woman turned, and, with a face full of loathing and scorn,
pointed to one of the reptiles beneath the feet of the chair. And while
Myrtle's eyes followed hers, the flattened and half-crushed creature
seemed to swell and spread like his relative in the old fable, like the
black dog in Faust, until he became of tenfold size, and at last of
colossal proportions. And, fearful to relate, the batrachian features
humanized themselves as the monster grew, and, shaping themselves more
and more into a remembered similitude, Myrtle saw in them a hideous
likeness of--No! no! it was too horrible, was that the face which had
been so close to hers but yesterday? were those the lips, the breath from
which had stirred her growing curls as he leaned over her while they read
together some passionate stanza from a hymn that was as much like a
love-song as it dared to be in godly company? A shadow of disgust--the
natural repugnance of loveliness for deformity-ran all through her, and
she shrieked, as she thought, and threw herself at the feet of that other
figure. She felt herself lifted from the floor, and then a cold thin
hand seemed to take hers. The warm life went out of her, and she was to
herself as a dimly conscious shadow that glided with passive acquiescence
wherever it was led. Presently she found herself in a half-lighted
apartment, where there were books on the shelves around, and a desk with
loose manuscripts lying on it, and a little mirror with a worn bit of
carpet before it. And while she looked, a great serpent writhed in
through the half-open door, and made the circuit of the room, laying one
huge ring all round it, and then, going round again, laid another ring
over the first, and so on until he was wound all round the room like the
spiral of a mighty cable, leaving a hollow in the centre; and then the
serpent seemed to arch his neck in the air, and bring his head close down
to Myrtle's face; and the features were not those of a serpent, but of a
man, and it hissed out the words she had read that very day in a little
note which said, "Come to my study to-morrow, and we will read hymns
together."

Again she was back in her little chamber, she did not know how, and the
two women were looking into her eyes with strange meaning in their own.
Something in them seemed to plead with her to yield to their influence,
and her choice wavered which of them to follow, for each would have led
her her own way,--whither she knew not