Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/130

118 nightmare of a haunted night! For if it should be true, if it should be true, what is there for me but the torture fires of an eternal hell? Have mercy on me, Lord, have mercy!"

She broke into a paroxysm of sobbing. She shed no tears, hers were dry sobs; but it seemed as if they were tearing her to pieces. Then they ceased. Again a shudder went all over her, and again she seemed to come back to a curious wakefulness, out of a fevered dream.

"I'm not well; I can't be; I wish I were. It is as if I were two persons, and each keeps losing the other. Can there be two persons in one body? My brain seems blurred—as if it were in two parts. When I am using one part, the other—the other's all confused. It's not as it should be. I feel sure that I haven't always been like this; something must have happened to make me so. When I try to think what it is, I'm afraid; and yet I can't help trying. I know—I know it was in this room it happened; but what could it have been? What brought me to this room at all? When was it that I came?

"There's something in my head that I can't catch hold of—it keeps eluding me. If I only could get hold of it, I'd understand—I'm sure I should.—What would it be that I should understand? I'm afraid to think! It's awful that I should be afraid of what would come to me if