Latest / Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales / 🟡 House of the Vampire (Full Audiobook) | George Sylvester Viereck

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🟡 House of the Vampire (Full Audiobook) | George Sylvester Viereck · Occult & Supernatural Audiobooks: Forbidden Rituals, Esoteric Texts & Paranormal Tales

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  Speaker 1: CHAPTER I. THE FREAKISH LITTLE LEADER OF THE ORCHESTRA, NEWLY
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  Speaker 1: IMPORTED FROM CICILY TO NEW YORK, tossed his conductor's wand
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  Speaker 1: excitedly through the air, drowning with musical thunders the hum
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  Speaker 1: of conversation and the clatter of plates. Yet neither his
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  Speaker 1: apish demeanor nor the deafening noises that responded to every
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  Speaker 1: movement of his agile body detracted attention from the figure
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  Speaker 1: of Reginald Clark and the young man at his side
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: as they smilingly wound their way to the exit. The
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  Speaker 1: boy's expression was pleasant, with an inkling of wistfulness. while
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  Speaker 1: the soft glimmer of his lucid eyes betrayed the poet
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  Speaker 1: and the dreamer. The smile of Reginald Clarke was the
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  Speaker 1: smile of a conqueror. A suspicion of silver in his
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  Speaker 1: crown of dark hair only added dignity to his bearing,
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  Speaker 1: while the infinitely ramified lines above the heavyset mouth spoke
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  Speaker 1: at once of subtlety and of strength. Without stretch of
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  Speaker 1: the imagination, one might have likened him to a Roman
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  Speaker 1: cardinal in the days of the Borgias, who had miraculously
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  Speaker 1: stepped forth from a time-stained canvas and slipped into twentieth-century
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  Speaker 1: evening clothes. With the affability of complete self-possession, he nodded
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  Speaker 1: in response to greetings from all sides, inclining his head
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  Speaker 1: with special politeness to a young woman whose sea-blue eyes
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  Speaker 1: were riveted upon his features with a look of mingled
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  Speaker 1: hate and admiration. The woman, disregarding his silent salutation, continued
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  Speaker 1: to stare at him wild-eyed, as a damned soul in
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  Speaker 1: purgatory might look at Satan passing in regal splendour through
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  Speaker 1: the seventy-times-sevenfold circles of hell. Reginald Clark walked on unconcernedly
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  Speaker 1: through the rows of gay diners, still smiling, affable, calm.
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  Speaker 1: But his companion bethought himself of certain rumours he had
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  Speaker 1: heard concerning Ethel Brandenburg's mad love for the man, from
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  Speaker 1: whose features she could not even now turn her eyes.
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  Speaker 1: Evidently her passion was unreciprocated. It had not always been so.
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  Speaker 1: There was a time in her career, some years ago
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  Speaker 1: in Paris, when it was whispered that she had secretly
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  Speaker 1: married him, and not much later, obtained a divorce. The
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  Speaker 1: matter was never cleared up, as both preserved an uncompromising
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  Speaker 1: silence upon the subject of their matrimonial experience. Certain it
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  Speaker 1: was that, for a space, the genius of Reginald Clark
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  Speaker 1: had completely dominated her brush, and that, ever since he
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  Speaker 1: had thrown her aside, Her pictures were but plagiarisms of
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  Speaker 1: her former artistic self. The cause of the rupture between
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  Speaker 1: them was a matter only of surmise, but the effect
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  Speaker 1: it had on the woman testified clearly to the remarkable
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  Speaker 1: power of Reginald Clarke. He had entered her life, and behold,
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  Speaker 1: the world was transfixed on her canvases in myriad hues
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  Speaker 1: of transcending radiance. He had passed from it, and with
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  Speaker 1: him vanished the brilliancy of her colouring, as at sunset
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  Speaker 1: the borrowed amber and gold fade from the face of
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  Speaker 1: the clouds. The glamour of Clark's name may have partly
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  Speaker 1: explained the secret of his charm, but even in circles
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  Speaker 1: where literary fame is no passport, he could, if he chose,
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  Speaker 1: exercise an almost terrible fascination. Subtle and profound, he had
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  Speaker 1: ransacked the coffers of medieval dialecticians, and plundered the arsenals
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  Speaker 1: of the sophists. Many years later, when the vultures of
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  Speaker 1: misfortune had swooped down upon him, and his name was
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  Speaker 1: no longer mentioned without a sneer, he was still remembered
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  Speaker 1: in New York drawing-rooms as the man who had brought
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  Speaker 1: to perfection the art of talking. Even to dine with
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  Speaker 1: him was a liberal education. Clark's marvellous conversational power was
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  Speaker 1: equalled only by his marvellous style. Ernest Fielding's heart leaped
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  Speaker 1: in him the thought that henceforth he would be privileged
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  Speaker 1: to live under one roof with the only writer of
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  Speaker 1: his generation who could lend to the English language the
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  Speaker 1: rich strength and rugged music of the Elizabethans. Reginald Clark
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  Speaker 1: was a master of many instruments. Milton's mighty organ was
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  Speaker 1: no less obedient to his touch than the little lute
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  Speaker 1: of the troubadour. He was never the same. That was
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  Speaker 1: his strength. Clark's style possessed at once the chiseled chasteness
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  Speaker 1: of a Greek marble column and the elaborate deviltry of
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  Speaker 1: the late Renaissance. At times his winged words seemed to
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  Speaker 1: flutter down the page frantically like Baroque angels. At other
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  Speaker 1: times nothing could have more adequately described his manner than
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  Speaker 1: the timeless calm of the gaunt pyramids. The two men
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  Speaker 1: had reached the street. Reginald wrapped his long spring coat
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  Speaker 1: round him.' I shall expect you to-morrow at four,' he said.
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  Speaker 1: The tone of his voice was deep and melodious, suggesting
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  Speaker 1: hidden depths and cadences. I shall be punctual. The younger
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  Speaker 1: man's voice trembled as he spoke. I look forward to
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  Speaker 1: your coming with much pleasure. I am interested in you.
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  Speaker 1: The glad blood mounted to earnest cheeks at praise from
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  Speaker 1: the austere lips of this arbiter of literary elegance. An
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  Speaker 1: almost imperceptible smile crept over the other man's features. I
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  Speaker 1: am proud that my work interests you, was all the
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  Speaker 1: boy could say. I think it is quite amazing. But
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  Speaker 1: at present— Here Clark drew out a watch set with jewels.
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  Speaker 1: I am afraid I must bid you good-bye. He held
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  Speaker 1: Ernest's hand for a moment in a firm, genial grasp,
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  Speaker 1: then turned away briskly, while the boy remained standing, open-mouthed.
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  Speaker 1: The crowd, jostling against him, carried him almost off his feet,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: but his eyes followed far into the night the masterful
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  Speaker 1: figure of Reginald Clark. toward whom he felt himself drawn
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  Speaker 1: with every fiber of his body and the warm enthusiasm
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  Speaker 1: of his generous youth. CHAPTER II With elastic step, inhaling
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  Speaker 1: the night air with voluptuous delight, Reginald Clark made his
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  Speaker 1: way down Broadway, lying stretched out before him, bathed in
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  Speaker 1: light and pulsating with life. His world-embracing intellect was powerfully
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  Speaker 1: attracted by the giant city's motley activities. On the street,
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  Speaker 1: as in the salon, his magnetic power compelled recognition, and
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  Speaker 1: he stepped through the mist of the crowd as a
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  Speaker 1: Circassian blade cleaves water. After walking a block or two,
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  Speaker 1: he suddenly halted before a jeweler's shop. Arrayed in the
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  Speaker 1: window were priceless gems that shone in the glare of
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  Speaker 1: electricity like mystical serpent eyes, green, pomegranate, and water-blue. And
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  Speaker 1: as he stood there, the dazzling radiance before him was
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  Speaker 1: transformed in the prism of his mind into something great,
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  Speaker 1: and very wonderful, that might some day be a poem.
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  Speaker 1: Then his attention was diverted by a small group of
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  Speaker 1: tiny girls dancing on the sidewalk to the husky strains
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  Speaker 1: of an old hurdy-gurdy. He joined the circle of amused
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  Speaker 1: spectators to watch those pink-ribboned bits of femininity swaying airily
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  Speaker 1: to and fro in unison with the tune. One especially
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  Speaker 1: attracted his notice— a slim, olive-coloured girl from a land where
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  Speaker 1: it is always spring— her whole being translated into music,
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  Speaker 1: with hair dishevelled and feet hardly touching the ground, the
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  Speaker 1: girl suggested an orange leaf dancing on a sunbeam. The
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  Speaker 1: rasping street-organ, perchance, brought to her melodious reminiscences of some
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  Speaker 1: flute-playing Savoyard boy, brown-limbed and dark of hair. For several
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  Speaker 1: minutes Reginald Clark followed with keen delight each delicate curve
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  Speaker 1: her graceful limbs described. Then, was it that she grew tired,
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  Speaker 1: or that the stranger's persistent scrutiny embarrassed her, the music
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  Speaker 1: oozed out of her movements. They grew slower, angular, almost clumsy.
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  Speaker 1: The look of interest in Clark's eyes died, but his
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  Speaker 1: whole form quivered, as if the rhythm of the music
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  Speaker 1: and the dance had mysteriously entered into his blood. He
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  Speaker 1: continued his stroll, seemingly without aim. In reality he followed,
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  Speaker 1: with nervous intensity— the multiform undulations of the populace, swarming
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  Speaker 1: through Broadway in either direction. Like the giant whose strength
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  Speaker 1: was rekindled every time he touched his mother, the earth,
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  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark seemed to draw fresh vitality from every contact
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  Speaker 1: with life. He turned east along Fourteenth Street, where cheap
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  Speaker 1: vaudevilles are strung together as glass pearls on the throat
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  Speaker 1: of a wanton. Gaudy billboards, drenched in clamorous red, proclaimed
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  Speaker 1: the tawdry attractions within. Much to the surprise of the
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  Speaker 1: doorkeeper at a particularly evil-looking music hall, Reginald Clarke lingered
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  Speaker 1: in the lobby, and finally even bought a ticket that
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  Speaker 1: entitled him to enter this sordid wilderness of decollete art.
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  Speaker 1: Street snipes, a few working men, dilapidated sportsmen and women
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  Speaker 1: whose ruined youth thick layers of powder and paint, even
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  Speaker 1: in this artificial light, could not restore, constituted the bulk
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  Speaker 1: of the audience. Reginald Clarke apparently unconscious of the curiosity, surprise,
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  Speaker 1: and envy that his appearance excited, seated himself at a
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  Speaker 1: table near the stage, ordering from the solicitous waiter only
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  Speaker 1: a cocktail and a program. The drink he left untouched,
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  Speaker 1: while his eyes greedily ran down the lines of the announcement.
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  Speaker 1: When he had found what he sought, he lit a cigar,
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  Speaker 1: paying no attention to the boards, but studying the audience
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  Speaker 1: with cursory interest until the appearance of Betsy, the hyacinth girl.
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  Speaker 1: When she began to sing, his mind still wandered. The
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  Speaker 1: words of her song were crude, but not without a
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  Speaker 1: certain lilt that delighted the uncultured ear, while the girl's
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  Speaker 1: voice was thin to the point of being unpleasant. When, however,
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  Speaker 1: she came to the burden of the song, Clark's manner
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  Speaker 1: changed suddenly. Laying down his cigar, he listened with rapt attention,
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  Speaker 1: eagerly gazing at her. For as she sang the last
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  Speaker 1: line and tore the hyacinth blossoms from her hair, there
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  Speaker 1: crept into her voice a strangely poignant, pathetic little trill
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  Speaker 1: that redeemed the execrable faultiness of her singing, and brought
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  Speaker 1: the rude audience under her spell. Clark, too, was captivated
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  Speaker 1: by that tremor, the infinite sadness of which suggested the
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  Speaker 1: plaint of souls moaning low at night, when lust preys
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  Speaker 1: on creatures marked for its spoil. The singer paused. Still
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  Speaker 1: those luminous eyes were upon her. She grew nervous. It
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  Speaker 1: was only with tremendous difficulty that she reached the refrain.
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  Speaker 1: As she sang the opening lines of the last stanza,
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  Speaker 1: an inscrutable smile curled on Clark's lips. She noticed the
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  Speaker 1: man's relentless gaze and faltered. When the burden came, her
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  Speaker 1: singing was hard and cracked. The tremor had gone from
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  Speaker 1: her voice. CHAPTER III Long before the appointed time, Ernest
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  Speaker 1: walked up and down in front of the abode of
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  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark, a stately apartment house overlooking Riverside Drive. Misshapen
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  Speaker 1: automobiles were chasing by, carrying to the cool river's marge
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  Speaker 1: the restlessness and the fever of American life. But the
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  Speaker 1: bustle and the noise seemed to the boy only auspicious
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  Speaker 1: omens of the future. Jack, his roommate and dearest friend,
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  Speaker 1: had left him a month ago, and for a space
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  Speaker 1: he had felt very lonely— His young and delicate soul
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  Speaker 1: found it difficult to grapple with the vague fears that
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  Speaker 1: his nervous brain engendered when whispered sounds seemed to float
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  Speaker 1: from hidden corners and the stairs creaked under mysterious feet.
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  Speaker 1: He needed the voice of loving kindness to call him
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  Speaker 1: back from the valley of haunting shadows, where his poet
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  Speaker 1: soul was wont to linger overlong. In his hours of
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  Speaker 1: weakness the light caress of a comrade renewed his strength
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  Speaker 1: and rekindled in his hand the flaming sword of song.
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  Speaker 1: and at nightfall he would bring the day's harvest to Clark,
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  Speaker 1: as a worshipper scattering precious stones, incense, and tapestries at
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  Speaker 1: the feet of a god. Surely he would be very happy,
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  Speaker 1: and as the heart at times leads the feet to
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  Speaker 1: the goal of its desire, while multicoloured dreams like dancing
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  Speaker 1: girls lull the will to sleep, he suddenly found himself
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: stepping from the elevator car to Reginald Clark's apartment. Already
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  Speaker 1: was he raising his hand to strike the electric bell,
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  Speaker 1: when a sound from within made him pause halfway. No,
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  Speaker 1: there's no help, he heard Clark say. His voice had
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  Speaker 1: a hard, metallic clangor. A boyish voice answered plaintively. What
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  Speaker 1: the words were Ernest could not distinctly hear, but the
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  Speaker 1: suppressed sob in them almost brought the tears to his eyes.
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  Speaker 1: He instinctively knew that this was the finale of some tragedy.
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  Speaker 1: He withdrew hastily, so as not to be a witness
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  Speaker 1: of an interview that was not meant for his ears.
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  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark probably had good reason for parting with his
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  Speaker 1: young friend, whom Ernest surmised to be Abel Felton, a
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  Speaker 1: talented boy whom the master had taken under his wings.
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  Speaker 1: In the apartment a momentary silence had ensued. This was
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  Speaker 1: interrupted by Clark.' It will come again. In a month.
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  Speaker 1: In a year. In two years.'' No. No!'' It is
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  Speaker 1: all gone,' sobbed the boy.' Nonsense. You are merely nervous.'
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  Speaker 1: But that is just why we must part.' There is
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  Speaker 1: no room in one house for two nervous people.' I
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  Speaker 1: was not such a nervous wreck before I met you.'
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  Speaker 1: Am I to blame for it?' For your morbid fancies,
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  Speaker 1: your extravagance,' the slow tread of a nervous disease, perhaps?'
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  Speaker 1: Who can tell?' but I am all confused. I don't
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  Speaker 1: know what I am saying. Everything is so puzzling. Life, friendship, you.
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  Speaker 1: I fancied you cared for my career, and now you
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  Speaker 1: end our friendship without a thought. We must all follow
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  Speaker 1: the law of our being. The laws are within us
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  Speaker 1: and in our control. They are within us and beyond us.
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  Speaker 1: It is the physiological structure of our brains, our nerve cells,
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  Speaker 1: that makes and mars our lives. Our mental companionship was
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  Speaker 1: so beautiful. It was meant to last. That is the
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  Speaker 1: dream of youth. Nothing lasts. Everything flows. Pantare. We are
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  Speaker 1: all but sojourners in an inn. Friendship, as love, is
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  Speaker 1: an illusion. Life has nothing to take from a man
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  Speaker 1: who has no illusions. It has nothing to give him.
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  Speaker 1: They said goodbye. At the door, Ernest met Abel. Where
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  Speaker 1: are you going? he asked.' For a little pleasure trip.'
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: Ernest knew that the boy lied. He remembered that Abel
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  Speaker 1: Felton was at work upon some book, a play, or
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  Speaker 1: a novel. It occurred to him to inquire how far
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  Speaker 1: he had progressed with it. Abel smiled sadly.' I am
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  Speaker 1: not writing it.'' Not writing it?'' Reginald is.'' I' m afraid
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  Speaker 1: I don't understand.'' Never mind. Someday you will.' CHAPTER IV
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  Speaker 1: I am so happy you came, Reginald Clark said, as
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  Speaker 1: he conducted Ernest into his studio. It was a large,
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  Speaker 1: luxuriously furnished room overlooking the Hudson and Riverside Drive. Dazzled
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  Speaker 1: and bewildered, the boy's eyes wandered from object to object,
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  Speaker 1: from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous details, the whole
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  Speaker 1: arrangement possessed style and distinction. A satyr on the mantelpiece
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: whispered obscene secrets into the ears of St. Cecilia. The
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  Speaker 1: argent limbs of Antinous brushed against the garments of Mona Lisa,
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  Speaker 1: and from a corner a little Rococo lady peered coquettishly
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: at the grey image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: a picture of Napoleon facing the image of the crucified.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Above all, in the semi-darkness, artificially produced by heavy draperies,
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  Speaker 1: towered two busts. Shakespeare and Balzac. Ernest exclaimed with some surprise.' Yes,'
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  Speaker 1: explained Reginald.' They are my gods.'' His gods! Surely there
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: was a key to Clark's character. Our gods are ourselves
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  Speaker 1: raised to the highest power. Clark and Shakespeare!' Even to
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  Speaker 1: Ernest's admiring mind it seemed almost blasphemous to name a contemporary,
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  Speaker 1: however esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of
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  Speaker 1: song— whose great gaunt shadow, thrown against the background of
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  Speaker 1: the years, has assumed immense, unproportionate, monstrous dimensions. Yet something
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: might be said for the comparison. Clark undoubtedly was universally
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: broad and undoubtedly concealed, with no less exquisite taste than
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid raiment of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: his art. They certainly were affinities. It would not have
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: been surprising to him to see the clear, calm head
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of Shakespeare— rise from behind his host. Perhaps, who knows,
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  Speaker 1: the very presence of the bust in his room had,
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  Speaker 1: to some extent, subtly and secretly moulded Reginald Clarke's life.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: A man's soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Even comparative trifles, the number of the house in which
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: we live, or the colour of the wallpaper of a room,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: may determine a destiny. The boy's eyes were again surveying
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the fantastic surroundings in which he found himself, while from
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  Speaker 1: a corner Clark's eyes were watching his every movement, as
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  Speaker 1: if to follow his thoughts into the innermost labyrinth of
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: this passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: curio in the room, was reflected in Clark's work. In
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: a long-cued porcelain Chinese mandarin, he distinctly recognized a quaint
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: quatrain in one of Clark's most marvelous poems. And he
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: could have sworn that the grin of the Hindu monkey-god
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm of the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: two stanzas whose grotesque cadence had haunted him for years.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: At last Clark broke the silence.' You like my studio?'
