue This to her service, as the demon Orthone served the Lord of
+Corasse, as Paracelsus was served by his Familiar, or Gyges by the
+spirit of his ring.
+
+Alas for the sorceress, misguided by legend and fantasy! She had evoked
+no phantom, but a fact actual as nature always is even if nature is not
+humanly understood. The Thing was real.
+
+The awe of the magician became the stricken panic of the woman. She had
+unloosed what she could not bind. She had called a servant, and gained a
+master. Gone forever were the dreams of power and splendor and triumph.
+Now she learned that only pure magic can discharge the spirits it has
+summoned, nor could a murderess attain that lofty art.
+
+We were given a glimpse of a frantic girl crouched in the useless
+pentagram traced on the floor for her protection, covering her beauty
+with the cloak of her hair against the eyes that burned upon her between
+the overturned silver lamps.
+
+A deepening horror gathered about the house of Mistress Desire Michell.
+The old dame who had been the girl's nurse and caretaker fled the place
+and fell into mumbling dotage in a night. No child would come near the
+garden, though fruit and nuts rotted away where they dropped from
+overripeness. No neighbor crossed the doorstep where Sir Austin had
+died. She lived in utter solitude by day. By night she waged hideous
+battle against her Visitor; using woman's cunning, essaying every
+expedient and art her books suggested to her desperate need.
+
+With each conflict, her strength and resource waned, while That which
+she held at bay knew no weariness. Time was not, for it, nor change of
+purpose.
+
+"I faint, I fail!" she wrote. "The Sea of Dread breaks about my feet. It
+is midnight. The pentagram fades from the floor--the nine lamps die--the
+breath of the One at the casement is upon me----"
+
+Vere stopped.
+
+"A handful of pages have been torn out here," he stated. "The next entry
+that I can read is in the middle of a stained page, and must be
+considerably later on."
+
+Phillida made an odd little noise like a whimper, clutching at his
+sleeve. The third shock for which I had been waiting shuddered through
+the house, this time distinctly enough for all to feel. A gust of wind
+went through the wet trees outside like a gasp.
+
+"Ethan, what was that?" she stammered. "Oh, I'm afraid! Cousin
+Roger----?"
+
+I had no voice to answer her. In my ears was the rush and surge of that
+sea whose waters had gripped me in the past night. I felt the icy
+death-tide hiss around me in its first returning wave, rise to my knee's
+height, then sink away down its unearthly beach. What I had dimly known
+all day, underlying Vere's sturdy cheerfulness and our plans and
+efforts, was the truth. Through those intervening hours of daylight I
+had remained my enemy's prisoner, bound on that shore we both knew well,
+until It pleased or had power to return and finish with me. No doubt It
+was governed by laws, as we are.
+
+As before, the cold struck a paralysis across my senses. Vere's
+reassurance sounded faint and distant.
+
+"The thunder is getting closer," he said. "That was a storm wind, all
+right! Would you rather go upstairs and lie down, and not hear any more
+of this stuff tonight?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! I could not bear to be alone," she refused. "Just, just go
+on, dear. Of course it is the coming storm that makes the room so cold."
+
+He put his left arm around her as she nestled against him. His right
+hand held the diary flattened on the table under the light.
+
+"The next entry is just one line in the middle of a page where
+everything else is blotted out," Vere repeated. "It reads: 'The child is
+a week old today.'"
+
+The wave crashed foaming in tumult up the strand, flowing higher,
+drenching me in cold sharp as fire. The tide rose faster tonight. The
+silence that held the others dumb before the significance of that last
+sentence covered my silence from notice. Desire's face was quite hidden;
+lamplight and firelight wavered and gleamed across her bent head. I
+wanted to arise and go to her, to take her hands and tell her to have
+patience and courage. But when this wave ebbed, my strength drained away
+with the receding water. Moreover, the darkness curdled and moved beyond
+the window opposite me. The curtains hung between were no bar to my
+vision, as the light and presence of my companions were no bar to the
+Thing that kept rendezvous with me. Since last night, we were nearer to
+one another.
