olve 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 lowes