Page:Richard Marsh--The goddess a demon.djvu/302

290 a touch to fill her with impassioned frenzy. It is for that touch that she waits and watches."

It was exactly what I had myself observed. The figure needed only some little thing to give it at least the semblance of actual life. I could not make out of what substance it was compounded; certainly neither of wood nor stone.

"As Philip came at me across the room I moved towards The Goddess. 'Take care,' I said. 'Don't be a fool! Don't you see that there's a lady here.' He did not; or if he did he showed no signs of doing so. I doubt even if he saw The Goddess. It was his way. In his fits of passion he was like some maddened bull; he had eyes only for the object of his rage. 'I'll kill you!' he kept on muttering, in a voice which fury had made husky. 'Don't be an ass!' I cried. But he was an ass. Presently there came the rush which I was looking for. He went for me as the bull goes for the toreador. And instead of me he met The Goddess. It had to be, or I should not have lived to tell the tale.

"As it chanced The Goddess was between us. I had in my fingers this little cord—you see I have it here. My scarlet beauty was an obstacle of which he took no account at all. He made as if he would dash her into splinters and scatter them about the room. But The