+
+A breath of chill foulness crept across the pungent odor of the burning
+apple-log in the fireplace. A whisper spoke to my intelligence.
+
+"Man conquered by me, fall down before me. Beg my forbearance. Beg life
+of me--and take the gift!"
+
+"No," my thought answered Its.
+
+"You die, Man."
+
+"All men die."
+
+"Not as they die who are mine."
+
+"I am not yours. You kill me, as a wild beast might. But I am not yours;
+not dying nor dead am I yours."
+
+"Would you not live, pygmy?"
+
+"Not as your pensioner."
+
+The logs on the hearth crackled and sank down with a soft rustle, burned
+through to a core of glowing red. Phillida spoke with a hushed urgency,
+drawing still closer to her husband, so that her forehead rested against
+his shoulder.
+
+"Go on, Ethan. Finish and let us be done."
+
+Vere bent his head above the book on the table to obey her. Across the
+dark I suddenly saw the Eyes glare in upon him.
+
+"On the next page, the writing begins again," he said. "It says:
+
+"'I am offered the kingdoms of earth. But I crave that kingdom of myself
+which I cast away. The child is sent to England. The circle is drawn.
+The names are traced and the lamps filled. Tonight I make the last
+essay. There remains untried one mighty spell. This Mystery----'"
+
+A clap of thunder right over the house overwhelmed the reader's voice.
+Phillida screamed as a violent wind volleyed through the place with a
+crashing of doors and shutters, upstairs and down. The diary was ripped
+from beneath Vere's hand and hurled straight to the center of that nest
+of fire formed by the settling of the logs. A long tongue of flame
+leaped high in the chimney as the spread leaves of the book caught and
+flared, fanned by wind and draft. Vere sprang up, but Phillida's
+clinging arms delayed him. When he reached the fire-tongs there was
+nothing to rescue except a charring mass half-way toward ashes.
+
+He turned toward me, perhaps at last surprised by my immobility.
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Locke," he apologized.
+
+Desire had started up with the others when the sudden uproar of the
+storm burst upon them. Now she cried out, breaking Vere's excuse of the
+loss. Her small face blanched, she ran a few steps toward me.
+
+"It has come! He will die--he is dying. Look, look!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+     "Behold! Where are their abodes?
+     Their places are not, even as though they had not been."
+                                     --TOMB OF KING ENTEF.
+
+
+Desire Michell was beside me, and I could not rise or answer her. She
+bent over me, so that the Rose of Jerusalem fragrance inundated me and
+drove back the sickening air that was the breath of our enemy.
+
+"Let me go," she sobbed, her head beside my head. "If you can hear me,
+listen and leave me as It wills. You know now that I belong to It by
+heritage? You know why we can never be together as you planned? Try to
+feel horror of me. Put me away from you. No evil can come to me unless I
+seek evil. But It will not suffer you to take me. Live, dear Roger, and
+let me go."
+
+"Yield to me, Man, what you may not keep," the whisper of the Thing
+followed after her voice. "Would you take the witch-child to your
+hearth? Cast her off; and taste my pardon."
+
+"Can you hear, Roger? Roger, let me go."
+
+With an effort terrible to make as death to meet, I broke from the
+paralysis that chained me. As from the drag of a whirlpool, I tore
+myself from the tide-clutch, from the will of the Thing, from the numb
+weakness upon me. For a moment I thrust back the hand at my throat. I
+stood up and drew Desire up with me in my arms, both of us reeling with
+my unsteadiness.
+
+"I do not give you up," I said, my speech hoarse and difficult. "I claim
+you, now, and after. And my claim is good, because I pay."
+
+Desire exclaimed something. What, I do not know. Her voice was lost in
+the triumphant conviction that I was right. She was free, and the
+freedom was my gift to her. I was not vanquished, but victor. The life I
+paid was not a penalty, but a price.
+
+Her face was uplifted to mine as she clung to me; then my weight glided
+through her arms and I fell back in my chair.
