Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/328

320 saw two women, two women belonging to him: his wife and his sister. But in between them crept a third woman; and her eyes mocked like golden eyes of mockery. . . until suddenly they ceased to mock and died away in sadness, in unutterable sadness, as though really they had always been sad and had never mocked or laughed.

"Gerrit . . . dear Gerrit . . . are you coming?"

"Yes . . . yes . . . I'm coming. . . ."

"He's delirious," whispered Constance.

The room around the sick man had now become as glass, but not transparent glass. For he no longer, through the walls of the room, saw the universe and the beast: he saw nothing now save the room; but so brittle was that room, so brittle all the things which it contained that it seemed to be all of glass—the room, the bed and he—all glass, all brittle glass, which a single incautious movement might shiver into dust. Yes, now that the beast had sucked up all his marrow with that voluptuous licking, it had let him go, left him lying exhausted on his bed; and he lay, his glass body lay powerless to move; and, now that, after a long time, he had laboriously opened his eyes and saw his room around him as glass and felt himself as glass, he knew that the beast would no longer dart the fiery shafts of his tongue, because it had eaten the whole