Page:The Quest Volume 11 (1919-20).djvu/554

 the fattening breath of time spent in vain waiting and wasting.

"As I wandered on I came to a town full of people. Many of them I knew on earth. I reminded myself of their countless vain and abortive hopes; how they walked more and more bowed down year after year, yet could not drive out of their hearts the vampires—their own demonic selves that devoured their Life and their Time. Here I saw them staggering about swollen into spongy monsters with huge bellies, bulging eyes and cheeks puffed with fat.

"First I noticed a bank which displayed in its windows the announcement: Out of it came thronging a grinning crowd carrying sacks of gold, smacking their puffed lips in greasy contentment—phantoms in fat and jelly of all who waste their lives on earth in the insatiable hunger for a gambler's gains.

"I entered a vast hall; it seemed like a colossal temple whose columns reached the sky. There, on a throne of coagulated blood, sat a monstrous four-armed figure. Its body was human but its head a brute's—hyæna-like, with foam-flecked jaws and snout. It was the war-god of the still savage superstitious nations who offer it their prayers for victory over their foes.

"Filled with horror and loathing I fled out of the