+
+I was alone amid blackness and desolation that poured past me like the
+wind above the world.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the last time, I opened my eyes on the gray shore at the foot of the
+Barrier. I, pygmy indeed, stood again before the colossal wall whose
+palisades reared up beyond vision and stretched away beyond vision on
+either side.
+
+I was alone here. No whisper of taunt or menace, no presence of horror
+troubled me. Opposite me, the Breach that split the cliff showed as a
+shadowed canon, empty except of dread. Far out behind me the sea that
+was like no sea of earth gathered itself beneath its eternal mists as a
+tidal wave draws and gathers. With folded arms I stood there, waiting
+for the returning surge of mighty waters to overwhelm me in their flood.
+I waited in awe and solemn expectancy, beyond fear or hope.
+
+But now I became aware of a new doubleness of experience. Here on the
+Frontier, I was between the worlds, yet I also saw the room in the house
+left behind. I saw myself as an unconscious body reclined in a chair
+beside the hearth. Desire Michell knelt on the floor beside me, her
+hands grasping my arms, her gaze fixed on my face, her hair spilling its
+shining lengths across my knees. Phillida was huddled in a chair, crying
+hysterically. Vere apparently had been trying to force some stimulant
+upon the man who was myself, yet was not myself, for while I watched he
+reluctantly rose from bending above the figure and set a glass upon the
+table. I echoed his sigh. Life was good.
+
+The sea behind me began to rush in from immeasurable distances. The roar
+of the waters' thunderous approach blended with the heat and flash of
+storm all about the house into which I looked.
+
+"He dies," Desire spoke, her voice level and calm. "Has it not been so
+with all who loved the daughters of my race these two centuries past?
+Yet never did one of those die as he dies--not for passion, but for
+protection of the woman--not as a madman or one ignorant, but facing
+that which was not meant for man to face, his eyes beating back the
+intolerable Eyes. Oh, glory and grief of mine to have seen this!"
+
+Phillida cowered lower in her chair, burying her face in the cushions.
+But Vere abruptly stood erect, his fine dark face lifted and set. Just
+so some ancestors of his might have risen in a bleak New England
+meeting-house when moved powerfully to wrestle with evil in prayer. But
+it is doubtful if any Maine deacon ever addressed his Deity as Vere
+appealed to his.
+
+"Almighty, we're in places we don't understand," he spoke simply as to a
+friend within the room, his earnest, drawling speech entirely natural.
+"But You know them as You do us. If things have got to go this way, why,
+we'll make out the best we can. But if they don't, and we're just
+blundering into trouble, please save Roger Locke and this poor girl.
+Because we know You can. Amen."
+
+Now at this strange and beautiful prayer--or so it seemed to me--a ray
+of blinding light cleaved up from where Vere stood, like a shot arrow
+speeding straight through house and night into inconceivable space. Then
+the room vanished from my sight as the great wave burst out of the mist
+upon me.
+
+I went down in a smother of ghastly snarling floods cold as space is
+cold. Something fled past me up the strand, shrieking inhuman passion;
+the Eyes of my enemy glared briefly across my vision.
+
+One last view I glimpsed of that dread Barrier, amid the tumult and
+welter of my passing. The breach was closed! Unbroken, majestic, the
+enormous Wall stood up inviolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+     "Fancy, like the finger of a clock,
+     Runs the great circuit, and is still at home."
+                                              --COWPER.
+
+The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair
+before the hearth in the living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was
+the din of a tempest outside.
+
+Opposite me, Phillida and Desire were clinging together, watching me
+with such looks of gladness and anxiety that I felt myself abashed
+before them. Bagheera, the cat, sat on the table beside the lamp, yellow
+eyes blinking at each flash and rattle of lightning and thunder, while
+he sleeked his recently wetted fur. Wondering where that wet had come
+from, I discovered presently that the fire was out, and the hearth
+drenched with soot-stained water. I looked toward the windows, from
+which the curtains had been drawn aside. Rain poured glistening down the
+panes, but the clean storm was empty of horror.
+
+"Drink some of this, Mr. Locke," urged Vere, whose arm was about me.
+"Sit quiet, and I guess you'll be all right in a few moments."