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: he asked. The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.'
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Like it? Why, it's stunning! It set up in me
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the queerest train of thought.' I, too, have been in
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a whimsical mood to-night. Fancy, unlike genius, is an infectious disease.'
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: What is the peculiar form it assumed in your case?
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I have been wondering whether all the things that environ
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: us day by day are, in a measure, fashioning our thought-life.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: I sometimes think that even my little mandarin and this
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: monkey idol, which, by the way, I brought from India,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: are exerting a mysterious but nonetheless real influence upon my work.''
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Great God!' Ernest replied.' I have had the identical thought.''
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: How very strange!' Clark exclaimed, with seeming surprise. It is
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: said tritely but truly that great minds travel the same roads,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: Ernest observed, inwardly pleased. No, the older man subtly remarked,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: but they reach the same conclusion by a different route.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: And you attach serious importance to our fancy.'' Why not?'
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Clark was gazing abstractedly at the bust of Balzac.' A
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: man's genius is commensurate with his ability of absorbing from
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: life' the elements essential to his artistic completion.' Balzac possessed
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: this power in a remarkable degree.' But strange to say,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it was evil that attracted him most. He absorbed it
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: as a sponge absorbs water, perhaps because there was so
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: little of it in his own make-up. He must have
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: purified the atmosphere around him for miles by bringing all
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: the evil that was floating in the air or slumbering
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: in men's souls to the point of his pen. And
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: he— his eyes were resting on Shakespeare's features— as a man
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: might look upon the face of a brother. He, too,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: was such a nature. In fact, he was the most
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: perfect type of the artist. Nothing escaped his mind. From
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: life and from books he drew his material, each time
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: reshaping it with a master hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Recreation,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many palettes.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: That is why he is so great, and why his
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: work is incredibly greater than he. It alone explains his
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: unique achievement. Who was he? What education did he have?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: What opportunities? None. And yet we find in his work
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: the wisdom of Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh's fancies and discoveries,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Marlowe's verbal thunders, and the mysterious loveliness of Mr. W. H.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Ernest listened, entranced by the sound of Clark's mellifluous voice.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: He was indeed a master of the spoken word, and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: possessed a miraculous power of giving to the wildest fancies
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: an air of ressemblance. CHAPTER V. Yes, said Walkam, the sculptor,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: it's a most curious thing.' What is?' asked Ernest, who
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was looking at
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: thousand years.' How our dreams of yesterday stare at us
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: like strangers today.'' On the contrary,' remarked Reginald,' it would
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: be strange if they were still to know us. In fact,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: it would be unnatural. The skies above us and the
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: earth underfoot are in perpetual motion.' Each atom of our
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: physical nature is vibrating with unimaginable rapidity. Change is identical
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: with life. It sometimes seems, said the sculptor, as if
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: thoughts evaporated like water. Why not under favourable conditions? But
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: where do they go? Surely they cannot perish utterly. Yes,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: that is the question. Or rather it is not a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: question— Nothing is ever lost in the spiritual universe.'' But what,'
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: inquired Ernest,' is the particular reason for your reflection?'' It
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: is this,' the sculptor replied.' I had a striking motive
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: and lost it.'' Do you remember,' he continued, speaking to Reginald,'
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the narcissist I was working on the last time when
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: you called at my studio?'' Yes. It was a striking
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: thing and impressed me very much,' though I cannot recall
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it at the moment. Well, it was a commission. An
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: eccentric young millionaire had offered me $ 8, 000 for it. I
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: had an absolutely original conception. But I cannot execute it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: It's as if a breeze had carried it away. That
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: is very regrettable. Well, I should say so, replied the sculptor.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Ernest smiled, for everybody knew of Walkham's domestic troubles. Having
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: twice figured in the divorce court, he was at present
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: defraying the expenses of three households. The sculptor had meanwhile
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: seated himself at Reginald's writing-table, unintentionally scanning a typewritten page
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: that was lying before him. Like all artists, something of
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: a madman and something of a child, he at first
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: glanced over its contents distractedly, then with an interest so
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: intense that he was no longer aware of the impropriety
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: of his action.' By Jove!' he cried. What is this?''
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: It is an epic of the French Revolution,' Reginald replied,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: not without surprise.' But, man, do you know that I
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: have discovered my motive in it?'' What do you mean?'
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: asked Ernest, looking first at Reginald and then at Walkham,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: whose sanity he began to doubt.' Listen!' And the sculptor read,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: trembling with emotion, a long passage whose measured cadence delighted
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Ernest's ear— without, however, enlightening his mind as to the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: purport of Walkam's cryptic remark. Reginald said nothing, but the
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: gleam in his eye showed that this time, at least,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: his interest was alert. Walkam saw the hopelessness of making
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: clear his meaning without an explanation.' I forget you haven't
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: a sculptor's mind. I am so constituted that, with me,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: all impressions are immediately translated into the sense of form.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I do not hear music.' I see it rise with
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: domes and spires, with painted windows and arabesques. The scent
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: of the rose is to me tangible. I can almost
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: feel it with my hand. So your prose suggested to
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: me by its rhythmic flow, something which at first indefinite
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: crystallized finally into my lost conception of Narcissus. It is extraordinary,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: murmured Reginald. I had not dreamed of it. So you
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: do not think it rather fantastic, remarked Ernest, circumscribing his
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: true meaning. No, it was quite possible. Perhaps his narcissus
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: was engaging the subconscious strata of my mind while I
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: was writing this passage, and surely it would be strange
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: if the undercurrents of our minds were not reflected in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: our style. Do you mean, then, that a subtle psychologist
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: ought to be able to read between and beneath our lines,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: not only what we express, but also what we leave unexpressed? undoubtedly.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Even if, while we are writing, we are unconscious of
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: our state of mind, that would open a new field
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: to psychology. Only to those that have the key, that
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: can read the hidden symbols. It is to me a
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: matter of course that every mind-movement below or above the
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: threshold of consciousness must of a necessity leave its imprint
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: faintly or clearly, as the case may be, upon our activities.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: This may explain why books that seem intolerably dull to
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: the majority delight the hearts of the few, Ernest interjected. Yes,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to the few that possess the key. I distinctly remember
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: how an uncle of mine once laid down a discussion
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: on higher mathematics and blushed fearfully when his innocent wife
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: looked over his shoulder. The man who had written it
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: was a roué. Then the seemingly most harmless books may
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: secretly possess the power of scattering in young minds the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: seed of corruption, Walkham remarked. If they happen to understand,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Clark observed thoughtfully, I can very well conceive of a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: lecherous textbook of the calculus, or of a reporter's story
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of a picnic in which burnt, under the surface, undiscoverable,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: save to the initiate, the tragic passion of Tristram and Azolt.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER VI. Several weeks had elapsed since the conversation in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark's studio. The spring was now well advanced and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: had sprinkled the meadows with flowers, and the bookshelves of
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the reviewers with fiction. The latter Ernest turned to in
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: good account, but from the flowers no poem blossomed forth.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: In writing about other men's books, he almost forgot that
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the springtide had brought to him no bouquet of song.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Only now and then, like a rippling of water, disquietude
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: troubled his soul. The strange personality of the master of
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the house had enveloped the lad's thoughts with an impenetrable maze.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: The day before Jack had come on a flying visit
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: from Harvard, but even he was unable to free Ernest's
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: soul from the obsession of Reginald Clark. Ernest was lazily
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: stretching himself on a couch, waving the smoke of his
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: cigarette to Reginald, who was writing at his desk.' Your
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: friend Jack is delightful,' Reginald remarked, looking up from his papers.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and his ebon-coloured hair contrasts prettily with the gold in yours.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I should imagine that you are temperamental antipodes. So we are,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: but friendship bridges the chasm between. How long have you
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: known him? We've been chums ever since our sophomore year.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: What attracted you in him? It is no simple matter
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: to define exactly one's likes and dislikes, Even a tiny
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: protoplasmic animal appears to be highly complex under the microscope.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: How can we hope to analyze with any degree of
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: certitude our souls, especially when, under the influence of feeling,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: we see as through a glass darkly? It is true.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that personal feeling colors our spectacles and distorts the perspective. Still,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: we should not shrink from self-analysis. We must learn to
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: see clearly into our own hearts if we would give
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: vitality to our work. Indiscretion is the better part of
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: literature— and it behooves us to hound down each delicate,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: elusive shadow of emotion, and convert it into copy. It
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: is because I am so self-analytical that I realize the
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: complexity of my nature, and am at a loss to
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: define my emotions. Conflicting forces sway us hither and thither
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: without neutralizing each other. Physicology isn't physics. There were many
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: things to attract me to Jack. He was a subtler,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: more sympathetic, more feminine, perhaps, than the rest of my
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: college mates. That I have noticed. In fact, his lashes
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: are those of a girl. You still care for him
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: very much. It isn't a matter of caring. We are
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: two beings that live one life. A sort of psychic
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Siamese twins. Almost. Why, the matter is very simple. Our
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: hearts root in the same soil, the same books have
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: nourished us, the same great winds have shaken our being,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: and the same sunshine called forth the beautiful blossom of friendship.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: He struck me, if you will pardon my saying so,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: as a rather commonplace companion. There is in him a
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: hidden sweetness and a depth of feeling which only intimate
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: contact reveals. He is now taking his postgraduate course at Harvard,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: and for well-nigh two months we have not met, yet
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: so many invisible threads of common experience unite us that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: we could meet after years and still be near each other.''
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: You are very young,' Reginald replied.' What do you mean?'' Ah,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: never mind.'' So you do not believe that two hearts
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: may ever beat as one?'' No. That is an auditory delusion.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Not even two clocks beat in unison. There is always
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: a discrepancy— infinitesimal, perhaps— but a discrepancy nevertheless.' A sharp ring of
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: the bell interrupted the conversation. A moment later a curly
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: head peeped through the door.' Hello, Ernest. How are you,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: old man?' the intruder cried with a laugh in his voice. Then,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: noticing Clark, he shook hands with the great man unceremoniously,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: with the nonchalance of the healthy young animal bred in
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere of an American college. His touch seemed to
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: thrill Clark, who breathed heavily and then stepped to the window,
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: as if to conceal the flush of vitality on his cheek.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: It was a breath of springtide that Jack had brought
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: with him. Youth is a prince charming. To shriveled veins
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: the pressure of his hand imparts a spark of animation,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: and middle age unfolds its petals in his presence, as
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: a sunflower gazing at late noon once more upon its lord.'
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: I have come to take Ernest away from you,' said Jack.'
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: He looks a trifle paler than usual, and a day's
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: outing will stir the red corpuscles in his blood.'' I
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: have no doubt that you will take very good care
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: of him,' Reginald replied.' Where shall we go?' Ernest asked, absentmindedly.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: But he did not hear the answer, for Reginald's skepticisms
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: had more deeply impressed him than he cared to confess
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: to himself. CHAPTER VII The two boys had bathed their
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: souls in the sea-breeze, and their eyes in light. The
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: tide of pleasure-loving humanity jostling against them had carried their
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: feet to the Lion Palace. From there, seated at table
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: and quenching their thirst with highballs, they watched the feverish
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: palpitations of the city's life-blood pulsating in the veins of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Coney Island, to which they had drifted from Brighton Beach.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Ernest blew thoughtful rings of smoke into the air. Do
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: you notice the ferocious look in the mien of the
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: average frequenter of this island resort? he said to Jack,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: whose eyes, following the impulse of his more robust youth,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: were examining specimens of feminine flotsam on the waves of
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the crowd. It is, he continued, speaking to himself for
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: want of an audience, the American who is in for
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: having a good time, and he is going to get it.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Like a huntsman he follows the scent of happiness, but
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I warrant that always it eludes him. Perhaps his mad
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: race is only the epitome of humanity's vain pursuit of pleasure,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: the eternal cry that is never answered. But Jack was
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: not listening. There are times in the life of every
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: man when a petticoat is more attractive to him than
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: all the philosophy of the world. Ernest was a little hurt,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and it was not without some silent remonstrance that he
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: acquiesced when Jack invited to their table two creatures that
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: once were women.' Why? But they are interesting.' I cannot
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: find so. They both had seen better times, of course.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Then money losses came, with work in shop or factory,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and the voice of the tempter in the commercial wilderness. One,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: a frail, nervous little creature, who had instinctively chosen a
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: seat at Ernest's side, kept prattling in his ear, ready
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: to tell the story of her life to anyone who
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: was willing to treat her to a drink. Something in
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: her demeanour interested him. And then I had a stroke
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: of luck. The manager of a vaudeville was my friend
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: and decided to give me a trial. He thought I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: had a voice. They called me Betsy, the hyacinth girl.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: At first it seemed as if people liked to hear me.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: But I suppose that was because I was new. After
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: a month or two they discharged me. And why? I
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: suppose I was just used up, that's all. Frightful. I
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: never had much of a voice. And the tobacco smoke.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: And the wine. I love wine. she gulped down her glass.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: And do you like your present occupation? Why not? Am
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I not young? Am I not pretty? This, she said,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: not parrot-wise, but with a simple coquettishness that was all
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: her own. On the way to the steamer a few
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: moments later, Ernest asked half-reproachfully, Jack, and you really enjoyed
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: this conversation? Didn't you? Do you mean this? Why, yes,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: she was— Very agreeable. Ernest frowned. We're twenty, Ernest. And
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: then you see it's like a course in sociology. Susie. Susie,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: that was her name? Yes. So she had a name?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Of course. She shouldn't. It should be a number. They
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: may not be pillars of society. Still, they're human. Yes,
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: said Ernest. That is the most horrible part of it.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER VIII The moon was shining brightly. Swift and sure
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the prow of the night-boat parted the silvery foam. The
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: smell of young flesh, peals of laughter, a breathless pianola,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the tripping of dancing feet, voices husked with drink and
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: voices soft with love, the shrill accents of vulgarity, hustling waiters, shop-girls,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: bourgeois couples, tired families of four and upward— Sleeping children,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a boy selling candy, the crying of babies. The two
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: friends were sitting on the upper deck, muffled in their
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: long raincoats. In the distance the Empire City rose radiant
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: from the mist. Say, Ernest, you should spout some poetry
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: as of old. Are your lips stricken mute, or are
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: you still thinking of Coney Island? Oh, no, the swift
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: wind has taken it away. I am clean, I am pure.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Life has passed me. It has kissed me, but it
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: has left no trace. He looked upon the face of
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: his friend. Their hands met. They felt with keen enjoyment
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the beauty of the night, of their friendship, and of
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: the city beyond. Then Ernest's lips moved softly, musically, twitching
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: with a strange ascetic passion that trembled in his voice
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: as he began. Huge steel-ribbed monsters rise into the air,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: her Babylonian tower's while on high, like gilt-scaled serpents, glide
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: the swift trains by. Or, underfoot, creep to their secret lair,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: a thousand lights are jewels in her hair, the sea
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: her girdle and her crown the sky, her life-blood throbs,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the fevered pulses fly, immense, defiant, breathless she stands there,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: and ever listens in the ceaseless din, waiting for him,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: her lover who shall come, whose singing lips shall boldly
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: claim their own, and render sonant what in her was dumb,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the splendor and the madness and the sin, her dreams
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: in iron and her thoughts of stone. He paused. The
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: boat glided on. For a long time neither spoke a word.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: After a while Jack broke the silence. And are you
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: dreaming of becoming the lyric mouth of the city, of
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: giving utterance to all its yearnings? its dreams in iron
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and thoughts of stone. No, replied Ernest simply, not yet.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: It is strange to what impressions the brain will respond.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: In Clark's house, in the midst of inspiring things, inspiration
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: failed me. But while I was with that girl, an
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: idea came to me. An idea, big, real.' Will it
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: deal with her?' Ernest smiled.' Oh, no. She personally has
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. At least not directly. It
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: was the commotion of blood and—'' Brain. The air. The change.'
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know what.'' What will it be?' asked Jack,
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: with interest all alert.' A play, a wonderful play, and
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: its heroine will be a princess, a little princess with
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: a yellow veil.'' What of the plot?'' That I shall
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: not tell you to-day. I shall not breathe a word
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to any one. It will take you all by surprise,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: and the public by storm.'' So it will be playable?''
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: If I am not very much mistaken, you will see
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: it on Broadway within a year.'' And,' he added graciously,'
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I will let you have two box seats for the
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: first night.' They both chuckled at the thought, and their
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: hearts leaped within them.' I hope you will finish it soon,'
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Jack observed after a while.' You haven't done much of late.''
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: A similar reflection was on my mind when you came yesterday.'
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: That accounts for the low spirits in which you found me.'' Ah, indeed,'
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Jack replied, measuring earnest with a look of wonder.' But
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: now your face is aglow.' It seems that the blood
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: rushes to your head swifter at the call of an
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: idea than at the kiss of a girl. Thank God!
