Once more
she saw the boy's wistful face before her, and a trembling something
stirred in her heart. Her hand shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of
tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem. It was a
piece of sombre brilliance. Like black-draped monks half crazed with
mystic devotion, the poet's thoughts flitted across the page. It was the
wail of a soul that feels reason slipping from it and beholds madness
rise over its life like a great pale moon. A strange unrest emanated
from it and took possession of her. And again, with an insight that was
prophetic, she distinctly recognised behind the vague fear that had
haunted the poet the figure of Reginald Clarke.
A half-forgotten dream, struggling to consciousness, staggered her by
its vividness. She saw Clarke as she had seen him in days gone by,
grotesquely transformed into a slimy sea-thing, whose hungry mouths shut
sucking upon her and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She
closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence. And in that moment it
became clear to her that she must take into her hands the salvation of
Ernest Fielding from the clutches of the malign power that had
mysteriously enveloped his life.
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