+
+I took the advice. Strength was flowing into me, as inexplicably as it
+had flowed away from me a while past. How can I describe the certainty
+of life that possessed me? The assurance was established, singularly
+enough, for all of us. None of my companions asked, and I myself never
+doubted whether the danger might return. The experience was complete,
+and closed. Moreover, already the Thing that had been our enemy, the
+horror that had been Its atmosphere, the mystery that haunted
+Desire--all were fading into the past. The phantoms were exorcised, and
+the house purified of fear.
+
+But there was something different from ordinary storm in this tempest.
+The tumult of rain and wind linked another, deeper roar with theirs. The
+house quivered with a steady trembling like a bridge over which a train
+is passing. Pulling myself together I turned to Vere.
+
+"What is happening outdoors?" I asked.
+
+"The cloudburst was too much for the dam," he answered regretfully. "It
+went off with a noise like a big gun, a while back. I expect the lake is
+flooding the whole place and messing up everything from our cellar to
+the chickenhouse. Daylight is due pretty soon, now, and the storm is
+dying down. We'll be able to add up the damage, after a bit."
+
+"The water came down the chimney and drowned Bagheera," Phillida bravely
+tried to summon nonchalance. "Isn't it lucky you and Desire could not
+get started in the car, after all? Fancy being out in that!"
+
+Desire Michell steadied her soft lips and gave her quota to the shelter
+of commonplace speech we raised between ourselves and emotions too
+recently felt.
+
+"It was like the tropical storms in Papua, where I lived until this
+year," she said. "Once, one blew down the mission house."
+
+Vere's weather prediction proved quite right. In an hour the storm had
+exhausted itself, or passed away to other places. Sunrise came with a
+veritable glory of crimson and gold, blazing through air washed limpidly
+pure by the rain. The east held a troop of small clouds red as
+flamingoes flying against a shining sky; last traces of our tempest.
+
+We stood on the porch together to survey an unfamiliar scene in the rosy
+light. Water overlay lawns and paths, so the house stood in a wide,
+shallow lake whose ripples lapped around the white cement steps and the
+pillars of the porte-cochere. Phillida's Pekin ducks floated and fed on
+this new waterway as contentedly as upon their accustomed pastures.
+Small objects sailed on the flood here and there; Bagheera's milk-pan
+from the rear veranda bobbed amidst a fleet of apples shaken down in the
+orchard, while some wooden garden tools nudged a silk canoe-cushion.
+
+In contrast to all this aquatic prospect, where the real lake had been
+there now lay some acres of ugly, oozing marsh; its expanse dotted with
+the bodies of dead water-creatures and such of Vere's young trout as had
+not been swept away by the outpouring flood. The dam was a mere pile of
+debris through which trickled a stream bearing no resemblance to the
+sparkling waterfall of yesterday. Already the sun's rays were drawing a
+rank, unwholesome vapor from the long-submerged surface.
+
+We contemplated the ruin for a while, without words.
+
+"Poor Drawls!" Phillida sighed at length. "All your work just rubbed
+out!"
+
+"Never mind, Vere," I exclaimed impulsively. "We will put it all back in
+the same shape as it was."
+
+But even as I spoke, I felt an odd shock of uneasiness and recoil from
+my own proposition. I did not want the lake to be there again; or to
+hear the unaccountable sounds to which it gave birth and the varying
+fall of the cataract over the dam. Did the others share my repugnance? I
+seemed to divine that they did. Even the impetuous Phil did not break
+out in welcome of my offer. Desire, who had smoothed her sober gray
+dress in some feminine fashion and stood like Marguerite or Melisande
+with a great braid over either shoulder, moved as if to speak, then
+changed her intention. A faint distress troubled her expression.
+
+As usual, Vere himself quietly lifted us out of unrest.
+
+"I'm not sure that couldn't be bettered, Mr. Locke," he demurred. "That
+is if you liked, of course! That marsh could be cleaned up and drained
+into pretty rich land, I guess. And down there beyond the barn, on the
+other side where the creek naturally widens out into a kind of basin, I
+should think might be the spot for a smaller, cleaner lake."
