n the secret of your beloved? Have you not opened your mind
to the evil thoughts that creep upon the citadel of strength within and
tear down its power? Of your own deed, you are mine. My breath drinks
your breath. Your life falls down as a lamp that is thrown from its
pedestal. Your spirit rises from its seat and looks toward those spaces
where it shall take flight tonight. Man, you die."

Again the surge and shock of that frigid sea rushed upon me. I felt the
swirl and hiss of the broken wave higher about me before it sank away
down whatever dreadful strand it owned. My life ebbed with it, draining
low. My enemy spoke the truth. One more such wave----

My imagination sprang ahead of the event. In fancy, I saw bright dawn
filling this room of mine, shining on the figure of a man who had been
myself. His head rested on his folded arms so that his face was hidden.
On the table beside him a vase was overturned; a spray of heliotrope lay
near and water had trickled over scattered sheets of music, staining the
paper. By and by Vere would come to summon that unanswering figure to
the gay little breakfast-table. Phillida would leave her place behind
the burnished copper percolator she prized so highly and come running up
the stairs. In her gentleness she would grieve, no doubt. I was sorry
for that. But it was a contentment and pleasure for me to recall that I
had settled my financial affairs so that my little cousin would never
lack money or know any care that I could spare her. Strange, how she had
been rated below more beautiful or more clever women until the waif
Ethan Vere had set her dearness in full sun for us to wonder at!

"Pygmy, will you think of another pygmy now?" raged the Thing.
"Yourself! Think of yourself! Crouch! Think of death, corruption, the
vileness of the grave. Think how you are of the grave. Think how you are
alone with me. Think how you are abandoned to me."

But with that tenderness for Phillida a warmth had flowed through me
like strength.

"Not so," my defiance answered It. "For where I am, I stand by my own
will. With where I shall stand, you have nothing to do. Back, then, for
with the death of my body your power ends. Back--or else face me, Thing
of Darkness, while we stand in one place."

At this mad challenge of mine silence closed down like a shutting trap.
Consciousness sank away from me with a sense of swooning quietness.

* * * * *

I stood before th