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Ernest remarked with a sigh of relief. Mighty forces within
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: me are fashioning the limpid thought. Passion may grip us
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: by the throat momentarily. Upon our backs we may feel
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the lashes of desire and bathe our souls in flames
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of many hues. But the joy of activity is the
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: ultimate passion. CHAPTER IX It seemed indeed as if work
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: was to Ernest what the sting of pleasure is to
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: the average human animal. The interplay of his mental forces
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: gave him the sensuous satisfaction of a woman's embrace. His
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: eyes sparkled, his muscle tightened, The joy of creation was
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: upon him. Often very material reasons, like stone weights tied
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: to the wings of a bird, stayed the flight of
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: his imagination. Magazines were waiting for his copy, and he
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: was not in the position to let them wait. They
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: supplied his bread and butter. Between the bread and butter, however,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the play was growing scene by scene. In the lone
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: hours of the night he spun upon the loom of
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: his fancy a brilliant weft of swift desire— heavy, perfumed, oriental,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: interwoven with bits of gruesome tenderness. The thread of his
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: own life intertwined with the thread of the story. All
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: genuine art is autobiography. It is not, however, necessarily a
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: revelation of the artist's actual self, but of a myriad
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: of potential selves. Ah, our own potential selves! They are
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: sometimes beautiful, often horrible, and always fascinating— They loom to
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: heavens none too high for our reach, they stray to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: yawning hells beneath our very feet. The man who encompasses
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: heaven and hell is a perfect man, but there are
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: many heavens and more hells. The artist snatches fire from both.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: Surely the assassin feels no more intensely the lust of
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: murder than the poet who depicts it in glowing words.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: The things he writes are as real to him as
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the things that he lives, but in his realm the
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: poet is supreme. his hands may be red with blood
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: or white with leprosy, he still remains king. Woe to him, however,
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: if he transcends the limits of his kingdom and translates
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: into action the secret of his dreams. The throng that
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: before applauded him will stone his quivering body or nail
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: to the cross his delicate hands and feet. Sometimes days
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: passed before Ernest could concentrate his mind upon his play.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Then the fever seized him again— and he strung pearl
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: on pearl, line on line, without entrusting a word to paper.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Even to discuss his work before it had received the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: final brush-strokes would have seemed indecent to him. Reginald, too,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: seemed to be in a turmoil of work. Ernest had
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: little chance to speak to him, and to drop even
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: a hint of his plans between the courses at breakfast
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: would have been desecration. Sunset followed sunset, night followed night.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: The stripling April had made room for the Lady May.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: The play was almost completed in Ernest's mind, and he
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: thought with a little shudder of the physical travail of
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: to paper would demand all his powers. For of late
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: his thoughts seemed strangely evanescent. They seemed to run away
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: from him whenever he attempted to seize them. The day
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: was glad with sunshine— and he decided to take a
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: long walk in the solitude of the Palisades to steady
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: hand and nerve for the final task. He told Reginald
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: of his intention, but met with little response. Reginald's face
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: was wan and bore the peculiar pallor of one who
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: had worked late at night.' You must be frightfully busy,'
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: Ernest asked, with genuine concern.' So I am,' Reginald replied.'
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I always work in a white heat.' I am restless, nervous, feverish,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: and can find no peace until I have given utterance
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: to all that clamours after birth.'' What is it that
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: is so engaging your mind? The epic of the French Revolution?'' Oh, no.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: stroke of work on it for several weeks. In fact,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: ever since Walkham called, I simply couldn't. It seemed as
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: if a rough hand had in some way destroyed the
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: web of my thought.' Poetry in the writing is like
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: red-hot glass before the master blower has fashioned it into
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: birds and trees and strange fantastic shapes. A draft caused
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: by the opening of a door may distort it. But
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: at present I am engaged upon more important work. I
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: am modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: molten gold. You make me exceedingly anxious to know what
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: you have in store for us. It seems to me
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: you have reached a point where even you can no
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: longer surpass yourself. Reginald smiled.' Your praise is too generous.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Yet it warms like sunshine. I will confess that my
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: conception is unique. It combines with the ripeness of my
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: technique the freshness of a second spring.' Ernest was bubbling
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: with anticipated delights. His soul responded to Reginald's touch as
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: a harp to the winds.' When,' he cried, 'shall we
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: be privileged to see it?' Reginald's eyes were already straying
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: back to his writing-table. If the gods are propitious, he remarked,
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I shall complete it to-night. To-morrow is my reception, and
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: I have promised to read it then. Perhaps I shall
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: be in the position soon to let you see my play.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Let us hope so, Reginald replied absentmindedly. The egotism of
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: the artist had once more chained him to his work.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER X That night a brilliant crowd had gathered in
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark's house. From the studio and the adjoining salon
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: rose a continual murmur of well-tuned voices. On bare white
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: throats jewels shone, as if in each a soul were imprisoned,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: and voluptuously rustled the silk that clung to the fair
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: slim forms of its bears in an undulating caress. Subtle
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: perfumes emanated from the hair and the hands of siren women,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: commingling with the soft plump scent of their flesh. Fragrant tapers,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: burning in precious crystal globules, stained with exquisite colors, sprinkled
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: their shimmering light over the fashionable assemblage, and lent a
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: false radiance to the faces of the men, while in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the hair and the jewels of the women each ray
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: seemed to dance like an imp with its mate. A
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: seat like a throne, covered with furs of tropic beasts
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: of prey, stood in one corner of the room in
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: the full glare of the light, waiting for the monarch
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: to come. Above were arranged with artistic raffinement weird oriental draperies,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: resembling a crimson canopy in the total effect. Chattering visitors
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: were standing in groups, or had seated themselves on the
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: divans and curiously fashioned chairs that were scattered in seeming
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: disorder throughout the salon. There were critics and writers and
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: men of the world. Everybody who was anybody and a
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: little bigger than somebody else was holding court in his
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: own small circle of enthusiastic admirers. The bohemian element was subdued,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: but not entirely lacking. The magic of Reginald Clark's name
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: made stately dames blind to the presence of some individuals
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: whom they would have passed on the street without recognition.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Ernest surveyed this gorgeous assembly with the absent look of
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: a sleepwalker. Not that his sensuous soul was unsusceptible to
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere of culture and corruption that permeated the whole,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: nor to the dazzling color effect that tantalized while they
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: delighted the eye. But to-night they shriveled into insignificance before
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: the splendor of his inner vision. A radiant dreamland palace,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: his play, had risen from the night of Inchoate thought.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: It was wonderful, it was real, and needed for its
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: completion only the detail of actual construction. And now the
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: characters were hovering in the recesses of his brain, were
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: yearning to leave that many-winded labyrinth to become real beings
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: of paper and ink. He would probably have tarried over
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: long in this fanciful mansion, had not the reappearance of
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: an unexpected guest broken his reverie.' Jack!' he exclaimed in surprise.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I thought you a hundred miles away from here.'' That
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: shows that you no longer care for me,' Jack playfully answered.'
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: When our friendship was young, you always had a presentiment
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: of my presence.'' Ah, perhaps I had. But tell me,
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: where do you hail from?'' Clark called me up on
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: the telephone. Long distance, you know. I suppose it was
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: meant as a surprise for you. And you certainly looked surprised.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Not even pleasantly. I am really head over heels at work.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But you know how it is.' Sometimes a little imp
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: whispers into my ears, daring me to do a thing
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: which I know is foolish. But what of it? My
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: legs are strong enough not to permit my follies to
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: overtake me. It was certainly good of you to come.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: In fact, you make me very glad. I feel that
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I need you tonight. I don't know why. The feeling
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: came suddenly. Suddenly is you. I only know I need you.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: How long can you stay?'' I must leave you tomorrow morning.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: I have to hustle somewhat.' You know my examinations are
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: taking place in a day or two, and I've got
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to cram up a lot of things.'' Still,' remarked Ernest,'
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: your visit will repay you for the loss of time.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Clark will read to us tonight his masterpiece.'' What is it?''
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I only know it's the real thing.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: It's worth all the wisdom bald-headed professors may administer to
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: you in concentrated doses at five thousand a year.'' Come now,'
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Jack could not help saying,' is your memory giving way?'
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: Don't you remember your own days in college, especially the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: mathematical examinations? You know that your marks came always pretty
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: near the absolute zero. Jack, cried Ernest in honest indignation.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Not the last time. The last time I didn't flunk. No,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: because your sonnet on Cartesian geometry roused even the math
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: fiend to compassion. And don't you remember Professor Squealer, whose
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: heart seemed to leap with delight whenever he could tell
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: you that, In spite of incessant toil on your part,
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: he had again flunked you in physics with fifty-nine and
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: a half percent. And he wouldn't raise the mark to sixty.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: God forgive him. I cannot. Here their exchange of reminiscences
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: was interrupted. There was a stir. The little potentates of
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: conversation hastened to their seats before their minions had wholly
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: deserted them. The king was moving to his throne. Assuredly
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Reginald Clark had the bearing of a king— Leisurely he
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: took his seat under the canopy. A hush fell on
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the audience. Not a fan stirred as he slowly unfolded
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: his manuscript. The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Virick CHAPTER XI. The music of Reginald Clarke's intonation captivated
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: every ear. Voluptuously, in measured cadence, it rose and fell,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: now full and strong like the sound of an organ,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: now soft and clear like the tinkling of bells. His
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: voice detracted by its very tunefulness from what he said.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: The powerful spell charmed even Ernest's accustomed ear. The first
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: page gracefully glided from Reginald's hand to the carpet, before
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: the boy dimly realized that he was intimately familiar with
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: every word that fell from Reginald's lips. When the second
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: page slipped with seeming carelessness from the reader's hand, a
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: sudden shudder ran through the boy's frame. It was as
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: if an icy hand had gripped his heart. There could
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: be no doubt of it. This was more than mere coincidence.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: It was plagiarism. He wanted to cry out, but the
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: room swam before his eyes. Surely he must be dreaming— it
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: was a dream— the faces of the audience, the lights, Reginald, Jack,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: all phantasmagoria of a dream. Perhaps he'd been ill for
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a long time. Perhaps Clark was reading the play for him.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: He did not remember having written it, but he probably
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: had fallen sick after its completion. What strange pranks our
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: memories will play us! But no, he was not dreaming,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: and he had not been ill. He could endure the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: horrible uncertainty no longer— His overstrung nerves must find relaxation
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: in some way or break with a twang. He turned
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: to his friend, who was listening with rapt attention.' Jack, Jack!'
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: he whispered.' What is it?'' That is my play.'' You
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: mean that you inspired it?'' No, I have written it,
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: or rather was going to write it.'' Wake up, Ernest,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: you are mad.'' No, in all seriousness, it is mine.''
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: I told you, don't you remember, when we returned from
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Coney Island, that I was writing a play?'' Ah, but
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: not this play.'' Yes, this play. I conceived it. I
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: practically wrote it. The more's the pity that Clark had
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: preconceived it.'' But it is mine.'' Did you tell him
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: a word about it?'' No, to be sure.'' Did you
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: leave the manuscript in your room?'' I had, in fact,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: not written a line of it. No, I had not
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: begun the actual writing.' Why should a man of Clark's
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: reputation plagiarize your plays, written or unwritten? I can see
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: no reason but— tut- tut! For already this whispered conversation had elicited
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: a look like a stab from a lady before them.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Ernest held fast to the edge of his chair. He
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: must cling to some reality, or else drift rudderless in
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: a dim sea of vague apprehensions. Or was Jack right?
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Was his mind giving way— No, no, no, there must
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: be a monstrous secret somewhere. But what matter? Did anything matter?
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: He had called on his mate like a ship lost
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: in the fog. For the first time he had not responded,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: he had not understood. The bitterness of tears rose to
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the boy's eyes. Above it all, melodiously ebbed and flowed
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: the rich accents of Reginald Clark. Ernest listened to the
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: words of his own play coming from the older man's mouth.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: The horrible fascination of the scene held him entranced. He
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: saw the creations of his mind pass in review before him,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: as a man might look upon the face of his
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: double grinning at him from behind a door in the
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: hideous hours of night. They were all there— the mad king,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: the subtle-witted courtiers, the sombre-hearted prince, the queen mother who
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: had loved a jester better than her royal mate, and
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: the fruit of their shameful alliance, the Princess Marigold, a
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: creature woven of sunshine and sin. Swiftly the action progressed.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Shadows of impending death darkened the house of the king.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: In the horrible agony of the rack the old jester confessed.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Stripped of his cap and bells, crowned with a wreath
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: of blood, he looked so pathetically funny that the Princess
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: Marigold could not help laughing between her tears. The queen
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: stood there all trembling and pale, Without a complaint, she
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: saw her lover die. The executioner's sword smote the old
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: man's head straight from the trunk. It rolled at the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: feet of the king, who tossed it to Marigold. The
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: little princess kissed it and covered the grinning horror with
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: her yellow veil. The last words died away. There was
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: no applause, only silence. All were stricken with the dread
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: that men feel in the house of God or his
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: awful presence in genius. but the boy lay back in
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: his chair. The cold sweat had gathered on his brow
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: and his temples throbbed. Nature had mercifully clogged his head
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: with blood. The rush of it drowned the crying voice
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: of the nerves, deadening for a while both consciousness and pain.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: CHAPTER XII Somehow the night had passed, somehow in bitterness,
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: in anguish, but it had passed. Ernest's lips were parched
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and sleeplessness had left its trace in the black rings
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: under the eyes when the next morning he confronted Reginald
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: in the studio. Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: his most characteristic pose, supporting his head with his hand
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: and looking with clear, piercing eyes searchingly at the boy.' Yes,'
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: he observed.' It' s a most curious physical phenomenon.'' You cannot
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: imagine how real it all seemed to me.' The boy
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: spoke painfully. dazed, as if struck by a blow.' Even
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: now it is as if something has gone from me,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: some struggling thought that I cannot— cannot remember.' Reginald regarded him
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: as a physical experimenter might look upon the subject of
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: a particularly baffling mental disease.' You must not think, my boy,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: that I bear you any malice for your extraordinary delusion.
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Before Jack went away he gave me an exact account
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: of all that has happened.' Diverse incidents recurred to him
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: from which it appears that, at various times in the past,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: you have been on the verge of a nervous collapse.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: A nervous collapse! What was the use of this term
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: but a euphemism for insanity? Do not despair, dear child,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Reginald caressingly remarked. Your disorder is not hopeless, not incurable.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: Such crises come to every man who writes. It is
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: the tribute we pay to the lords of songs. The
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: Minnesinger of the past wrote with his heart's blood, but
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: we moderns dip our pen into the sap of our nerves.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: We analyze life, love, art, and the dissecting knife that
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: we use on other men's souls finally turns against ourselves.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: But what shall a man do? Shall he sacrifice art
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: to hygiene and surrender the one attribute that makes him
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: chiefest of created things? Animals, too, think. Some walk on
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: two legs. But introspection differentiates man from the rest. Shall
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: we yield at the sweet consciousness of self that we
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: derive from the analysis of our emotion, for the contentment
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: of the bull that ruminates in the shade of a tree,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: or the healthful stupidity of a mule? Assuredly not. But
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: what shall a man do? Ah, that I cannot tell.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: Mathematics offers definite problems that admit of a definite solution.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: Life states its problems with less exactness and offers for
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: each a different solution— One and one are two, today
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: and tomorrow. Psychical values on each manipulation will yield a
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: different result. Still, your case is quite clear. You have
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: overworked yourself in the past, mentally and emotionally. You have
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: sown unrest and must not be surprised if neurasthenia is
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the harvest thereof. Do you think that I should go
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: to some sanitarium? the boy falteringly asked. God forbid! Go
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: to the seashore, somewhere where you can sleep and play.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Take your body along, but leave your brain behind. At
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: least do not take more of it with you than
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: is necessary. The summer season in Atlantic City has just begun. There,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: as everywhere in American society, you will be much more
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: welcome if you come without brains. Reginald's half-bantering tone reassured
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Ernest a little. Timidly he dared approach once more the
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: strange event that had wrought such havoc with his nervous equilibrium.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: How do you account for my strange obsession? One might
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: almost call it a mania. If it could be accounted for,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: it would not be strange. Can you suggest no possible explanation?
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Perhaps a stray leaf on my desk, a few indications
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: of the plot, a remark, who knows? Perhaps thought-matter is
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: floating in the air. Perhaps— but we had better not talk
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: of it now. It would needlessly excite you. You are right,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: answered Ernest gloomily. Let us not talk of it. But
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: whatever may be said, it is a marvellous play. You
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: flatter me. There is nothing in it that you may
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: not be able to do equally well. Someday. Ah, no,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the boy replied, looking up to Reginald with admiration. You
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: are the master. CHAPTER XIII. Lazily Ernest stretched his limbs
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: on the beach of Atlantic City. The sea, that purger
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: of sick souls, had washed away the fever and the
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: fret of the last few days. The wind was in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: his hair, and the spray was in his breath, while
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: the rays of the sun kissed his bare arms and legs.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: He rolled over in the glittering sand in the sheer
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: joy of living. Now and then a wavelet stole far
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: into the beach, as if to caress him, but pined
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: away ere it could reach its goal. It was as
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: if the enamored sea was stretching out its arms to him.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: Who knows, perhaps through the clear water some green-eyed nymph
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: or young sea-god with the tang of the sea in
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: his hair was peering amorously at the boy's red mouth.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: The people of the deep love the red warm blood
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: of humankind. It is always the young that they lure
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: to their watery haunts, never the shriveled limbs that totter
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: shivering to the grave. Such fancies came to Ernest as
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: he lay on the shore in his bathing attire, happy, thoughtless, animal.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: The sun and the sea seemed to him two lovers
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: vying for his favor. The sudden change of environment had
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: brought complete relaxation and had quieted his rebellious, assertive soul.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: He was no longer a solitary unit, but one with
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: wind and water, herb and beach and shell. Almost voluptuously
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: his hand toyed with the hot sand that glided caressingly
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: through his fingers and buried his breast and shoulder under
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: its glittering burden. A summer girl who passed lowered her
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: eyes coquettishly. He watched her without stirring. Even to open
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: his mouth or to smile would have seemed too much exertion.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: Thus he lay for hours. When at length noon drew nigh,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: it cost him a great effort of will to shake
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: off his drowsy mood and exchange his airy costume for
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: the conventional habiliments of the dining-room. He had taken lodgings
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: in a fashionable hotel. An unusual stroke of good luck,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: hack-work that paid outrageously well, had made it possible for
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: him to idle for a time without a thought of
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: the unpleasant necessity of making money. One single article to
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: which he signed his name only with reluctance had brought
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: to him more gear than a series of golden sonnets.' Surely,'
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: he thought,' the social revolution ought to begin from above.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: for a week's work almost more than I for a song?'
