Page:The Quest Volume 13 (1921-22).djvu/120

 like a new power of nature? And what birth is to come forth from it, and who will be the heir?

"Shall there again come forward one whose steps no one may hinder—as it has always happened from time to time in the millennial course? The thought does not leave me."

"Let him come! But if he comes again this time too in clothes of flesh and blood," said the Rev. Magister Wirtzigh scornfully, "they will quickly nail him down—with jests. No one has yet triumphed over grinning laughter!"

"But he may come without shape," murmured Dr. Chrysophron Zagreus to himself, "even as a short time ago spooks came overnight upon the animals, so that horses suddenly could calculate and dogs could read and write. What if he should break forth out of men themselves like unto a flame?"

"Then must we cheat light through light in man," cried Monseigneur du Ghazal. "We must dwell henceforth in their brains as a new false glow of an illusory, sober intelligence until they mistake the moon for the sun. ."

What more his lordship said I cannot remember. I found that suddenly I could move again, and the glass-like, crystallized state that had held me hitherto spell-bound slowly began to leave me. A voice within me seemed to whisper that I ought to be afraid; but I could not manage to feel anything.

Nevertheless, as if to protect myself, I stretched out my arm with the lamp in front of me.

It may be that a draught of air caught the light or that the snake had reached the hollow in the head of