nthony had ever
dreamed of hearing; a sound that was near and yet remote, a sound that
was low and yet charged with power, like the groaning of a voice in
grievous pain and anger, that strives to be free and yet is helpless.
And then Anthony knew that he had indeed opened the door that looks into
the other world, and that a deadly thing that held him in enmity had
looked out. His reeling brain still told him that he was safe where he
was, but that he must not step or fall outside the circle; but how he
should resist the power of the wicked face he knew not. He tried to
frame a prayer in his heart; but there swept such a fury of hatred
across the face that he dared not. So he closed his eyes and stood
dizzily waiting to fall, and knowing that if he fell it was the end.

Suddenly, as he stood with closed eyes, he felt the horror of the spell
relax; he opened his eyes again, and saw that the face died out upon the
air, becoming first white and then thin, like the husk that stands on a
rush when a fly draws itself from its skin, and floats away into the
sunshine.

Then there fell a low and sweet music upon the air, like a concert of
flutes and harps, very far away. And then suddenly, in a sweet clear
radiance, the face of his mother, as she lived in his mind, appeared in
the space, and looked at him with a kind of heavenly love; then beside
the face appeared two thin hands which seemed to wave a blessing towards
him, which flowed like healing into his soul.

The relief from the horror, and the flood of tenderness that came into
his heart, made him reckless. The tears came into his eyes, not in a
rising film, but a flood hot and large. He took a step forwards round
the altar; but as he did so, the vision disappeared, the lights shot up
into a flare and went out; the house seemed to be suddenly shaken; in
the darkness he heard the rattle of bones, and the clash of metal, and
Anthony fell all his length upon the ground and lay as one dead.

But while he thus lay, there came to him in some secret cell of the mind
a dreadful vision, which he could only dimly remember afterwards with a
fitful horror. He thought that he was walking in the cloister of some
great house or college, a cool place, with a pleasant garden in the
court. He paced up and down, and each time that he did so, he paused a
little before a great door at the end, a huge blind portal, with much
carving about it, which he somehow knew he was forbidden to enter.