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: Thus soliloquizing, he reached the dining-room. The scene that unfolded
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: itself before him was typical— the table overloaded, the women overdressed.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: The luncheon was already in full course when he came.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: He mumbled an apology and seated himself on the only
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: remaining chair next to a youth who reminded him of
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: a well-dressed dummy. With slight weariness his eyes wandered in
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: all directions for more congenial faces when they were arrested
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: by a lady on the opposite side of the table.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: She was clad in a silk robe with curiously embroidered
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: network that revealed a nervous and delicate throat. The rich
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: effect of the network was relieved by the studied simplicity
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: with which her heavy chestnut-colored hair was gathered in a
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: single knot. Her face was turned away from him, but
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: there was something in the carriage of her head that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: struck him as familiar. When at last she looked him
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: in the face, the glass almost fell from his hand.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: It was Ethel Brandenburg. She seemed to notice his embarrassment
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: and smiled. When she opened her lips to speak, he
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: knew by the haunting sweetness of the voice that he
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: was not mistaken.' Tell me,' she said wistfully,' you have
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: forgotten me. They all have.' He hastened to assure her
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: that he had not forgotten her, He recollected now that
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: he had first been introduced to her in Walkham's house
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: some years ago, when a mere college boy, he had
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: been privileged to attend one of that master's famous receptions.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: She had looked quite resolute and very happy then, not
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: at all like the woman who had stared so strangely
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: at Reginald in the Broadway restaurant. He regarded this encounter
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: as very fortunate. He knew so much of her personal
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: history that it almost seemed to him as if they
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: had been intimate for years. She, too, felt on familiar
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: ground with him, neither as much as whispered the name
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: of Reginald Clark, yet it was he, and the knowledge
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: of what he was to them, that linked their souls
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: with a common bond. CHAPTER XIV It was the third
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: day after their meeting. Hour by hour their intimacy had increased.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: Ethel was sitting in a large wicker chair. She restlessly
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: fingered her parasol, mechanically describing magic circles in the sand.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Ernest lay at her feet. With his knees clasped between
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: his hands, he gazed into her eyes.' Why are you
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: trying so hard to make love to me?' the woman asked,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: with the half-amused smile with which the eve near thirty
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: receives the homage of a boy. There is an element
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: of insincerity in that smile, but it is a weapon
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: of defence against love's artillery. Sometimes, indeed, the pleading in
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the boy's eyes and the cry of the blood pierces
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: the woman's smiling superiority. She listens, loves, and loses.' Ethel
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: Brandenburg was listening, but the idea of love had not
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: yet entered into her mind. Her interest in Ernest was
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: due in part to his youth and the trembling in
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: his voice when he spoke of love. But what probably
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: attracted her most powerfully was the fact that he intimately
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: knew the man who still held her woman's heart in
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: the hollow of his hand. It was half in play, therefore,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: that she had asked him that question. Why did he
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: make love to her? He did not know. Perhaps it
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: was the irresistible desire to be petted which young poets
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: share with domesticated cats. But what should he tell her?
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Polite platitudes were out of place between them. Besides, he
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: knew the penalty of all tender entanglements. Women treat love
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: as if it were an extremely tenuous wire that can
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: be drawn out indefinitely. This is a very expensive process.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: It costs us the most precious, the only irretrievable thing
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: in the universe— time. And to him time was song, for
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: money he did not care. The Lord had hallowed his
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: lips with rhythmic speech. Only in the intervals of his
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: singing might he listen to the voice of his heart,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: strangest of all watches, that tells the time not by
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: minutes and hours, but by the coming and going of love.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: The woman beside him seemed to read his thoughts.' Child, child,'
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: she said,' why will you toy with love?' Like Jehovah,
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: he is a jealous God, and nothing but the whole
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: heart can placate him. Woe to the woman who takes
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: a poet for a lover! I admit it is fascinating,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: but it is playing va-bonk. In fact, it is fatal.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Art or love will come to harm. No man can
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: minister equally to both. A genuine poet is incapable of
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: loving a woman. Pshaw! You exaggerate. Of course there is
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: a measure of truth in what you say, but it
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: is only one side of the truth, and the truth,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: you know, is always Janus-faced. In fact, it often has
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: more than two faces. I can assure you that I
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: have cared deeply for the women to whom my love-poetry
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: was written, and you will not deny that it is genuine.''
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: God forbid! Only you have been using the wrong preposition.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: You should have said that it was written at them.'
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Ernest stared at her in childlike wonder.' By Jove! You
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: are too devilishly clever!' he exclaimed. After a little silence,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: he said, not without hesitation,' And do you apply your
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: theory to all artists, or only to us makers of rhyme?''
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: To all,' she replied. He looked at her questioningly.' Yes,'
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: she said, with a new sadness in her voice,' I
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: too have paid the price.'' You mean, I loved. And art?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: That was the sacrifice. Perhaps you have chosen the better part.'
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Ernest said without conviction.' No,' she replied.' My tribute was
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: brought in vain.' This she said calmly, but Ernest knew
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: that her words were of tragic import.' You love him still?'
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: he observed simply. Ethel made no reply. Sadness clouded her
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: face like a veil or like grey mist over the
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: face of the waters. Her eyes went out to the sea,
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: following the sombre flight of the sea-mews. In that moment
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: he could have taken her in his arms and kissed
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: her with infinite tenderness. But tenderness between man and woman
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: is like a match in a powder magazine. The least
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: provocation and an amorous explosion will ensue, tumbling down the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: card-houses of platonic affection. If he yielded to the impulse
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: of the moment, the wine of the spring-tide would set
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: their blood afire, and from the flames within us there
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: is no escape.' Come, come,' she said.' You do not
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: love me.' He protested.' Ah!' she cried triumphantly,' how many
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: sonnets would you give for me? If you were a
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: usurer in gold instead of in rime, I would ask
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: how many dollars. But it is unjust to pay in
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: a coin that we value little. To a man starving
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: all the treasures of the earth. To you, I warrant
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: your poems are the standard of appreciation. How many would
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: you give for me? One, two—' Three. More. Because you
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: think love would repay you with compound interest, she observed merrily.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: He laughed. And when love turns to laughter, the danger
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: is past for the moment. THE HOUSE OF THE VAMPIRE
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: by George Sylvester Virick Chapter 15 Thus three weeks passed
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: without apparent change in their relations. Ernest possessed a personal
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: magnetism that, always emanating from him, was felt most deeply
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: when withdrawn. He was at all times involuntarily exerting his power,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: which she ever resisted, always on the alert, always warding off.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: When at last pressure of work made his immediate departure
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: for New York imperative, he had not apparently gained the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: least ground. But Ethel knew in her heart that she
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: was fascinated, if not in love. The personal fascination was
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: supplemented by a motherly feeling toward Ernest, that, sensuous in
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: an essence, was in itself not far removed from love.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: She struggled bravely and with external success against her emotions,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: never losing sight of the fact that twenty and thirty
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: are fifty. Increasingly aware of her own weakness, she constantly
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: attempted to lead the conversation into impersonal channels, speaking preferably
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: of his work.' Tell me,' she said, negligently fanning herself,'
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: what new inspiration have you drawn from your stay at
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: the seaside?'' Why,' he exclaimed enthusiastically,' volumes and volumes of it.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: I shall write the great novel of my life after
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: I am once more quietly installed at Riverside Drive.'' The
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: great American novel,' she rejoined.' Perhaps.' Who will be your hero? Clark?'
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: There was a slight touch of malice in her words,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: or rather in the pause between the penultimate word and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: the last. Ernest detected its presence, and knew that her
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: love for Reginald was dead. Stiff and cold it lay
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: in her heart's chamber, beside how many others, all embossed
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: in the coffin of memory.' No,' he replied after a while,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: a little piqued by her suggestion.' Clark is not the hero.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: What makes you think that he casts a spell on
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: everything I do?' Dear child, she replied, I know him.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: He cannot fail to impress his powerful personality upon all
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: with whom he comes in contact, to the injury of
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: their intellectual independence. Moreover, he is so brilliant and says
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: everything so much better than anybody else, that by his
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: very splendor he discourages effort in others. At best, his
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: influence will shape your development according to the tenets of
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: his mind, curious, subtle, and corrupted. You will become mentally
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: distorted— like one of those hunchback Japanese trees, infinitely wrinkled
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: and infinitely grotesque, whose laws of growth are not determined
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: by nature, but by the diseased imagination of the East.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I am no weakling, Ernest asserted, and your picture of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: Clark is altogether out of perspective. His splendid successes are
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: to me a source of constant inspiration. We have some
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: things in common, but I realize that it is along
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: entirely different lines that success will come to me. He
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: has never sought to influence me. In fact, I never
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: received the smallest suggestion from him. Here the Princess Marigold
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: seemed to peer at him through the veil of the past,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: but he waved her aside. As for my story, he continued,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: you need not go so far out of your way
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: to find the leading character. Who can it be? Ethel
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: remarked with a merry twinkle. You? Ethel, he said sulkingly.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Be serious. You know that it is you. I am
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: immensely flattered, she replied. Really, nothing pleases me better than
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: to be immortalized in print, since I have little hope
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: nowadays of perpetuating my name by virtue of pencil or brush.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: I have been put into novels before, and am consumed
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: with curiosity to hear the plot of yours.'' If you
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: don't mind, I had rather not tell you just yet,'
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Ernest said.' It' s going to be called Leontina. That's you.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: But all depends on the treatment. You know it doesn't
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: matter much what you say so long as you say
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: it well. That's what counts.' At any rate, any indication
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: of the plot at this stage would be decidedly inadequate.''
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I think you are right,' she ventured.' By all means,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: choose your own time to tell me. Let's talk of
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: something else. Have you written anything since your delightful book
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: of verse last spring? Surely now is your singing season.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: By the time we are thirty the springs of pure
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: lyric passion are usually exhausted.' Ethel's inquiry somehow startled him.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: In truth he could find no satisfactory answer— A remark
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: relative to his play— Clark' s play— rose to the threshold of his lips,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: but he almost bit his tongue as soon as he
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: realized that the strange delusion which had possessed him that
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: night still dominated the undercurrents of his cerebration. No, he
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: had accomplished but little during the last few months, at
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: least by way of creative literature. So he replied that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: he had made money.' That is something,' he said.' Besides,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: who can turn out a masterpiece every week? An artist's
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: brain is not a machine.' and in the respite from
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: creative work I have gathered strength for the future. But,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: he said, slightly annoyed, you are not listening. His exclamation
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: brought her back from the train of thoughts that his
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: words had suggested, for in his reasoning she had recognized
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: the same arguments that she had hourly repeated to herself
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: in defense of her inactivity when she was living under
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the baneful influence of Reginald Clark. Yes, baneful, for the
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: first time she dared to confess it to herself. In
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: a flash the truth dawned upon her that it was
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: not her love alone, but something else, something irresistible and
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: very mysterious that had dried up the well of creation
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: in her. Could it be that the same power was
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: now exerting its influence upon the struggling soul of this
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: talented boy? Rack her brains as she might, she could
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: not definitely formulate her apprehensions, and a troubled look came
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: into her eyes.' Ethel,' the boy repeated impatiently,' why are
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: you not listening? Do you realize that I must leave
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: you in half an hour?' She looked at him with
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: deep tenderness. Something like a tear lent a soft radiance
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: to her large, childlike eyes. Ernest saw it and was
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: profoundly moved. In that moment he loved her passionately.' Foolish boy,'
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: she said softly, then lowering her voice to a whisper.'
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: You may kiss me before you go.' His lips gently
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: touched hers, but she took his head between her hands
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: and pressed her mouth upon his in a long kiss.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: Ernest drew back a little awkwardly. He had not been
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: kissed like this before. Poet though you are, Ethel whispered,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: you have not yet learned to kiss. She was deeply
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: agitated when she noticed that his hand was fumbling for
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: the watch in his vest pocket. She suddenly released him,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: and said, a little hurt, No, you must not miss
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: your train. Go, by all means. Vainly, Ernest remonstrated with her.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Go to him, she said, and again. Go to him.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: With a heavy heart, the boy obeyed, He waved his
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: hat to her once more from below, and then rapidly
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: disappeared in the crowd. For a moment strange misgivings cramped
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: her heart, and something within her called out to him,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: Do not go, do not return to that house. But
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: no sound issued from her lips. Worldly wisdom had sealed them,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: had stifled the inner voice. And soon the boy's golden
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: head was swallowed up in the distance. CHAPTER XVI While
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: the train sped to New York, Ethel Brandenburg was the
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: one object engaging Ernest's mind. He still felt the pressure
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: of her lips upon his, and his nostrils dilated at
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: the thought of the fragrance of her hair brushing against
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: his forehead. but the moment his foot touched the ferry-boat
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: that was to take him to Manhattan, the past three
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: weeks were, for the time being at least, completely obliterated
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: from his memory. All his other interests that he had
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: suppressed in her company because she had no part in
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: them came rushing back to him. He anticipated with delight
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: his meeting with Reginald Clark. The personal attractiveness of the
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: man had never seemed so powerful to Ernest as when
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: he had not heard from him for some time. Reginald's
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: letters were always brief. Professional writers, he was wont to say,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private correspondence,
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: they must turn it into copy. He longed to sit
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: with the master in the studio when the last rays
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: of the daylight were tremulously falling through the stained window,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: and to discuss far into the darkening night philosophies young
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: and old. He longed for Reginald's voice, his little mannerisms,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: the very perfume of his rooms. There was also a
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: deluge of letters likely to await him in his apartment— the
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: for in his hurried departure he had purposely left his
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: friends in the dark as to his whereabouts only to
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: jack he had dropped a little note the day after
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: his meeting with ethel he earnestly hoped to find reginald
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: at home though it was well nigh ten o'clock in
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: the evening and he cursed the rapid transit for its
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: inability to annihilate time and space It is indeed disconcerting
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: to think how many months, if not years, of our
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: earthly sojourn the dwellers in cities spend in transportation conveyances
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: that must be set down as a dead loss in
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: the ledger of life. A nervous impatience against things material
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: overcame Ernest in the subway. It is ever the mere
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: stupid obstacle of matter that weighs down the wings of
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: the soul and prevents it from soaring upward to the sun.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: When at last he had reached the house, he learned
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: from the hall-boy that Clark had gone out. Ruffled in temper,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: he entered his rooms and went over his mail. There
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: were letters from editors with commissions that he could not
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: afford to reject. Everywhere newspapers and magazines opened their yawning
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: mouths to swallow up what time he had. He realized
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: at once that he would have to postpone the writing
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: of his novel for several weeks, if not longer. Among
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: the letters was one from Jack. It bore the postmark
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: of a little place in the Adirondacks where he was
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 1: staying with his parents. Ernest opened the missive not without hesitation.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: On reading and re-reading it, the fine lines on his forehead,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: that would some day deepen into wrinkles, became quite pronounced
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and a look of displeasure darkened his face. Something was
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: wrong with Jack, a slight change that defied analysis. Their
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: souls were out of tune. It might only be a
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: passing disturbance. Perhaps it was his own fault. It pained
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: him nevertheless. Somehow it seemed of late that Jack was
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: no longer able to follow the vagaries of his mind—
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: Only one person in the world possessed a similar mental vision,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: only one seemed to understand what he said and what
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: he left unsaid. Reginald Clarke, being a man and poet,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: read in his soul as in an open book. Ethel
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: might have understood, had not love, like a cloud, laid
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: itself between her eyes and the page. It was with
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: exultation that Ernest heard near midnight the click of Reginald's
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: key in the door. He found him unchanged, completely, radiantly himself.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: Reginald possessed the psychic power of undressing the soul, of
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: seeing it before him in primal nakedness. Although no word
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: was said of Ethel Brandenburg except the mere mention of
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: her presence in Atlantic City, Ernest intuitively knew that Reginald
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: was aware of the transformation that absence had wrought in him.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: In the presence of this man he could be absolutely himself,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: without shame or fear of misunderstanding, and by a strange metamorphosis,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: all his affection for Ethel and Jack went out for
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: the time being to Reginald Clark. CHAPTER XVII. The next
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: day Ernest wrote a letter of more or less superficial
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: tenderness to Ethel. She had wounded his pride by proving
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: victorious in the end over his passion and hers. Besides,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: he was in the throes of work. When after the
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: third day no answer came, he was inclined to feel aggrieved.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: It was plain now that she had not cared for
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: him in the least, but had simply played with him
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: for lack of another toy. A flush of shame rose
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyze
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: his own emotions, and stunned, if not stabbed, his passion
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: step by step. Work was calling to him. It was
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: that which gave life its meaning, not the love of
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: a season. How far away, how unreal she now seemed
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: to him! Yes, she was right. He had not cared deeply.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: And his novel, too, would be written only at her.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his interest.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: not the living prototype. Once in a conversation with Reginald
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: he touched upon the subject. Reginald held that modern taste
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: no longer permitted even the photographer to portray life as
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: it is, but insisted upon an individual visualization. No man,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: he remarked, was ever translated bodily into fiction. In contradiction
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: to life, art is a process of artificial selection. Bearing
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: in mind this motive, Ernest went to work to mould
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: from the material in hand a new Ethel, more real
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: than life. Unfortunately, he found little time to devote to
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: his novel. It was only when, after a good day's work,
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: desk that he could think of concentrating his mind upon Leontina.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: The result was that, when he went to bed, his
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: imagination was busy with the plan of his book, and
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: his eyelid, so that he could not sleep. When at
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: last sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still at work,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: not in orderly sequence, but along trails monstrous and grotesque.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: Hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and leering incubi
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning he
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: awoke unrested. The tan vanished from his face, and little
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: lines appeared in the corners of his mouth. It was
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: as if his nervous vitality were sapped from him in
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often at night,
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: outside brought him back to himself. In one of his
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: morbid moods he wrote a sonnet which he showed to
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: Reginald after the latter's return from a short trip out
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: of town. Reginald read it, looking at the boy with
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: a curious, lurking expression. Oh, gentle sleep! Turn not thy
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: face away, but place thy finger on my brow, and
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: take all burdens from me and all dreams that ache.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay, seeing I am
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: a-weary of the day. But lo, thy lips are ashen
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: and they quake. What spectral vision sees thou that can
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: shake thy sweet composure and thy heart dismay? Perhaps some
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: murderer's cruel eye a gleam is fixed upon me, or
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: some monstrous dream might bring such fearful guilt upon the
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: head of my unvigilant soul as would arouse the Borgin
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: snake from her envenomed bed, or startle Nero in his
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: golden house. Good stuff, Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: When did you write it? The night when you were
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: out of town, Ernest rejoined. I see, Reginald replied. There
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: Ernest's attention.' What do you see?' he asked quickly.' Nothing,'
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: Reginald replied, with a movable calm.' Only that your state
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: of nerves is still far from satisfactory.' CHAPTER XVIII After
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: Ernest's departure, Ethel Brandenburg's heart was swaying hither and thither
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: back into chaos. A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: re-echoing with an ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: of love. His jeweled sentences glittered, but left her cold.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: They lacked that spontaneity which renders even simple and hackneyed
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: phrases wonderful and unique. Ethel clearly realized that her hold
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: upon the boy's imagination had been a fleeting midsummer night's charm,
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: and that a word from Reginald's lips had broken the
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: Reginald's visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: from between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason came
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: and whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: give her heart into the keeping of the boy. His love,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: she knew, would have been exacting, irritating at times. He
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: would have asked her to sympathize with every phase of
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: his life and would have expected active interest on her
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: part in much that she had done with long ago.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: Thus untruth would have stolen into her life and embittered it.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: When mates are unequal, love must paint its cheeks, and
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: in certain moods at least hide its face under a mask.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: sorrow in its train. These things she told herself over
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: and over again while she penned a cool and calculating
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: answer to Ernest's letter. She rewrote it many times, and
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: every time it became more difficult to reply. At last
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: she put her letter aside for a few days, and
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: when it fell again into her hand it seemed so
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: unnatural and strained that she destroyed it. Thus several weeks
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: had passed, and Ernest no longer exclusively occupied her mind,
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: when one day in early September, while glancing over a magazine,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: she came upon his name in the table of contents.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: Once more she saw the boy's wistful face before her,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: and a trembling something stirred in her heart. Her hand
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: shook as she cut the pages, and a mist of
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: tears clouded her vision as she attempted to read his poem.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: It was a piece of sombre brilliance. Like black-draped monks
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: half-crazed with mystic devotion, the poet's thoughts flitted across the page.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: It was the wail of a soul that feels reason
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: slipping from it, and beholds madness rise over its life
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: like a great pale moon. A strange unrest emanated from
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: it and took possession of her. And again— With an
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: insight that was prophetic, she distinctly recognized behind the vague
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: fear that had haunted the poet the figure of Reginald Clark.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: A half-forgotten dream, struggling to consciousness, staggered her by its vividness.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: She saw Clark as she had seen him in days
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: gone by, grotesquely transformed into a slimy sea-thing, whose hungry
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: mouth shut sucking upon her, and whose thousand tentacles encircled
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: her form. She closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: and in that moment it became clear to her that
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: she must take into her hands the salvation of Ernest
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Fielding from the clutches of the malign power that had
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: mysteriously enveloped his life. CHAPTER XIX The summer was brief,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: and already by the middle of September many had returned
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: to the pleasures of urban life. Ethel was among the first-comers,
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: for after her resolve to enter the life of the
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: young poet, once more, it would have been impossible for
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: her to stay away from the city much longer. Her
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: plan was all ready. Before attempting to see Ernest, she
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: would go to meet Reginald and implore him to free
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: the boy from his hideous spell. An element of curiosity
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: unconsciously entered her determination. When, years ago, she and Clark
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: had parted, the man had seemed for once greatly disturbed,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: and had promised, in his agitation, that some day he
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: would communicate to her what would exonerate him in her eyes.
