l, thou wilt welcome my
coming. In me alone thy hope will be placed; through me alone wilt thou
seek a path out of thy sorrow. I shall ask my conditions: they will make
thee my tool and my slave!'"

The shadow waned,--it was gone. I did not seek to detain it, nor, had I
sought, could I have known by what process. But a new idea now possessed
me. This shadow, then, that had once so appalled and controlled me,
was, by its own confession, nothing more than a shadow! It had spoken of
higher Intelligences; from them I might learn what the Shadow could
not reveal. As I still held the wand firmer and firmer in my grasp, my
thoughts grew haughtier and bolder. Could the wand, then, bring those
loftier beings thus darkly referred to before me? With that thought,
intense and engrossing, I guided the wand towards the space, opening
boundless and blue from the casement that let in the skies. The wand no
longer resisted my hand.

In a few moments I felt the floors of the room vibrate; the air was
darkened; a vaporous, hazy cloud seemed to rise from the ground without
the casement; an awe, infinitely more deep and solemn than that which
the Scin-Laeca had caused in its earliest apparition, curdled through my
veins, and stilled the very beat of my heart.

At that moment I heard, without, the voice of Lilian, singing a simple,
sacred song which I had learned at my mother's knees, and taught to her
the day before: singing low, and as with a warning angel's voice. By an
irresistible impulse I dashed the wand to the ground, and bowed my head
as I had bowed it when my infant mind comprehended, without an effort,
mysteries more solemn than those which perplexed me now. Slowly I raised
my eyes, and looked round; the vaporous, hazy cloud had passed away, or
melted into the ambient rose-tints amidst which the sun had sunk.

Then, by one of those common reactions from a period of overstrained
excitement, there succeeded to that sentiment of arrogance and daring
with which these wild, half-conscious invocations had been fostered and
sustained, a profound humility, a warning fear.

"What!" said I, inly, "have all those sound resolutions, which my reason
founded on the wise talk of Julius Faber, melted away in the wrack of
haggard, dissolving fancies! Is this my boasted intellect, my vaunted
science! I--I, Allen Fenwick, not only the credulous believer, but the
blundering practitioner, of an evil magic! Grant what may be possible,
however unco