+
+"Doesn't it seem to you, Ethan," I said, "that we have progressed rather
+past the _Mr. Locke_ stage?"
+
+A little later, when Desire and I were alone on the porch, we walked to
+the end nearest the vanished lake. Or rather, I led her to a swinging
+couch there, and sat down beside her.
+
+"Point out the path down the hill by which you used to come," I asked of
+her.
+
+She shook her head. There are no words to paint how she looked in the
+clear morning, except that she seemed its sister.
+
+"It is only the end of a path that matters," she said. "Look instead at
+the marsh. Do you see nothing there stranger than a path through the
+woods even when trodden by a wilful woman?"
+
+Following her lifted finger, I saw a series of long mounds out there in
+the muddy floor not far from the dam. Not high, two or three feet at
+most, the mounds formed an irregular square of considerable area.
+
+"The old house!" I exclaimed.
+
+"It was set on fire by the second Desire Michell one night deep in
+winter. Her father built this house of yours and put in the dam that
+covered the ruins with water. I think he hoped to wash away the horror
+upon the place."
+
+"I know so little of your history."
+
+"You can imagine it." She turned her head from me. "The first child came
+back from England when it was a man grown, and claimed the house and
+name of the first Desire. He settled and married here. For two
+generations only sons were born to the Michells. I do not know if the
+Dark One came to them. I believe it did, but they were hard, austere men
+who beat off evil. Then, a daughter was born. She looked like the first
+Desire and she was--not good. She was a scandal to the family. She
+listened to It----! The tradition is that she set fire to the house
+after a terrible quarrel with her people, but herself perished by some
+miscalculation. There were no more girls born for another while after
+that. Not until my father's time. He had a sister who resembled the two
+Desires of the past. My grandfather brought her up in harshness and
+austerity, holding always before her the wickedness to which she was
+born. Yet it was no use. She fled from his house with a man no one knew,
+and died in Paris after a life of great splendor and heartlessness.
+Everyone who loved the Desires suffered. That is why I--covered myself
+from--you."
+
+I took her hand, so small a thing to hold and feel flutter in mine.
+
+"But what of me, Desire? The darkness covered no beauty in me, but a
+defect. You never saw me until last night and now in the morning. Now
+that you know, can you bear with a man who--limps? You, so perfect?"
+
+She turned toward me. Her kohl-dark eyes, vivid as a summer noon, opened
+to my anxious scrutiny.
+
+"But I have seen you often," she said, the heat of confession bright on
+cheek and lip. "I never meant you to know, but now----! After the first
+time you spoke to me so kindly and gayly--I was so very sorrowfully
+alone--and the convent was so dull! My father's field-glasses were in my
+trunk."
+
+"Desire?"
+
+"I fear I have no vocation for a nun. I--there is a huge rock half-way
+down the hill with a clear view of this place. I have spent hours there,
+watching these lawns and verandas, and the things you all did. It all
+seemed so amusing and, and happy. You see, where I lived there were
+almost no white people except my father and a priest at the Catholic
+mission. So I learned to know Phillida and Mr. Vere and----"
+
+"Then, all this time, Desire----"
+
+"The glasses brought you very close," she whispered. "I knew you by
+night and by day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+     "Life hath its term, the assembly is dispersed,
+      And we have not described Thee from the first."
+                                            --GULISTAN.
+
+
+I have come to the end of this narrative and with the end, I come to
+what people of practical mind may call its explanation. Of the four of
+us who were joined in living through the events of that summer, my wife
+and I and Ethan Vere agree in one belief, while Phillida holds the
+opinion of her father, the Professor. I think Bagheera, the cat, might
+be added to our side also, if his testimony was available.
+
+The press reports of the cloudburst and flood brought the Professor up
+to Connecticut to verify with his own eyes his daughter's safety. Aunt
+Caroline did not come with him, but I may here set down that she did
+come later. They found their son-in-law by no means what their
+forebodings menaced, so reconciled themselves at last to the marriage;
+to Phillida's abiding joy.