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: She had answered that all words between them were purposeless,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: and that she hoped never to see his face again.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: The experience that the years had brought to her, instead
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: of elucidating the mystery of Reginald's personality, had, on the contrary,
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: made his behavior appear more and more unaccountable. She had
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: more than once caught herself wishing to meet him again,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: and to analyze dispassionately the puzzling influences he had exerted
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 1: upon her. And she could at last view him dispassionately.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: There was triumph in that. She was dimly aware that
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: something had passed from her, something by which he had
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: held her, and without which his magnetism was unable to
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: play upon her. So when Walkham sent her an invitation
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: to one of his artistic at-homes, she accepted, in the
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: hope of meeting Reginald. It was his frequentation of Walkham's
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: house that had for several years effectively barred her foot
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: from crossing the threshold. It was with a very strange
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: feeling that she greeted the many familiar faces at Walkham's now,
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: and when, toward ten o'clock, Reginald entered, politely bowing in
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: answer to the welcome from all sides, her heart beat
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: in her like a drum. But she calmed herself. and
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: catching his eye so arranged it that early in the
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: evening they met in an alcove of the drawing-room.' It
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: was inevitable,' Reginald said.' I expected it.'' Yes,' she replied.'
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: We were bound to meet.' Like a great rush of water,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: memory came back to her. He was still horribly fascinating
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: as of old, only she was no longer susceptible to
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: his fascination. He had changed somewhat in those years. The
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: lines about his mouth had grown harder— and a steel-like
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: look had come into his eyes. Only for a moment,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: as he looked at her, a flash of tenderness seemed
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: to come back to them. Then he said, with a
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: touch of sadness, Why should the first word between us
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: be a lie? Ethel made no answer. Reginald looked at
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: her half in wonder and said, And is your love
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: for the boy so great that it overcame your hate
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: of me? Ah, he knew. She winced. He has told you.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: Not a word. There was something superhuman in his power
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: of penetration. Why should she wear a mask before him,
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: when his eyes, like the eyes of God, pierced to
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: the core of her being? No, she replied. It is
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: not love, but compassion for him. Compassion? Yes, compassion for
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: your victim. You mean... Reginald. I am all ear. I
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: implore you. Speak. Speak. You have ruined one life. He
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: raised his eyebrows derogatively. Yes, she continued fiercely, ruined it.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: Is not that enough? I have never willfully ruined anyone's life.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: You have ruined mine. Willfully? How else shall I explain
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: your conduct? I warned you. Warning indeed, the warning that
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: the snake gives to the sparrow helpless under its gaze. Ah,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: but who tells you that the snake is to blame?
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: Is it not rather the occult power that prescribes with
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: blood on brazen scroll the law of our being? This
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: is no solace to the sparrow. But whatever may be said,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: let us drop the past. Let us consider the present.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: I beg of you, leave this boy, let him develop
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: without your attempting to stifle the life in him or
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: impressing upon it the stamp of your alien mind. Ethel,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: he protested, you are unjust. If you knew— Then an
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: idea seemed to take hold of him. He looked at
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: her curiously.' What if I knew?' she asked.' You shall know,'
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: he said simply.' Are you strong? Strong to withstand anything
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: at your hand. There is nothing that you can give me,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: nothing that you can take away.'' No,' he remarked.' Nothing. Yes,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: you have changed. Still, when I look upon you, the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: ghosts of the past seem to rise like live things.'
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: We both have changed. We now meet upon equal grounds.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: You are no longer the idol I made of you.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Don't you think that to the idol this might be
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: a relief, not a humiliation? It is a terrible torture
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: to sit in state with lips eternally shut. Sometimes there
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: comes over the most reticent of us a desire to
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: break through the eternal loneliness that surrounds the soul. It
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: is this feeling that prompts madmen to tear off their
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: clothes and exhibit their nakedness in the market-place. It's madness
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: on my part, or a whim, or I don't know what,
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: but it pleases me that you should know the truth.
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: You promised me long ago that I should. Today I
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: will redeem my promise, and I will tell you another
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: thing that you will find hard to believe. And that is?
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: That I loved you. Ethel smiled a little skeptically. You
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: have loved often. No, he replied. Loved, seriously loved. I
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: have only once. CHAPTER XX They were sitting in a
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: little Italian restaurant where they had often in the old
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: days lingered late into the night over a glass of
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: Lacrimae Christi, but no pale ghost of the past rose
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: from the wine, only a wriggling something with serpent eyes
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: that sent cold shivers down her spine and told her
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: speechless and entranced. When their order had been filled and
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: the waiter had posted himself at a respectful distance, Reginald began,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: at first leisurely, a man of the world. but as
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: he proceeded a strange exultation seemed to possess him, and
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: from his eyes leaped the flame of the mystic. You
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: must pardon me, he commenced, if I monopolize the conversation,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: but the revelations I have to make are of such
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: a nature that I may well claim your attention. I
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: will start with my earliest childhood. You remember the picture
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: of me that was taken when I was five. She remembered, indeed,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: each detail of his life was deeply engraven on her mind.'
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: At that time,' he continued,' I was not held to
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: be particularly bright. The reason was that my mind, being
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: pre-eminently and extraordinarily receptive, needed a stimulus from without. The
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: moment I was sent to school, however, a curious metamorphosis
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: took place in me. I may say that I became
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: at once the most brilliant boy in my class. You
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: know that, to this day, I have always been the
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: most striking figure in any circle in which I have
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: ever moved.' Ethel nodded assent. Silently watching the speaker, she
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: saw a gleam of the truth from afar, but still
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: very distant and very dim. Reginald lifted the glass against
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: the light and gulped its contents. Then, in a lower voice,
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: he recommenced, Like the chameleon, I have the power of
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: absorbing the color of my environment. Do you mean that
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: you have the power of absorbing the special virtues of
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: other people? she interjected. That is exactly what I mean. Oh!
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: she cried, for in a heartbeat many things had become
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: clear to her, for the first time she realized, still
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: vaguely but with increasing vividness, the hidden causes of her ruin,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: and still more plainly, the horrible danger of Ernest Fielding.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: He noticed her agitation, and a look of psychological curiosity
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: came into his eyes. eyes.' Ah, but that is not all,'
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: he observed smilingly.' That is nothing. We all possess that
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: faculty in a degree. The secret of my strength is
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: my ability to reject every element that is harmful or
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: inessential to the completion of myself. This did not come
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: to me easily,' nor without a struggle. But now, looking
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: back upon my life, many things became transparent that were
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: obscure even to me at the time. I can now
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: follow the fine-spun threads in the intricate web of my fate,
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: and discover in the wilderness of meshes a design, awful
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: and grandly planned. His voice shook with conviction as he
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: uttered these words. There was something strangely gruesome in this
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: man— a It was thus that she had pictured to herself
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: the high priest of some terrible and mysterious religion, demanding
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: a human sacrifice to appease the hunger of his God.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: She was fascinated by the spell of his personality, and
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: listened with a feeling not far removed from awe. But
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: Reginald suddenly changed his tone and proceeded in a more
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: conversational manner. The first friend I ever cared for was
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: a boy marvelously endowed for the study of mathematics. At
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: the time of our first meeting at school, I was
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: unable to solve even the simplest algebraical problem. But when
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: we had been together only for half a month, when
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: we exchanged parts, it was I who was the mathematical
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: genius now, whereas he became hopelessly dull and stuttered through
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: his recitations only with a struggle that brought the tears
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: to his eyes. Then I discarded him.' Heartless,' you say.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: I have come to know better. Have you ever tasted
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: a bottle of wine that had been uncorked for a
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: long time?' If you have, you have probably found it flat.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: The essence was gone, evaporated. Thus it is when we
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: care for people. Probably, no assuredly, there is some principle
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: prisoned in their souls or in the windings of their brains,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: which when escaped leaves them insipid, unprofitable, and devoid of
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: interest to us. Sometimes this essence, not necessarily the finest
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: element in a man's or a woman's nature, but soul-stuff
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: that we lack, disappears. In fact, it invariably disappears. It
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: may be that it has been transformed in the process
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: of their growth. It may also be that it has
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: utterly vanished by some inadvertence, or that we ourselves have
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: absorbed it. Then we throw them away, Ethel asked, pale
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: but dry-eyed. A shudder passed through her body and she
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: clenched her glass nervously. At that moment Reginald resembled a
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: veritable prince of darkness, sinister and beautiful, painted by the
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: hand of a modern master. Then, for a space, he
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: again became the man of the world. Smiling and self-possessed,
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: he filled the glasses, took a long sip of the wine,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: and resumed his narrative. That boy was followed by others.
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I absorbed many useless things, and some that were evil.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: I realized that I must direct my absorptive propensities. This
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: I did. I selected— selected well. And all the time the
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: terrible power of which I was only half-conscious grew within me.'
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: It is indeed a terrible power,' she cried, all the
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: more terrible for its subtlety.' Had I not myself been
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: its victim, I should not now find it possible to
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: believe in it.' The invisible hand that smites in the
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: dark is certainly more fearful than a visible foe.' It
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: is also more merciful.' Think how much you would have
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: suffered had you been conscious of your loss.' Still, it
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: seems even now to me that it cannot have been
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: an utter irreparable loss There is no action without reaction.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: Even I, even we must have received from you some
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: compensation for what you have taken away. In the ordinary
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: processes of life the law of action and reaction is
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: indeed potent, but no law is without its exception. Think
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: of radium, for instance, with its constant and seemingly inexhaustible
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: outflow of energy. It is a difficult thing to imagine,
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: but our scientific men have accepted it as a fact.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: Why should we find it more difficult to conceive of
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: a tremendous and infinite absorptive element? I feel sure that
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: it must somewhere a phenomenon in the physical world finds
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: its counterpart in the psychical universe. There are radium souls
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: that radiate without loss of energy, but also without increase.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: And there are souls, the reverse of radium, with unlimited
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: absorptive capabilities. Vampire souls, she observed with a shudder, and
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: her face blanched.' No,' he said.' Don' t say that.' And
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: then he suddenly seemed to grow in stature. His face
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: was ablaze like the face of a god.' In every age,'
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: he replied with solemnity,' there are giants who attain to
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: a greatness which by natural growth no men could ever
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: have reached. But in their youth a vision came to them,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: which they set out to seek. They take the stones
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: of fancy to build them a palace in the kingdom
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: of truth, projecting into reality dreams— monstrous and impossible. Often
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: they fail, and tumbling from their airy heights end a
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: quixotic career. Some succeed. They are the chosen. Carpenters' sons
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: they are who have laid down the law of a
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: world for millenniums to come, or simple Corsicans, before whose
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: eagle eyes have quaked the kingdoms of the earth. but
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: to accomplish their mission they need a will of iron
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: and the wit of a hundred men, and from the
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: iron they take the strength, and from a hundred men's
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: brains they absorb their wisdom. Divine missionaries, they appear in
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: all departments of life. In their hand is gathered to-day
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: the gold of the world. Mighty potentates of peace and war,
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: they unlock new seas and from distant continents lift the bars.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: Single-handed they accomplish what nations dared not hope, With titan
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: strides they scale the stars and succeed where millions fail.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: In art they live, the makers of new periods, the
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: dreamers of new styles. They make themselves the vocal sunglasses
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: of God. Homer and Shakespeare, Hugo and Balzac, they concentrate
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: the dispersed rays of a thousand lesser luminaries in one
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: singing flame that, like a giant torch, lights up humanity's path.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: She gazed at him, open-mouthed. The light had gone from
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: his visage. He paused, exhausted, but even then he looked
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: the incarnation of a force no less terrible, no less grand.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: She grasped the immensity of his conception, but her woman's
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: soul rebelled at the horrible injustice to those whose light
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: is extinguished, as hers had been, to feed an alien flame.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: And then, for a moment, she saw the pale face
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: of Ernest staring at her out of the wine.' Cruel,'
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: she sobbed.' How cruel!'' What matter?' he asked. Their strength
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: is taken from them, but the spirit of humanity, as
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: embodied in us, triumphantly marches on. CHAPTER XXI. Reginald's revelations
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: were followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: officiousness of the waiter. The spell once broken, they exchanged
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: a number of more or less irrelevant observations. Ethel's mind
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: returned again and again to the word he had not spoken.
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: He had said nothing of the immediate bearing of his
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: monstrous power upon her own life and that of Ernest Fielding.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: At last, somewhat timidly, she approached the subject.' You said
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: you loved me,' she remarked. I did. But why, then?
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: I could not help it. Did you ever make the
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: slightest attempt? In the horrible night hours I struggled against it.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: I even implored you to leave me. Ah, but I
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: loved you. You would not be warned. You would not listen.
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: You stayed with me, and slowly, surely, the creative urge
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: went out of your life. But what on earth could
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: you find in my poor art to attract you, What
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: were my pictures to you? I needed them. I needed you.
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: It was a certain something, a rich color effect, perhaps.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: And then, under your very eyes, the color that vanished
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: from your canvases reappeared in my prose. My style became
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: more luxurious than it had been, while you tortured your
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: soul in the vain attempt of calling back to your
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: brush what was irretrievably lost. Why did you not tell me?
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: you would have laughed in my face, and I could
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: not have endured your laugh. Besides, I always hoped until
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 1: it was too late that I might yet check the
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: mysterious power within me. Soon, however, I became aware that
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: it was beyond my control. The unknown God whose instrument
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: I am had wisely made it stronger than me.' But why,'
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 1: retorted Ethel,' was it necessary to discard me like a
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: cast-off garment, like a wanton who has lost the power
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: to please?' Her frame shook with the remembered emotion of
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: that moment, when years ago he had politely told her
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: that she was nothing to him.' The law of being,'
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: Reginald replied, almost sadly.' The law of my being. I
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: should have pitied you, but the eternal reproach of your
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: suffering only provoked my anger. I cared less for you
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: every day, and when I had absorbed all of you
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: that my growth required, you were to me as one dead,
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: as a stranger you were.' there was between us no
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: further community of interest. Henceforth, I knew, our lives must
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: move in totally different spheres. You remember that day when
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: we said good-bye.'' You mean that day when I lay
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: before you on my knees,' she corrected him.' The day
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: I buried my last dream of personal happiness. I would
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: have gladly raised you from the floor, but love was
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: utterly gone.' If I am tenderer to-day than I am
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: wont to be, it is because you mean so much
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: to me as the symbol of my renunciation. When I
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: realized that I could not even save the thing I
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: loved from myself, I became hardened and cruel to others.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: Not that I know no kindly feeling, but no qualms
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: of conscience lay their prostrate forms across my path. There
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: is nothing in life for me but my mission. His
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: face was bathed in ecstasy. The pupils were luminous, large,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: and threatening— He had the look of a madman or
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: a prophet. After a while, Ethel remarked,' But you have
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: grown into one of the master figures of the age.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: Why not be content with that? Is there no limit
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: to your ambition?' Reginald smiled.' Ambition! Shakespeare stopped when he
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: had reached his full growth, when he had exhausted the
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: capacities of his contemporaries. I am not yet ready to
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: lay down my pen and rest.'' And will you always
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: continue in this criminal course, a murderer of other lives?'
