Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after
night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at
midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what
expression this man wore, what was imprinted on his
features;--obsessed by a desire to learn what he might be
thinking--with death drawing nearer.
But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly
room--a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all
day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly
across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty
crust of glass above.
One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back
at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness
following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.
For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that
the laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot
and trembling fingers.
It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous
apprehension--as though he had been on the verge of something
horrible sinking into it for a moment--but had escaped.
Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he
laughed; then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had
been afire too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them
in leash lest they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the
trail of the man they had dogged so long.
Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and
clenched his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash;
could not control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like
hell-fire scorching the soul in him, searing his aching brain with
flames which destroy.
In the darkness he struggled blindly to his feet; and he saw the
stars through the glass roof all ablaze in the midnight sky; saw the
infernal flicker of pale flames in the obscurity around him, heard a
voice calling for help--his own voice-Then something stirred in the darkness; he listened, stared,
striving to pierce the obscurity with fevered eyes.
Long since the cloths that swathed the clay figures in the studio
had dried out unnoticed by him. He gazed from one to another,
holding his breath. Then his eyes rested upon the altar piece, fell
on the snowy foot, were lifted inch by inch along the marble folds
upward slowly to the slim and child-like hands-"Oh, God!" he whispered, knowing he had gone mad at last.
For, under the carven fingers, the marble folds of the robe over the
heart were faintly glowing from some inward radiance. And, as he
reeled forward and dropped at the altar foot, lifting his burning
eyes, he saw the child-like head bend toward him from the slender
neck--saw that the eyes were faintly blue-"Mother of God!" he screamed, "my mind is dying--my mind is dying!
. . . We were boys, he and I. . . . Let God judge him. . . . Let him
be judged . . . mercifully. . . . I am worse than he. . . . There is
no hell. I have striven to fashion one--I have desired to send him
thither--Mother of God--Cecile--"