+
+But first the little Professor arrived alone, three days after the
+storm. Characteristically, he had sent no warning of his coming, so no
+one met him at the railway station. He arrived in one of those curious
+products of a country livery stable known as a rig, driven by a local
+reprobate whom no prohibition could sober.
+
+I shall never forget the incredulous rapture with which Phillida
+welcomed him, nor the pride with which she presented Vere.
+
+The damages to the place were already being repaired, although weeks of
+work would be needed to restore a condition of order and make the
+changes we planned. The automobile had been disentangled from the
+wreckage of garage and willow tree and towed away to receive expert
+attention. We were awaiting the arrival of the new car I had ordered for
+the honeymoon tour Desire and I were soon to take. Phillida had declared
+two weeks shopping a necessary preliminary to the wedding of a bride who
+was to live in New York "and meet everybody." Nor would I have shortened
+the pretty orgy into which the two girls entered, transforming my
+sorceress into a lady of the hour; happiness seeming to me rather to be
+savored than gulped.
+
+Needless to say, there was no more talk of the convent whose iron gates
+were to have closed between the last Desire Michell and the world. She
+had been directed there by the priest whose island mission was near her
+father's. In her solitude and ignorance of life, the sisterhood seemed
+to offer a refuge in which to keep her promise to her father. But she
+had to learn the principles of the Church she was about to adopt, and
+during that period of delay I had come to the old house.
+
+On the second day of his visit, we told all the story to the Professor.
+We could not have told Aunt Caroline, but we told him.
+
+"It is perfectly simple," he pronounced at the end. "Interesting, even
+unique in points, but simple of explanation."
+
+"And what may be the explanation?" I inquired with scepticism.
+
+"Marsh gas," he replied triumphantly. "Have none of you young people
+ever considered the singular emanations from swamps and marshes where
+rotting vegetation underlies shallow water? Phillida, I am astonished
+that you did not enlighten your companions on this point. You, at least,
+have been carefully educated, not in the light froth of modern music and
+art, but in the rudiments of science. I do not intend to wound your
+feelings, Roger!"
+
+"I am not wounded, sir," I retorted. "Just incredulous!"
+
+"Ah?" said the Professor, with the bland superiority of his tribe.
+"Well, well! Yet even you know something of the evils attending people
+who live in low, swampy areas; malaria, ague, fevers. In the tropics,
+these take the form of virulent maladies that sweep a man from earth in
+a few hours. Your lake _was_ haunted, so was the house that once stood
+in its basin, as some vague instinct strove to warn the generations of
+Michells as well as you. Haunted by emanations of some powerful form of
+marsh gas given forth more plentifully at night, which lowered the heart
+action and impeded the breathing of one drawing the poison into his
+lungs through hours of sleep, producing--nightmare. Science has by no
+means analyzed all the possibilities of such phenomena."
+
+"Nightmare!" I cried. "Do you mean to account by nightmare for the wide
+and repeated experiences that twice brought me to the verge of death?
+And Desire? What of her knowledge of that same nightmare? What of the
+legend of her family so exactly coinciding with all I felt? And why did
+not Phillida and Ethan suffer the nightmare with me?"
+
+He held up a lean hand.
+
+"Gently, gently, Roger! Consider that of all the household you alone
+slept in the side of the house toward the lake. I know that you always
+have your windows open day and night--a habit that used to cause great
+annoyance to your Aunt Caroline when you were a boy. Thus you were
+exposed to the full effect of the water gases. That you did not feel the
+effects every night I attribute to differences in the wind, that from
+some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving
+you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most pronounced
+in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous air was atmospherically held
+down to the earth. You have spoken of miasmic mists that hung below the
+level of the tree-tops. When Mr. Vere experienced a similar unease and
+depression, he was on the shore of the lake at dawn after precisely such
+a close, foggy night as I have described as most dangerous. The symptoms
+confirm this theory. You say you awakened on each occasion with a sense
+of suffocation. Your heart labored, your limbs were cold and mind
+unnaturally depressed, owing to slow circulation of the blood. You were
+a man asphyxiated. After each attack you were more sensitive to the
+next, as a malaria patient grows worse if he remains in the swamp
+districts. It is remarkable that you did not guess the truth from the
+smell of decaying vegetation and stagnant damp which you admit
+accompanied the seizures! However, you did not; and in your condition
+the last three days of continuous fog brought on two attacks that nearly
+proved fatal. Now as to the character of your hallucinations, and their
+agreement with the young lady's ideas. That is a trifle more involved
+discussion, yet simple, simple!"