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: He looked her calmly in the face.' I do not know.''
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: Are you the slave of your unknown God?'' We are
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes.' You, Ernest, I.' There is no
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: freedom on the face of the earth nor above.' The
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: tiger that tears a lamb is not free.' I am
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: not free.' You are not free.' All that happens must happen.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: No word that is said is said in vain. In
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: vain is raised no hand.'' Then,' Ethel retorted eagerly,' if
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: I attempted to wrest your victim from you, I should
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: also be the tool of your God?'' Assuredly. But I
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: am his chosen.'' Can you— can you not set him free?''
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: I need him— a little longer. Then he is yours.' But
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: can you not, if I beg you again on my knees,
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: at least loosen his chains before he is utterly ruined?
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: It is beyond my power. If I could not rescue you,
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: whom I loved, what in heaven or on earth can
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: save him from his fate? Besides, he will not be
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: utterly ruined. It is only a part of him that
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: I absorb. In his soul are cords that I have
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: not touched. They may vibrate one day when he has
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: gathered new strength. You, too, would have spared yourself much
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: pain had you striven to attain success in different fields,
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: not where I had garnered the harvest of a lifetime.
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: It is only a portion of his talent that I
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: take from him. The rest I cannot harm. Why should
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: he bury that remainder? His eyes strayed through the window
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: to the firmament, as if to say that words could
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: no more bend his indomitable will than alter the changeless
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: course of the stars. Ethel had half forgotten the wrong
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: she had herself suffered at his hands— He could not
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: be measured by ordinary standards, this dazzling madman, whose diseased
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: will-power had assumed such uncanny proportions. But here a young
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: life was at stake. In her mind's eye she saw
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: Reginald crush between his relentless hands the delicate soul of
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: Ernest Fielding, as a magnificent carnivorous flower might close its
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: glorious petals upon a fly. Love, all-conquering love, welled up
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: in her. She would fight for Ernest as a tiger-cat
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: fights for its young. She would place herself in the
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: way of the awful force that had shattered her own aspirations,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: and save, at any cost, the brilliant boy who did
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: not love her. CHAPTER XXII The last rays of the
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: late afternoon sun fell slanting through Ernest's window. He was
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: lying on his couch in a leaden, death-like slumber that,
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: for the moment at least, was not even perturbed by
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: the presence of Reginald Clarke. The latter was standing at
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: the boy's bedside, calm, unmoved as ever. The excitement of
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: his conversation with Ethel had left no trace on the
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: chiseled contour of his forehead. Smilingly fastening an orchid of
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: an indefinable purple tint in his evening coat, radiant, buoyant
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: with life, he looked down upon the sleeper. Then he
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: passed his hand over Ernest's forehead, as if to wipe
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: off beads of sweat. At the touch of his hand
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: the boy stirred uneasily. When it was not withdrawn, his
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: countenance twitched in pain. He moaned as men moan under
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: the influence of some anesthetic, without possessing the power to
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: break through the narrow partition that separates them from death
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: on the one side and from consciousness on the other.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: At last a sigh struggled to his seemingly paralyzed lips,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: then another. Finally the babbling became articulate.' For God's sake!'
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: he cried in his sleep.' Take that hand away!' and
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: all at once the benignant smile on Reginald's features was
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: changed to a look of savage fierceness, he no longer
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 1: resembled the man of culture, but a disappointed, snarling beast
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: of prey. He took his hand from Ernest's forehead, and
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: retired cautiously through the half-open door. Hardly had he disappeared
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: when Ernest woke. For a moment he looked around, like
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: a hunted animal, then sighed with relief and buried his
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: head in his hand. At that moment a knock at
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: the door was heard, and Reginald re-entered. calm as before.'
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: I declare,' he exclaimed,' you have certainly been sleeping the
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: sleep of the just.'' It isn't laziness,' Ernest replied, looking
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: up rather pleased at the interruption,' but I have a
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: splitting headache. Perhaps those naps are not good for your health.'' Probably.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 1: But of late I have frequently found it necessary to
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: exact from the day-hours the sleep which the night refuses me.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: I suppose it is all due to indigestion, as you
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: have suggested.' The stomach is the source of all evil.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: It is also the source of all good. The Greeks
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: made it the seat of the soul. I have always
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: claimed that the most important item in a great poet's
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: biography is an exact reproduction of his menu. True, a
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: man who eats a heavy beefsteak for breakfast in the
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: morning is incapable of writing a sonnet in the afternoon. Yes,
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: Reginald added, we are what we eat, and what our
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: forefathers have eaten before us. I ascribe the staleness of
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: American poetry to the griddle-cakes of our Puritan ancestors. I
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: am sorry we cannot go deeper into the subject at present,
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: but I have an invitation to dinner where I shall study, experimentally,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: the influence of French sauces on my versification. Good-bye. Au revoir.
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: And with a wave of the hand Reginald left the room.
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: When the door had closed behind him, Ernest's thoughts took
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: a more serious turn. The tone of light bantering in
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: which the preceding conversation had taken place had been assumed
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: on his part. For the last few weeks evil dreams
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: had tortured his sleep and cast their shadow upon his
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: waking hours. They had ever increased in reality, in intensity,
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: and in hideousness. Even now he could see the long,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: tapering fingers that every night were groping in the windings
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: of his brain. It was a well-formed, manicured hand that
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: seemed to reach under his skull— carefully feeling its way
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: through the myriad convolutions where thought resides. And oh, the
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: agony of it all! A human mind is not a
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: thing of stone, but alive, horribly alive to pain. What
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: was it those fingers sought? What mysterious treasures? What jewels
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: hidden in the underlayer of his consciousness? His brain was
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: like a human goldmine, quaking under the blow of the
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: pick and the tread of the miner. The miner! Ah,
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 1: the miner! Ceaselessly, thoroughly, relentlessly, he opened vein after vein
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: and wrested untold riches from the quivering ground. But each
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: vein was a live vein, and each nugget of gold
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: a thought. No wonder the boy was a nervous wreck.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: Whenever a tremulous nascent idea was formulating itself, the dream-hand
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: clutched it and took it away, brutally severing the fine
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: threads that bind thought to thought. And when the morning came,
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: how his head ached! It was not an acute pain—
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: but dull, heavy, incessant. These sensations, Ernest frequently told himself,
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: were morbid fantasies. But then the monomaniac who imagines that
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: his arms have been mangled or cut from his body
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: might as well be without arms. Mind can annihilate obstacles.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 1: It can also create them. Psychology was no unfamiliar ground
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: to Ernest, and it was not difficult for him to
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: seek in some casual suggestion an explanation for his delusion—
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: the fixed notion that haunted him day and night. But
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: he also realized that to explain a phenomenon is not
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: to explain it away. The man who analyzes his emotions
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: cannot wholly escape them, and the shadow of fear, primal,
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: inexplicable fear, may darken at moments of weakness the life
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: of the subtlest psychologist and the cleverest thinker. He had
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: never spoken to Reginald of his terrible nightmares. Coming on
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: the heel of the fancy that he, Ernest, had written
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: The Princess with the Yellow Veil, A fancy, by the way,
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: had again possessed him of late. This new delusion would
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: certainly arouse suspicion as to his sanity in Reginald's mind.
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: He would probably send him to a sanitarium. He certainly
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: would not keep him in the house. Beneficence itself and
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: all other things, his host was not to be trifled
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 1: with in any matter that interfered with his work. He
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 1: would act swiftly and without mercy. For the first time
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: in many days Ernest thought of Abel Felton. Poor boy!
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: What had become of him after he had been turned
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: from the house? He would not wait for anyone to
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: tell him to pack his bundle. But then that was impossible.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Reginald was fond of him. Suddenly Ernest's meditations were interrupted
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: by a noise at the outer door. A key was
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: turned in the lock. It must be he. But why
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: so soon? What could have brought him back at this hour?
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: He opened the door and went out into the hall
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: to see what had happened. The figure that he beheld
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: was certainly not the person he expected, but a woman,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: from whose shoulders a theatre cloak fell in graceful folds,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: probably a visitor for Reginald. Ernest was about to withdraw discreetly,
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: when the electric light that was burning in the hallway
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: fell upon her face and illumined it. Then, indeed, surprise
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: overcame him.' Ethel!' he cried.' Is it you?' End of
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: Section 11 CHAPTER XXIII. Ernest conducted Ethel Brandenburg to his
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: room and helped her to remove her cloak. While he
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 1: was placing the garment upon the back of a chair,
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: she slipped a little key into her handbag. He looked
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: at her with a question in his eyes.' Yes,' she replied.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: I kept the key, but I had not dreamed that
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: I would ever again cross this threshold. Meanwhile it had
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: grown quite dark, the reflection of the street lanterns without
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: dimly lit the room, and through the twilight fantastic shadows
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: seemed to dance. The perfume of her hair pervaded the
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: room and filled the boy's heart with romance. Tenderness long
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 1: suppressed called with a thousand voices. The hour, the strangeness
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: and unexpectedness of her visit, perhaps even a boy's pardonable
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: vanity— roused passion from its slumbers, and once again wrought
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: in Ernest's soul the miracle of love. His arm encircled
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: her neck, and his lips stammered blind, sweet, crazy, and
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: caressing things.' Turn on the light,' she pleaded.' You are
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: not always so cruel.'' No matter. I have not come
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: to speak of love.'' Why, then, have you come?' Ernest
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: felt a little awkward, disappointed as he uttered these words.'
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: What could have induced her to come to his rooms?'
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: He loosened his hold on her and did as she asked.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: How pale she looked in the light! How beautiful! Surely
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: she had sorrowed for him, but why had she not
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: answered his letter? Yes, why?' Your letter?' She smiled a
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: little sadly.' Surely you did not expect me to answer that.''
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: Why not?' He had again approached her, and his lips
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: were close to hers.' Why not? I have yearned for you.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: I love you.' His breath intoxicated her. It was like
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: a subtle perfume— Still she did not yield. You love
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: me now. You did not love me then. The music
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: of your words was cold, machine-made, strained, and superficial. I
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: shall not answer, I told myself. In his heart he
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: has forgotten you. I did not then realize that a
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: dangerous force had possessed your life and crushed in your
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: mind every image but its own. I don't understand. Do
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: you think I would have come here if it were
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: a mere light matter? No, I tell you, it is
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: a matter of life and death to you, at least
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: as an artist.'' What do you mean by that?'' Have
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: you done a stroke of work since I last saw you?'' Yes.
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: Let me see. Surely, magazine articles and a poem.'' That
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: is not what I wanted to know. Have you accomplished
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: anything big? Have you grown since this summer? How about
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: your novel?'' I— I have almost finished it in my mind,
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: but I have found no chance to begin with the
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: actual writing. I was sick of late— very sick.' no doubt
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: of it. His face was pinched and pale, and the
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: lines about the mouth were curiously contorted, like those of
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: a man suffering from a painful internal disease.' Tell me,'
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: she ventured, 'do you ever miss anything?'' Do you mean,
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: are there thieves?'' Thieves! Against thieves one can protect oneself!'
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: He stared at her wildly, half frightened, in anticipation of
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: some dreadful revelation.' His dream! His dream! That hand!' Could
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: it be more than a dream? God! His lips quivered.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: Ethel observed his agitation, and continued more quietly, but with
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: the same insistence. Have you ever had ideas, plans that
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: you began without having strength to complete them? Have you
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: had glimpses of vocal visions that seemed to vanish no
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: sooner than seen? Did it ever seem to you as
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: if some mysterious and superior will brutally interfered with the
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: workings of your brain? Did it seem so to him?
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: He himself could not have stated more plainly the experience
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 1: of the last few months. Each word fell from her
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: lips like the blow of a hammer. Shivering, he put
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: his arm around her, seeking solace, not love. This time
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: she did not repulse him, and trustingly, as a child
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: confides to his mother, he depicted to her the suffering
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: that harrowed his life and made it a hell. As
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: she listened, indignation clouded her forehead, while rising tears of
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: anger and of love weighed down her lashes— she could
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: bear the pitiful sight no longer.' Child!' she cried, 'do
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: you know who your tormentor is?' And like a flash
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: the truth passed from her to him. A sudden intimation
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: told him what her words had still concealed.' Don' t! For
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: Christ's sake, do not pronounce his name!' he sobbed.' Do
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: not breathe it! I could not endure it! I should
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: go mad!' CHAPTER XXIV Very quietly, with difficulty restraining her
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: own emotion so as not to excite him further, Ethel
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: had related to Ernest the story of her remarkable interview
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: with Reginald Clark. In the long silence that ensued, the
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: wings of his soul brushed against hers for the first time,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: and love by a thousand tender chains of common suffering
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: welded their beings into one. Caressingly the ivory of her
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: fingers passed through the gold of his hair and over
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: his brow, as if to banish the demon eyes that
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: stared at him across the hideous spaces of the past.
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: In a rush a thousand incidents came back to him,
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: mute witnesses of a damning truth. His play, the dreams
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: that tormented him, his own inability to concentrate his mind
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: upon his novel which hitherto he had ascribed to nervous disease,
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: all piling fact on fact, became one monstrous monument of
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: Reginald Clarke's crime. At last, Ernest understood the parting words
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: of Abel Felton, and the look in Ethel's eye on
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: the night when he had first linked his fate with
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: the other man's. Walkham's experience, too— and Reginald's remarks on
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: the busts of Shakespeare and Balzac unmistakably pointed toward the
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: new and horrible spectre that Ethel's revelation had raised in
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: place of his host. And then, again, the other Reginald appeared,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: crowned with the lyric wreath. From his lips golden cadences fell,
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: sweeter than the smell of many flowers or the sound
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: of a silver bell. He was once more the divine master,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: whose godlike features bore no trace of malice, and who
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: had raised him to a place very near his heart.' No,'
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: he cried.' It is impossible. It's all a dream, a
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: horrible nightmare.'' But he has himself confessed it,' she interjected.'
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: Perhaps he has spoken in symbols. We all absorb to
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: some extent other men's ideas without robbing them and wrecking
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: their thought-life. Reginald may be unscrupulous in the use of
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: his power of impressing upon others the stamp of his master-mind.
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: So was Shakespeare. No, no, no!' You are mistaken. We
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: were both deluded for the moment by his picturesque account
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 1: of a common, not even a discreditable fact. He may
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 1: himself have played with the idea, but surely he cannot
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: have been serious.'' And your own experience? And Abel Felton's
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: and mine? Can they too be dismissed with a shrug
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: of the shoulder?'' But come to think of it, the
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: whole theory seems absurd. It is unscientific. It is not
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: even a case of mesmerism. If he had said that
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: he hypnotized his victims, the matter would assume a totally
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 1: different aspect.' I admit that something is wrong somewhere, and
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: that the home of Reginald Clark is no healthful abode
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 1: for me, but you must also remember that probably we
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: are both unstrung to the point of hysteria.' But to
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: Ethel his words carried no conviction.' You are still under
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: his spell,' she cried anxiously. A little shaken in his confidence,
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: Ernest resumed,' Reginald is utterly incapable of such an action,
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: even granting that he possesses the terrible power of which
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: you speak. A man of his splendid resources—' A literary Midas,
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: at whose touch every word turns into gold, is under
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: no necessity to prey on the thoughts of others. Circumstances,
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: I admit, are suspicious, but in the light of common
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: day this fanciful theory shrivels into nothing. Any court of
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: law would reject our evidence as madness. It is too
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: utterly fantastic, utterly alien to any human experience.'' Is it, though?'
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: Ethel replied with peculiar intonation.' Why, what do you mean?''
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 1: Surely—' she answered. You must know that in the legends
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: of every nation we read of men and women who
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 1: were called vampires. They are beings, not always wholly evil,
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: whom every night some mysterious impulse leads to steal into
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: unguarded bedchambers, to suck the blood of the sleepers, and
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: then having waxed strong in the life of their victims,
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: cautiously to retreat. Thence comes it that their lips are
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: very red. It is even said that they can find
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: no rest in the grave, but return to their former
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: haunts long after they are believed to be dead. Those
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 1: whom they visit, however, pine away for no apparent reason.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: The physicians shake their wise heads and speak of consumption.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: But sometimes ancient chronicles assure us the people's suspicions were aroused,
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: and under the leadership of good priests they went in
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: solemn procession to the graves of the person suspected, and
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: on opening the tombs it was found that their coffins
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: had rotted away and the flowers in their hair were black,
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: but their bodies were white and whole. Through no empty
• 2:08:13
  Speaker 1: sockets crept the vermin, and their sucking lips were still
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: moist with a little blood. Ernest was carried away in
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: spite of himself by her account, which vividly resembled his
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: own experience. Still he would not give in.' All this
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: is impressive. I admit it is very impressive. But you
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: yourself speak of such stories as legends. They are unfounded
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: upon any tangible fact. And you cannot expect a man
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 1: schooled in modern sciences to admit, as having any possible
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: bearing upon his life, the crude belief of the Middle Ages.''
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: Why not?' she responded. Our scientists have proved true the
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: wildest theories of medieval scholars. The transmutation of metals seems
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: today no longer an idle speculation, and radium has transformed
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: into potential reality the dream of perpetual motion. The fundamental
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: notions of mathematics are being undermined. One school of philosophers
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: claims that the number of angles in a triangle is
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: equal to more than two right angles. Another propounds that
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: it is less. Even great scientists who have studied the
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: soul of nature are turning to spiritualism. The world is
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: overcoming the shallow skepticism of the nineteenth century. Life has
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: become once more wonderful and very mysterious. But it also
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: seems that, with the miracles of the old days, their terrors,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: their nightmares, and their monsters have come back in a
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: modern guise.' Ernest became even more thoughtful.' Yes,' he observed,'
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: there is something in what you say.' Then, pacing the
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: room nervously, he exclaimed,' And still I find it impossible
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: to believe your explanation.' Reginald, a vampire! It seems so ludicrous.
