opportunity to account for
the delusion he heard the gallop of feet and a thunder at the door. It
was she! He wheeled like a rat surprised. There was a lateral exit,
through which he fled, and presently he found himself in a corridor that
seemed endless in extension. The man evidently had left the cradle and
preceded him, for Tristrem saw him putting on a great-coat some distance
ahead. In his feverish fright he thought, could he but disguise himself
with that, he might pass out unobserved, and he ran on to supplicate for
an exchange of costume; but when he reached the place where the man had
stood he had gone, vanished through a dead wall, and down the corridor
he heard her come. He could hear her bare feet patter on the stones. Oh,
God, what did she wish of him? And no escape, not one. He was in her
power, immured with her forevermore. He called for help, and beat at the
walls, and ever nearer she came, swifter than disease, and more
appalling than death. His nails sank in his flesh, he raised a hand to
stay the beating of his heart, and then at once she was upon him,
felling him to the ground as a ruffian fells his mistress, her knees
were on his arms, he was powerless, dumb with dread, and in his face was
the fetor of her breath. Her eyes were no longer lustreless, they
glittered like twin stars, and still she laughed, her naked breast
heaving with the convulsions of her mirth. "I am Truth," she bawled, and
laughed again. And with that Tristrem awoke, suffocating, quivering, and
outwearied as though he had run a race and lost it.

He sat awhile, broken by the horror of the dream. The palms of his hands
were not yet dry. But soon he bestirred himself, and went to the door;
the lights had been extinguished; he closed it again, and, with the aid
of some candles, he prepared for bed. He would have read a little, but
he was fatigued, tired by the emotions of the day, and when at last he
lay down it was an effort to rise again and put out the candle. How long
he lay in darkness, a second, an hour, he could not afterward recall; it
seemed to him that he had drowsed off at once, but suddenly he started,
trembling from head to foot. He had heard Viola's voice soaring to its
uttermost tension. "Coward," she had called. And then all was still. He
listened, he even went to the door, but the house was wrapped in
silence.

"Bah!" he muttered, "I am entertaining a procession of nightmares." And
in a few moments he was again aslee