+
+He put the tips of his fingers together and surveyed us with the benign
+condescension of one instructing a class of small children.
+
+"The first night that you passed in your newly purchased house, Roger,
+you accidentally encountered Miss Michell; or she did you!" He smiled
+humorously. "While your feelings were excited by the unusual episode,
+the strange surroundings and the dark, she related to you a wild legend
+of witchcraft and monsters. Later, when you suffered your first attack
+of marsh-gas poisoning, your consequent hallucination took form from the
+story you had just heard. Later conversations with your mysterious lady
+fixed the idea into an obsession. Recurrent dreams are a common
+phenomenon even in healthy persons. In this case, no doubt the exact
+repetition of the physical sensations of miasmic poisoning tended to
+reproduce in your mind the same sequence of ideas or semi-delirious
+imaginings. These were of course varied or distorted somewhat on each
+occasion, influenced by what you had been hearing or reading in advance
+of them. This mental condition became more and more confirmed as you
+steeped yourself more deeply in legendary lore and also--pardon me--in
+the morbid fancies of the young lady; whose ghostly visits in the dark
+and whose increasing interest for you put a further bias upon your
+thoughts."
+
+"What were the noises I heard from the lake, and the shocks we all
+felt?" I demanded.
+
+He nodded amiably toward Vere.
+
+"Mr. Vere has mentioned the large bubbles which formed and burst on the
+surface of the lake. That is a common manifestation of ordinary marsh
+gas. Possibly the singular and unknown emanation that took place at
+night came to the surface in the form of a bubble or bubbles huge enough
+to produce in bursting the smacking sound of which you speak. But I am
+inclined to another theory, after a walk I took about your place this
+morning. When you put up your cement dam instead of the old log affair
+that held back only a part of the stream, you made a greater depth and
+bulk of water in the swamp basin than it has contained these many years,
+if ever. As a result, I believe the sloping mud basin began to slip
+toward the dam. Oh, very gradually! Probably not stirring for weeks at a
+time. Just a yielding here, a parting there, until the cloudburst
+precipitated the disaster. You had, my dear Roger, a miniature
+landslide, which would account for sounds of shifting mud and water in
+your lake, and for the shocks or trembling of your house when the earth
+movements occurred."
+
+The rest of us regarded one another. I think Vere might have spoken, if
+he had not been unwilling to mar Phillida's contentment by any
+appearance of dispute with her father.
+
+"It is very cleverly worked out, sir," I conceded. "But how do you
+explain that Desire knew what I experienced with the Thing from the
+Barrier, if my experiences were merely delirious dreams?"
+
+"I have not yet understood that she did know," said the Professor dryly.
+"She put the suggestions into your head; innocently, of course. When you
+afterward compared notes and found they agreed, you cried 'miraculous'!
+How is that, Miss Michell? Did you actually know what Roger experienced
+in these excursions before he told you of them?"
+
+Desire gazed at him with her meditative eyes, so darkly lovely, yet
+never quite to lose their individual difference from any other lovely
+eyes I have ever seen. The eyes, I thought then and still think, of one
+who has seen more, or at least seen into farther spaces, than most of
+treadmill-trotting humanity. She wore one of the new frocks for which
+Phillida and she had already made a flying trip to town; a most
+sophisticated frock from Fifth Avenue, with frivolous French shoes to
+correspond. Her hair of a Lorelei was demurely coiled and wound about
+her little head. Yet some indescribable atmosphere closed her delicately
+around, an impalpable wall between her and the commonplace. Even the
+desiccated, material Professor was aware of this influence and took off
+his spectacles uneasily, wiped them and put them on again to contemplate
+her.