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: If you had told me that such creatures exist somewhere
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: far away, I might have discussed the matter. But in
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: this great city, in the shadow of the Flatiron building, no!
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: She replied with warmth. Yet they exist, have always existed,
• 2:10:02
  Speaker 1: not only in the Middle Ages, but at all times
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: and in all regions. There is no nation but has
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 1: some record of them in one form or another. And
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: don't you think if we find a thought, no matter
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: how absurd it may seem to us, that has ever
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: occupied the minds of men, if we find, I say,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: such a perennially recurrent thought, are we not justified in
• 2:10:21
  Speaker 1: assuming that it must have some basis in the actual
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: experience of mankind?' Ernest's brow became very clouded, and infinite
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: numbers of hidden premature wrinkles began to show. How wan
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: he looked, and how frail! He was as one lost
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: in a labyrinth in which he saw no light, convinced
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: against his will, or rather against his scientific conviction, that
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: she was not wholly mistaken. Still, he observed triumphantly, your
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: vampires suck blood. But Reginald, if vampire he be, preys
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: upon the soul. How can a man suck from another
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: man's brain a thing as intangible as quintessentialist thought? Ah,
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: she replied, you forget, thought is more real than blood.
• 2:11:06
  Speaker 1: End of section twelve Section thirteen XXV. Only three hours
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: had passed since Ethel had startled Ernest from his somber reveries,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: but within this brief space their love had matured as
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: if each hour had been a year. The pallor had
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: vanished from his cheeks and the restiveness from his eyes.
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: The intoxication of her presence had rekindled the light of
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: his countenance and given him strength to combat the mighty
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: forces embodied in Reginald Clark. The child in him had
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: made room for the man. He would not hear of
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 1: surrendering without a struggle, and Ethel felt sure she might
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: leave his fate in his own hand. Love had lent
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: him a coat of mail. He was warned and would
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: not succumb. Still she made one more attempt to persuade
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: him to leave the house at once with her. I
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: must go now. she said.' Will you not come with me,
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: after all? I am so afraid to think of you
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 1: still here.'' No, dear,' he replied,' I shall not desert
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: my post. I must solve the riddle of this man's life.
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: And if indeed he is the thing he seems to be,
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: I shall attempt to wrest from him what he has
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 1: stolen from me. I speak of my unwritten novel.'' Do
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: not attempt to oppose him openly. You cannot resist him.''
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: Be assured that I shall be on my guard.' I
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 1: have in the last few hours lived through so much
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: that makes life worth living that I would not wantonly
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 1: expose myself to any danger. Still, I cannot go without certainty— cannot,
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: if there is some truth in our fears, leave the
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: best of me behind.' What are you planning to do?''
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: My play. I am sure now that it is mine.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: I cannot take from him. That is irretrievably lost. He
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: has read it to his circle and prepared for its publication.'
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: and no matter how firmly convinced you or I may
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: be of his strange power, no one would believe our testimony.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 1: They would pronounce us mad. Perhaps we are mad. No,
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: we are not mad, but it is mad for you
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: to stay here, she asserted. I shall not stay here
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 1: one minute longer than is absolutely essential. Within a week
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: I shall have conclusive proof of his guilt or innocence.
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: How will you go about it? His writing-table. Ah! Yes,
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: perhaps I can discover some note, some indication, some proof.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: It's a dangerous game. I have everything to gain. I
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: wish I could stay here with you, she said. Have
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: you no friend, no one whom you could trust in
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 1: this delicate matter? Why, yes, Jack. A shadow passed over
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: her face. Do you know, she said, I have a
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: feeling that you care more for him than for me. Nonsense,
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: he said. He is my friend. You, you immeasurably more.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: Are you still as intimate with him as when I
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: first met you? Not quite. Of late, a troubling something
• 2:14:20
  Speaker 1: like a thin veil seems to have passed between us.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: But he will come when I call him. He will
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: not fail me in my hour of need. When can
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: he be here? In two or three days. Meanwhile, be
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: very careful. Above all, lock your door at night. I
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: will not only lock, but barricade it. I shall try
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: with all my power to elucidate this mystery without, however,
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 1: exposing myself to needless risks. I will go, then. Kiss
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: me good-bye. May I not take you to the car?
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: You had better not. At the door she turned back
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: once more.' Write me every day, or call me up
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: on the telephone.' He straightened himself, as if to convince
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: her of his strength. Yet when at last the door
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: had closed behind her, his courage forsook him for a moment.
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: and if he had not been ashamed to appear a
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: weakling before the woman he loved, who knows if any
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: power on earth could have kept him in that house
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 1: where from every corner a secret seemed to lurk. There
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: was a misgiving, too, in the woman's heart as she
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 1: left the boy behind, a prey to the occult power that,
• 2:15:23
  Speaker 1: seeking expression in multiple activities, has made and unmade emperors, prophets,
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 1: and poets. As she stepped into a streetcar, she saw
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: from afar, as in a vision, the face of Reginald Clarke.
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: It seemed very white and hungry. There was no human
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: kindness in it, only a threat and a sneer. CHAPTER
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: XXVI For over an hour, Ernest paced up and down
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 1: his room, wildly excited by Ethel's revelations. It required an
• 2:15:55
  Speaker 1: immense amount of self-control for him to pen the following
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: lines to Jack.' I need you. Come.' After he had
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: entrusted the letter to the hall-boy— A reaction set in,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: and he was able to consider the matter, if not
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: with equanimity, at least with a degree of calmness. The
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: strangest thing to him was that he could not bring
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: himself to hate Reginald, of whose evil influence upon his
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: life he was now firmly convinced. Here was another shattered idol.
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: But one, like the fragment of a great god-face in
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: the desert, intensely fascinating, even in its ruin. Then, yielding
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: to a natural impulse, Ernest looked over his photographs— and
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: at once laid hold upon the austere image of his
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: master and friend. No, it was preposterous. There was no
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: evil in this man. There was no trace of malice
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: in this face, the face of a prophet or an
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: inspired madman, a poet. And yet, as he scrutinized the
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: picture closely, a curious transformation seemed to take place in
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 1: the features. A sly little line appeared insinuatingly about Reginald's
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: well-formed mouth. and the serene calm of his Jupiter head
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 1: seemed to turn into the sneak smile of a thief. Nevertheless,
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: Ernest was not afraid. His anxieties had at last assumed
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: definite shape. It was possible now to be on his guard.
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: It was only invisible, incomprehensible fear, crouching upon us from
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 1: the night, that drives sensitive natures to the verge of
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: madness and transforms stern warriors into cowards. Ernest realized the
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 1: necessity of postponing the proposed investigation of Reginald's papers until
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: the morning, as it was now near eleven, and he
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: expected to hear at any moment the sound of his
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: feet at the door. Before retiring he took a number
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: of precautions. Carefully he locked the door to his bedroom
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: and placed a chair in front of it. To make
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: doubly sure, he fastened the handle to an exquisite Chinese vase,
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 1: a gift of Reginald's, that at the least attempt to
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: force an entrance from without would come down with a crash. Then,
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: although sleep seemed out of the question, he went to bed.
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: He had hardly touched the pillow when a leaden weight
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: seemed to fall upon his eyes. The day's commotion had
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 1: been too much for his delicate frame. By force of
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 1: habit he pulled the cover over his ear and fell asleep.
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: All night he slept heavily, and the morning was far
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: advanced when a knock at the door, that at first
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: seemed to come across in a measurable distance, brought him
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: back to himself. It was Reginald's manservant announcing that breakfast
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 1: was waiting. Ernest got up and rubbed his eyes. The
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 1: barricade at the door at once brought back to his
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 1: mind with startling clearness the events of the previous evening.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: Everything was as he had left it. Evidently no one
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: had attempted to enter the room while he slept. he
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: could not help smiling at the arrangement which reminded him
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: of his childhood, when he had sought by similar means
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: security from burglars and bogeys. And in the broad daylight
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 1: Ethel's tales of vampires seemed once more impossible and absurd. Still,
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: he had abundant evidence of Reginald's strange influence, and was
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 1: determined to know the truth before nightfall. Her words, that
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: thought is more real than blood, kept ringing in his ears.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: If such was the case, he would find evidence of
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: Reginald's intellectual burglaries and possibly be able to regain a
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: part of his lost self that had been snatched from
• 2:19:12
  Speaker 1: him by the relentless dream-hand. But under no circumstances could
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: he face Reginald in his present state of mind. He
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: was convinced that if, in the fleeting vision of a moment,
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: the other man's true nature should reveal itself to him,
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 1: he would be so terribly afraid as to shriek like
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: a maniac. So he dressed particularly slowly, in the hope
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 1: of avoiding an encounter with his host. But fate thwarted
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: his hope. Reginald, too, lingered that morning unusually long over
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: his coffee. He was just taking his last sip when
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: Ernest entered the room. His behavior was of an almost
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: bourgeois kindness, benevolence fairly beamed from his face. But to
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: the boy's eyes it had assumed a new and sinister expression.'
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: You are late this morning, Ernest,' he remarked in his
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: mildest manner.' Have you been about town, or writing poetry?
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 1: Both occupations are equally unhealthy.' As he said this, he
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: watched the young man with an inscrutable smile that at
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: moments was wont to curl upon his lips. Ernest had
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: once likened it to the smile of Mona Lisa, but
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: now he detected in it the suavity of the hypocrite
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: and the leer of the criminal. He could not endure it,
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: he could not look upon that face any longer. His
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: feet almost gayway under him, cold sweat gathered on his brow,
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: and he sank on a chair trembling and studiously avoiding
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 1: the other man's gaze. At last Reginald rose to go.
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: It seemed impossible to accuse this splendid impersonation of vigorous manhood,
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: of cunning and underhand methods, of plagiarisms and theft. As
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: he stood there he resembled more than anything a beautiful tiger-cat,
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: a wonderful thing of strength and will-power, indomitable and insatiate.
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: Yet who could tell whether this strength was not, after all, parasitic?
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: If Ethel's suspicions were justified, then, indeed, more had been
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: taken from him than he could ever realize, for in
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: that case it was his life-blood that circled in those veins,
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 1: and the fire of his intellect that set those lips aflame.
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Virick Chapter
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: 27 Reginald Clark had hardly left the room when Ernest
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: hastily rose from his seat. While it was likely that
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: he would remain in undisturbed possession of the apartment the
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: whole morning, the stake at hand was too great to
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: permit of delay. Palpitating and a little uncertain, he entered
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: the studio where, scarcely a year ago, Reginald Clark had
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: bidden him welcome. Nothing had changed there since then. Only
• 2:21:59
  Speaker 1: in Ernest's mind the room had assumed an aspect of evil.
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 1: The Antinous was there, and the Fawn, the Christhead. But
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 1: their juxtaposition to-day partook of the nature of the blasphemous.
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: The statues of Shakespeare and Balzac seemed to frown from
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: their pedestals as his fingers were running through Reginald's papers.
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 1: He brushed against a semblance of Napoleon that was standing
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: on the writing-table, so that it toppled over and made
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: a noise that weirdly re-echoed in the silence of the room.
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: At that moment a curious family resemblance between Shakespeare, Balzac, Napoleon,
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: and Reginald, forcefully impressed itself upon his mind. It was
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: the indisputable something that marks those who were chosen to
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: give ultimate expression to some gigantic world purpose. In Balzac's
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: face it was diffused with kindliness, and that of Napoleon's
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: sheer brutality predominated. The image of one who was said
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: to be the richest man of the world also rose
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: before his eyes. Perhaps it was only the play of
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: his fevered imagination, but he could have sworn that this
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: man's features, too, bore the mark of those unoriginal, great,
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: absorptive minds, who for better or for worse are born
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: to rob and rule. They seemed to him monsters that
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 1: know neither justice nor pity, only the law of their being,
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: the law of growth. Common weapons would not avail against
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: such forces. Being one, they were stronger than armies, nor
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: could they be overcome in single combat. Stealth, trickery, the
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: outfit of the knave, were legitimate weapons in such a fight.
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: In this case the end justified the means, even if
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: the latter included burglary. After a brief and fruitless search
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: of the desk, he attempted to force open a secret drawer,
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: the presence of which he had one day accidentally discovered.
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: He tried a number of keys to no account, and
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 1: was thinking of giving up his researches for the day,
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: until he had procured a skeleton key, when at last
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: the lock gave way. The drawer disclosed a large file
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: of manuscript. Ernest paused for a moment to draw breath.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: The paper rustled under his nervous fingers. And there, at last,
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 1: his eyes lit upon a bulky bundle that bore this legend. Leontina.
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 1: A novel. It was true, then. All— his dream, Reginald's confession,
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: and the house that had opened its door so kindly
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: to him was the house of a vampire. Finally curiosity
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: overcame his burning indignation. He attempted to read. The letters
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: seemed to dance before his eyes. His hands trembled. At
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 1: last he succeeded. The words that had first rolled over
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 1: like drunken soldiers now marched before his vision in orderly sequence.
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: He was delighted, then stunned. This was indeed authentic literature,
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: there could be no doubt about it. And it was his.
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: He was still a poet, a great poet. He drew
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: a deep breath. Sudden joy trembled in his heart. This
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: story set down by a foreign hand had grown chapter
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: by chapter in his brain. There were some slight changes,
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 1: slight deviations from the original plan. A defter hand than
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: his had retouched it here and there, but for all
• 2:25:07
  Speaker 1: that it remained his very own. It did not belong
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: to that thief. The blood welled to his cheek as
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: he uttered the word that, applied to Reginald, seemed almost sacrilegious.
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: He had nearly reached the last chapter when he heard
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: steps in the hallway. Hurriedly he restored the manuscript to
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: its place, closed the drawer, and left the room on tiptoe.
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: It was Reginald. But he did not come alone. Someone
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: was speaking to him. The voice seemed familiar. Ernest could
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 1: not make out what it said. He listened intently and— was
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 1: it possible? Jack? Surely he could not yet have come
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: in response to his note— What mysterious power, what dim
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: presentiment of his friend's plight had led him thither? But
• 2:25:50
  Speaker 1: why did he linger so long in Reginald's room instead
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: of hastening to greet him? Cautiously he drew near. This
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: time he caught Jack's words.' It would be convenient and pleasant.
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: Still someway I feel that it is not right for
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: me of all men to take his place here.'' That
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: need not concern you,' Reginald deliberately replied.' The dear boy
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: expressed the desire to leave me within a fortnight.' I
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: think he will go to some private sanitarium. His nerves
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 1: are frightfully overstrained. This seems hardly surprising after the terrible
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: attack he had when you read your play. That idea
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: has since then developed into a monomania. I am awfully
• 2:26:30
  Speaker 1: sorry for him. I cared for him much, perhaps too much,
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: but I always feared that he would come to such
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: an end. Of late his letters have been strangely unbalanced.
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: You will find him very much changed. In fact, he
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: is no longer the same.'' No,' said Jack.' He is
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: no longer the friend I loved.' Ernest clutched for the wall.
• 2:26:51
  Speaker 1: His face was contorted with intense agony. Each word was
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: like a nail driven into his flesh. Crucified upon the
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: cross of his own affection by the hand he loved,
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: all white and trembling, he stood there. Tears rushed to
• 2:27:05
  Speaker 1: his eyes, but he could not weep. Dry-eyed, he reached
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: his room and threw himself upon his bed. Thus he
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: lay— uncomforted and alone. Chapter 28 Terrible as was his loneliness,
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: a meeting with Jack would have been more terrible, and
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: after all it was true, a gulf had opened between them.
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: Ethel alone could bring solace to his soul. There was
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: a great void in his heart which only she could fill.
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: He hungered for the touch of her hand. He longed
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: for her presence strongly, as a wanton lusts for pleasure,
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: and as sad men crave death. Noiselessly he stole to
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: the door so as not to arouse the attention of
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: the other two men, whose every whisper pierced his heart
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: like a dagger. When he came to Ethel's home he
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: found that she had gone out for a breath of air.
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 1: The servant ushered him into the parlor, and there he waited, waited,
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: waited for her. Greatly calmed by his walk, he turned
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: the details of Clark's conversation over in his mind, and
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: the conviction grew upon him that the friend of his
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: boyhood was not to blame for his course of action.
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 1: Reginald probably had encircled Jack's soul with his demonical influence
• 2:28:14
  Speaker 1: and singled him out for another victim. That must never be.
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 1: It was his turn to save now. He would warn
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: his friend of the danger that threatened him, even if
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: his words should be spoken into the wind. For Reginald,
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: with an ingenuity almost satanic, had already suggested that the
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: delusion of former days had developed into a monomania, and
• 2:28:33
  Speaker 1: any attempt on his part to warn Jack would only
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: seem to confirm this theory. In that case only one
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: way was left open. He must plead with Reginald himself,
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: confront at all risks that snatcher of souls. Tonight he
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: would not fall asleep, he would keep his vigil, and
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: if Reginald should approach his room, if in some way
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: he felt the direful presence He must speak out, threaten
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: if need be, to save his friend from ruin. He
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: had fully determined upon this course when a cry of
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 1: joy from Ethel, who had just returned from her walk,
• 2:29:04
  Speaker 1: interrupted his reverie. But her gladness changed to anxiety when
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: she saw how pale he was. Ernest recounted to her
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: the happenings of the day, from the discovery of his
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: novel in Reginald's desk to the conversation which he had
• 2:29:16
  Speaker 1: accidentally overheard. He noticed that her features brightened as he
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 1: drew near the end of his tale.' Was your novel finished?'
• 2:29:24
  Speaker 1: she suddenly asked. I think so. Then you are out
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: of danger. He will want nothing else of you. But
• 2:29:30
  Speaker 1: you should have taken it with you. I had only
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: sufficient presence of mind to slip it back into the drawer.
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: Tomorrow I shall simply demand it. You will do nothing
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: of the kind. It is in his handwriting, and you
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 1: have no legal proof that it is yours. You must
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: take it away secretly, and he will not dare to
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 1: proclaim it. And Jack? She had quite forgotten Jack. Women
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: are invariably selfish for those they love. You must warn him,
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: she replied. He would laugh at me. However, I must
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 1: speak to Reginald. It is of no avail to speak
• 2:30:04
  Speaker 1: to him. At least you must not do so before
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 1: you have obtained the manuscript. It would unnecessarily jeopardize our plans.
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: And after? After, perhaps, but you must not expose yourself
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: to any danger. No, dear, he said, and kissed her.
