Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/301

Rh I do not know what the others were prepared to find revealed, nor even what it was which I had myself expected. There had been in my mind a vague anticipation of some incredible horror; something neither human nor inhuman, neither alive nor dead. What I actually did see occasioned me, at first sight, a shock of surprise. A moment's reflection, however, disclosed my own stupidity. Much that had gone before should have prepared me for exactly this. Only my mental opaqueness could have prevented my seeing to what Lawrence's words directly pointed. And yet, after all, this that I saw did not provide an adequate explanation; did not, for instance, shed light on what I had seen in my dream.

The downfall of the screen had revealed an idol; apparently a Hindoo goddess. She was squatted on what looked like an ebony pedestal, perhaps a foot or eighteen inches from the floor. The figure was nearly four feet high. It represented a woman squatting on her haunches. Her arms were crossed upon her breast, her fingers interlaced. Two things struck me as peculiar. One, that the whole figure was of a brilliant scarlet; the other, that its maker had managed to impart to it a curious suggestion of life. To this fact Lawrence himself drew our attention,

"You see how alive she is? She only needs