+
+"I am not sure," she answered him with careful candor. "I believe that I
+could always tell when the Dark One had been with him. I could feel
+that, here," she touched her breast. "I knew what its visits were like,
+because I was brought up to know by my father and was told the history
+of the three Desire Michells. My father had studied deeply and taught
+me--I shall not tell anyone all he taught me! I do not want to think of
+those things. Some of them I have told to Roger. Some of them are quite
+harmless and pleasant, like the secret formula for making the Rose of
+Jerusalem perfume; which has virtues not common, as Roger can say who
+has felt it revive him from faintness. But there are places into which
+we should not thrust ourselves. It is like--like suicide. One's mind
+must be perverted before certain things can be done. And that is the
+true sin--to debase one's soul. All men discover and learn of science
+and the universe by honest duty and effort is good, is lofty and leads
+up. Nothing is forbidden to us. But if we turn aside to the low door
+which only opens to crime and evil purpose, we step outside. I am
+unskilful; I do not express myself well."
+
+"Very well, young lady," the Professor condescended. "Unfortunately,
+your theories are wild mysticism. The veritable fiend that has plagued
+the house of Michell is the mischievous habit of rearing each generation
+from childhood to a belief in doom and witchcraft. A child will believe
+anything it is told. Why not, when all things are still equally
+wonderful to it? Let me point out that your theory also contradicts
+itself, since Roger certainly did not enter upon any path of crime, yet
+he met your unearthly monster."
+
+"Because he chose to link his fate with mine, who am linked by heredity
+with the Dweller at the Frontier," she said earnestly. "He was in the
+position of one who enters the lair of a wild beast to bring out a
+victim who is trapped there. It may cost that rescuer his life. Roger
+nearly paid his life. But he mastered It and took me away from It,
+because he was not afraid and not seeking his own good. I never imagined
+anyone so brave and strong and unselfish as Roger. I suppose it is
+because he thinks of others instead of himself, which gives the
+strongest kind of strength."
+
+"The Thing nearly had me, though," I hastily intervened to spare my own
+modesty. "And It did have me worse than afraid!"
+
+"I seem to be arguing against an impenetrable obstinacy," snapped the
+Professor. "Do you, Roger, who were educated under my own eye, in my
+house, have the effrontery to tell me that you believe Miss Michell is
+descended from the union of an evil spirit and a human being; as the
+Eastern legends claim for Saladin the Great?"
+
+"Your own theory, sir, being----?" I evaded.
+
+"There is no theory about the matter," he declared. "Excuse me, Miss
+Michell! The child was undoubtedly Sir Austin's son. Which accounts for
+the madness of the first Desire Michell."
+
+We were all silent for a while. Whatever thoughts each held remained
+unvoiced.
+
+"Come, Phillida, you take my sane point of view, I hope?" the Professor
+finally challenged his daughter, with a glance of scorn and compassion
+at the rest of our group. "You observe that I have explained every point
+raised, Miss Michell's testimony being of the vaguest?"
+
+"Yes, Papa," Phillida agreed hesitatingly. "I do believe you have solved
+the whole problem. Only, if Cousin Roger was suffering from marsh-gas
+poisoning last night when he seemed to be dying, I do not quite see why
+Ethan's prayer should have cured him."
+
+The Professor was momentarily posed. He looked disconcerted, took off
+his glasses and put them on again, and at length muttered something
+about storm-wind dissipating the miasma in the air and events being mere
+coincidence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The house was never again visited by the Dark Presence. Phantom or
+fancy, the horror was gone as if it never had brooded about the place.
+Desire Locke is a fatal companion only to my heart.
+
+But whether all this is so because the lake is drained and the Shetland
+pony of a young Vere browses over the green pasture that was once a
+miasmic swamp; or whether it is so for more subtle, wilder reasons, no
+one can say. I, recalling that colossal Barrier I visioned as closed and
+a certain cleaving arrow of light, must at least call the coincidence
+amazing.
+
+As I have said, my wife and I, Ethan Vere and Bagheera the cat have an
+understanding between us.
+
+
+
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