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 1: What danger is there, provided I keep my wits about me?
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: He steals upon men only in their sleep and in
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: the dark. Be careful, nevertheless. I shall. In fact, I
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: think he is not at home at this moment. If
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: I go now, I may be able to get hold
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: of the manuscript and hide it before he returns. I
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: cannot but tremble to think of you in that house.
• 2:30:39
  Speaker 1: You shall have no more reason to tremble in a
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 1: day or two. Shall I see you tomorrow? I don't
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: think so. I must go over my papers and things,
• 2:30:46
  Speaker 1: so as to be ready at any moment to leave
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: the house. And then? Then— He took her in his
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: arms and looked long and deeply into her eyes.' Yes,'
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: she replied.' At least— perhaps.' Then he turned to go, resolute
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: and happy. How strangely he had matured since the summer!
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: Her heart swelled with the consciousness that it was her
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: love that had affected this transformation.' As I cannot expect
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 1: you to-morrow, I shall probably go to the opera, but
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 1: I shall be home before midnight. Will you call me
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: up then? A word from you will put me at
• 2:31:20
  Speaker 1: ease for the night.' even if it comes over the telephone.'
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: I will call you up. We moderns have an advantage
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 1: over the ancients in this respect. The twentieth-century Pyramus can
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: speak to Thisbe, even if innumerable walls sever his body
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: from hers.'' A quaint conceit. But let us hope that
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: our love-story will end less tragically,' she said, tenderly caressing
• 2:31:41
  Speaker 1: his hair.' We shall be happy, you and I,' she
• 2:31:44
  Speaker 1: added after a while.' The iron finger of fate that
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: lay so heavily on our lives is now withdrawn.' Almost withdrawn. Yes, almost.
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: Only almost. And then a sudden fear came over her.' No,'
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: she cried.' Do not go. Do not go. Stay with me.
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 1: Stay here. I feel so frightened. I don't know what
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: comes over me. I am afraid— afraid for you.'' No, dear,'
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: he rejoined.' You need not be afraid. In your heart
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: you don't want me to desert a friend, and besides
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: leave the best part of my artistic life in Reginald's clutch.'
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: Why should you expose yourself to God knows what danger
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: for a friend who is ready to betray you? You
• 2:32:25
  Speaker 1: forget friendship is a gift. If it exacts payment in
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: any form, it is no longer either friendship or a gift.
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: And you yourself have assured me that I have nothing
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: to fear from Reginald. I have nothing to give to him.
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: She rallied under his words and had regained her self-possession
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: when the door closed behind him. He walked a few
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: blocks very briskly. Then his pace slackened. Her words had
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: unsettled him a little. and when he reached home he
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: did not at once resume his exploration of Reginald's papers.
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: He had hardly lit a cigarette, when, at an unusually
• 2:32:56
  Speaker 1: early hour, he heard Reginald's key in the lock. Quickly
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: he turned the light out, and in the semi-darkness, lit
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: up by an electric lantern below, barricaded the door as
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: on the previous night. Then he went to bed without
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: finding sleep. Supreme silence reigned over the house. Even the
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: elevator had ceased to run. Ernest's brain was all ear.
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: He heard Reginald walking up and down in the studio.
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: Not the smallest movement escaped his attention. Thus hours passed.
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: When the clock struck twelve he was still walking up
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: and down, down and up, up and down. ONE O'CLOCK
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: Still the measured beat of his footfall had not ceased.
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: There was something hypnotic in the regular tread. Nature at
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: last exacted its toll from the boy. He fell asleep.
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: Hardly had he closed his eyes when again that horrible
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: nightmare— no longer a nightmare— tormented him. Again he felt the pointed,
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: delicate fingers carefully feeling their way along the innumerable tangled
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: threads of nerve matter that lead to the innermost recesses
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: of self. A subconscious something strove to arouse him, and
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: he felt the fingers softly withdrawn. He could have sworn
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: that he heard the scurrying of feet in the room.
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: Bathed in perspiration, he made a leap for the electric light.
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 1: But there was no sign of any human presence. The
• 2:34:22
  Speaker 1: barricade at the door was undisturbed. But fear, like a
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: great wind, filled the wings of his soul. Yet there
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: was nothing— nothing to warrant his conviction that Reginald Clark had
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: been with him only a few moments ago, plying his
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: horrible trade. The large mirror above the fireplace only showed
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: him his own face, white, excited, the face of a madman.
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: The next morning's mail brought a letter from Ethel, a
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: few lines of encouragement and affection. Yes, she was right.
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: It would not do for him to stay under one
• 2:35:16
  Speaker 1: roof with Reginald any longer. He must only obtain the manuscript,
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: and if possible surprise him in the attempt to exercise
• 2:35:23
  Speaker 1: his mysterious and criminal power. Then he would be in
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: the position to dictate terms, and to demand Jack's safety
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: as the price of his silence. Reginald, however, had closeted
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: himself that day in his studio, busily writing— Only the
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: clatter of his typewriter announced his presence in the house.
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 1: There was no chance for conversation, or for obtaining the
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: precious manuscript of Leontina. Meanwhile, Ernest was looking over his
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: papers and preparing everything for a quick departure. Glancing over
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 1: old letters and notes, he became readily interested and hardly
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: noticed the passage of the hours. When the night came,
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: he only partly undressed and threw himself upon the bed.
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: It was now ten. At twelve he had promised Ethel
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 1: to speak to her over the telephone. He was determined
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: not to sleep at all that night. At last he
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: would discover whether or not the previous night and other
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: nights Reginald had secretly entered his room. When one hour
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 1: had passed without incident, his attention relaxed a little. His
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 1: eyes were gradually closing when suddenly something seemed to stir
• 2:36:24
  Speaker 1: at the door. The Chinese vase came rattling to the floor.
• 2:36:28
  Speaker 1: At once Ernest sprang up. His face had blanched with terror.
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: It was whiter than the linen in which they wrap
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: the dead. but his soul was resolute. He touched a button,
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: and the electric light illuminated the whole chamber. There was
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: no nook for even a shadow to hide. Yet there
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: was no one to be seen. From without the door
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: came no sound. Suddenly something soft touched his foot. He
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 1: gathered all his will-power so as not to break out
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 1: into a frenzied shriek. Then he laughed— not a hearty laugh,
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: to be sure. A tiny nose and tail gracefully curled
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: were brushing against him. The source of the disturbance was
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: a little Maltese cat, his favorite, that by some chance
• 2:37:10
  Speaker 1: had remained in his room. After its essay at midnight gymnastics,
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: the animal quieted down and lay purring at the foot
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: of his bed. The presence of a living thing was
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: a certain comfort, and the reservoir of his strength was
• 2:37:23
  Speaker 1: well-nigh exhausted. He dimly remembered his promise to Ethel, but
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 1: his lids drooped with sheer weariness. Perhaps an hour passed
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 1: in this way, when suddenly his blood congealed with dread.
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: He felt the presence of the hand of Reginald Clark
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: unmistakably groping in his brain, as if searching for something
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: that had still escaped him. He tried to move, to
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: cry out, but his limbs were paralysed, when by a
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 1: superhuman effort he at last succeeded in shaking off the
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: numbness that held him enchained, he awoke just in time
• 2:37:56
  Speaker 1: to see a figure, that of a man, disappearing in
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: the wall that separated Reginald's apartments from his room. This
• 2:38:03
  Speaker 1: time it was no delusion of the senses. He heard
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: something like a secret door softly closing behind retreating steps.
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: A sudden fierce anger seized him. He was oblivious of
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: the danger of the terrible power of the older man,
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 1: oblivious of the love he had once borne him, oblivious
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 1: of everything save the sense of outraged humanity and outraged right.
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 1: The law permits us to shoot a burglar who goes
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: through our pockets at night. Must he tolerate the ravages
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: of this a thousand times more dastardly and dangerous spiritual thief?
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 1: Was Reginald to enjoy the fruit of other men's labor unpunished?
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: Was he to continue growing into the mightiest literary factor
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: of the century by preying upon his betters? Abel, Walkham, Ethel, he, Jack,
• 2:38:47
  Speaker 1: Were they all to be victims of this insatiable monster?
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 1: Was this force resistless as it was relentless? No. A
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: thousand times no. He dashed himself against the wall at
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 1: the place where the shadow of Reginald Clark had disappeared.
• 2:39:03
  Speaker 1: In doing so he touched upon a secret spring. The
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 1: wall gave way noiselessly. Speechless with rage he crossed the
• 2:39:10
  Speaker 1: next room and the one adjoining it, and stood in
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 1: Reginald's studio. The room was brilliantly lighted, and Reginald, still dressed,
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: was seated at his writing-table scribbling notes upon little scraps
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: of paper in his accustomed manner. At Ernest's approach he
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: looked up without evincing the least sign of terror or surprise. Calmly,
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 1: almost majestically, he folded his arms over his breast, but
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 1: there was a menacing glitter in his eyes as he
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: confronted his victim. Chapter 30 Silently the two men faced
• 2:39:41
  Speaker 1: each other. Then Ernest hissed. Thief! Reginald shrugged his shoulders.' Vampire!''
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 1: So Ethel has infected you with her absurd fancies.' Poor boy!'
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: I am afraid.' I have been wanting to tell you
• 2:39:57
  Speaker 1: for some time,' but I think we have reached the
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: parting of our road.'' And that you dare to tell me?''
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: The more he raged, the calmer Reginald seemed to become.' Really,'
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 1: he said,' I fail to understand.' I must ask you
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 1: to leave my room.' You fail to understand? You cad!
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 1: Ernest cried. He stepped to the writing-table and opened the
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 1: secret drawer with a blow. A bundle of manuscripts fell
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: on the floor with a strange rustling noise. Then, seizing
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: his own story, he hurled it upon the table. And behold!
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: The last pages bore corrections in ink that could have
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: been made only a few minutes ago. Beginald smiled. Have
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 1: you come to play havoc with my manuscripts? he remarked.
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: Your manuscripts! Reginald Clark, you are an impudent imposter. You
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: have written no word that is your own. You are
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 1: an embezzler of the mind, strutting through life in borrowed
• 2:40:55
  Speaker 1: and stolen plumes. And at once the mask fell from
• 2:41:00
  Speaker 1: Reginald's face. Why stolen? he coolly said, with a slight
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 1: touch of irritation. I absorb. I appropriate. That is the
• 2:41:10
  Speaker 1: most any artist can say for himself. God creates. Man molds.
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 1: He gives us the colors, we mix them.'' That is
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: not the question. I charge you with having willfully and
• 2:41:23
  Speaker 1: criminally interfered in my life. I charge you with having
• 2:41:26
  Speaker 1: robbed me of what was mine. I charge you with
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: being utterly vile and rapacious, a hypocrite and a parasite.''
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 1: Foolish boy!' Reginald rejoined austerely.' It is through me that
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 1: the best in you shall survive, even as the obscure
• 2:41:40
  Speaker 1: Elizabethans live in hymn of Avon. Shakespeare absorbed what was
• 2:41:44
  Speaker 1: great in little men.' a greatness that otherwise would have perished,
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 1: and gave it a setting, a life. A thief may
• 2:41:52
  Speaker 1: plead the same. I understand you better. It is your
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: inordinate vanity that prompts you to abuse your monstrous power.
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: You err. Self-love has never entered into my actions. I
• 2:42:04
  Speaker 1: am careless of personal fame. Look at me, boy. As
• 2:42:08
  Speaker 1: I stand before you I am Homer, I am Shakespeare,
• 2:42:12
  Speaker 1: I am every cosmic manifestation in art— Men have doubted
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: tell of the meanest Athenian scribble or Elizabethan poetaster than
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 1: of me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self.
• 2:42:28
  Speaker 1: I care not. I have a mission. I am the
• 2:42:31
  Speaker 1: servant of the Lord. I am the vessel that bears
• 2:42:34
  Speaker 1: the host. He stood up at full length, the personification
• 2:42:38
  Speaker 1: of grandeur and power. A tremendous force trembled in his
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 1: very fingertips— He was like a gigantic dynamo, charged with
• 2:42:46
  Speaker 1: the might of ten thousand magnetic storms that shake the
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: earth in its orbit and lash myriads of planets through
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 1: infinities of space. Under ordinary circumstances, Ernest or any other
• 2:42:57
  Speaker 1: man would have quailed before him. But the boy in
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: that epic moment had grown out of his stature. He
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: felt the sword of vengeance in his hands. To him
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 1: was entrusted the cause of Abel and of Walkham, of
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 1: Ethel and of Jack. His was the struggle of the
• 2:43:11
  Speaker 1: individual soul against the same blind and cruel fate that
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: in the past had fashioned the ichthyosaurus and the mastodon.'
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 1: By what right?' he cried.' Do you assume that you
• 2:43:23
  Speaker 1: are the literary messiah?' Who appointed you?' What divine powers
• 2:43:26
  Speaker 1: made you the steward of my might' and of theirs
• 2:43:28
  Speaker 1: whom you have robbed?' I am a light-bearer.' I tread
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 1: the high hills of mankind.' I point the way to
• 2:43:36
  Speaker 1: the future.' I light up the abysses of the past.'
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: Were not my stature gigantic, how could I hold the
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 1: torch in all men's sight? The very souls that I
• 2:43:46
  Speaker 1: tread underfoot realize, as their dying gaze follows me, the
• 2:43:50
  Speaker 1: possibilities with which the future is big. Eternally secure, I
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: carry the essence of what is cosmic, of what is divine.
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: I am Homer, Goethe, Shakespeare. I am an embodiment of
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 1: the same force of which Alexander, Caesar, Confucius, and the
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: Christos were also embodiments. None so strong as to resist me.
• 2:44:12
  Speaker 1: A sudden madness overcame Ernest at this boast. He must strike,
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: now or never. He must rid humanity of this dangerous maniac,
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 1: this demon of strength. With the power ten times intensified,
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: he raised a heavy chair so as to hurl it
• 2:44:27
  Speaker 1: at Reginald's head and crush it. Reginald stood there calmly,
• 2:44:31
  Speaker 1: a smile upon his lips. Primal cruelties rose from the
• 2:44:35
  Speaker 1: depth of his nature. Still he smiled. turning his luminous
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 1: gaze upon the boy. And behold! Ernest's hand began to shake,
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 1: the chair fell from his grasp, he tried to call
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: for help, but no sound issued from his lips. Utterly paralyzed,
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 1: he confronted the Force. Minutes, eternities passed, and still those
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: eyes were fixed upon him. But this was no longer Reginald.
• 2:45:03
  Speaker 1: It was all brain. Only brain. A tremendous brain machine,
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: infinitely complex, infinitely strong. Not more than a mile away,
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 1: Ethel endeavored to call to him through the night. The
• 2:45:15
  Speaker 1: telephone rang once, twice, thrice, insistingly. But Ernest heard it not.
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: Something dragged him, dragged the nerves from his body, dragged, dragged, dragged.
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 1: It was an irresistible suction, pitiless, passionless, immense. Sparks, blue, crimson,
• 2:45:34
  Speaker 1: and violet seemed to play around the living battery. It
• 2:45:36
  Speaker 1: reached the finest fibers of his mind. Slowly, every trace
• 2:45:41
  Speaker 1: of mentality disappeared. First the will, then feeling, judgment, memory,
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 1: fear even. All that was stored in his brain cells
• 2:45:50
  Speaker 1: came forth to be absorbed by that mighty engine. The
• 2:45:54
  Speaker 1: princess with the yellow veil appeared, flitted across the room
• 2:45:57
  Speaker 1: and melted away. She was followed by childhood memories— girls' heads,
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: boys' faces. He saw his dead mother waving her arms
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: to him. An expression of deaf agony distorted the placid features.
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: Then throwing a kiss to him, she too disappeared. Picture
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: on picture followed. Words of love that he had spoken. Sins, virtues, magnanimities, meannesses, terrors,
• 2:46:21
  Speaker 1: mathematical formulas even, and snatches of songs. Leontina came and
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 1: was swallowed up. No, it was Ethel who was trying
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 1: to speak to him, trying to warn— She waved her
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: hands in frantic despair. She was gone. A pale face. Dark,
• 2:46:36
  Speaker 1: disheveled hair. Jack. How he had changed. He was in
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 1: the circle of the vampire's transforming might. Jack, he cried.
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: Surely Jack had something to explain, something to tell him.
• 2:46:48
  Speaker 1: Some word that if spoken would bring rest to his soul.
• 2:46:51
  Speaker 1: He saw the words rise to the boy's lips, but
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: before he had time to utter them, his image also
• 2:46:55
  Speaker 1: had vanished. And Reginald. Reginald, too, was gone. There was
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: only the mighty brain, panting, whirling. Then there was nothing.
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: The annihilation of Ernest Fielding was complete. Vacantly he stared
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 1: at the walls, at the room, and at his master.
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: The latter was wiping the sweat from his forehead. He
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 1: breathed deeply. The flush of youth spread over his features.
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: His eyes sparkled with a new and dangerous brilliancy. He
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: took the thing that had once been Ernest Fielding by
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 1: the hand and led it to its room. CHAPTER XXXI
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: With the first flush of the morning Ethel appeared at
• 2:47:35
  Speaker 1: the door of the house on Riverside Drive. She had
• 2:47:38
  Speaker 1: not heard from Ernest, and had been unable to obtain
• 2:47:41
  Speaker 1: connection with him at the telephone. Anxiety had hastened her steps.
• 2:47:45
  Speaker 1: She brushed against Jack, who was also directing his steps
• 2:47:48
  Speaker 1: to the abode of Reginald Clark. At the same time,
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 1: something that resembled Ernest Fielding passed from the house of
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: the vampire. It was a dull and brutish thing, hideously transformed,
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 1: without a vestige of mind.' Mr. Fielding!' cried Ethel, beside
• 2:48:06
  Speaker 1: herself with fear as she saw him descending. Ernest! Jack gasped,
• 2:48:11
  Speaker 1: no less startled at the change in his friend's appearance.
• 2:48:15
  Speaker 1: Ernest's head followed the source of the sound, but no
• 2:48:18
  Speaker 1: spark of recognition illumined the deadness of his eyes. Without
• 2:48:22
  Speaker 1: a present and without a past, blindly, a gibbering idiot,
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 1: he stumbled down the stairs. End of Section 15 End
• 2:48:34
  Speaker 1: of The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Virick