Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/210

 Harkness had been terrible in its nightmare stifling sense, pressing blinding confinement. Something of that he felt now. He seemed to be compelled to push against blankets of cold damp obstruction. The Fog assumed a personality, and it was a personality strangely connected in Harkness's confused brain with that little red-headed man who seemed now always to be pursuing him. He was somewhere there in the fog; it was part of his game that he was playing with Harkness, and he could hear that sweet melodious voice whispering: "Fain, you know. Pain. That's the thing to teach you what life really means. You'll be thankful to me before I've done with you. You shouldn't have interfered with my plans, you know. I warned you not to."

He tried to drive down his fancies and to control his body. That was his trouble—that every limb, every nerve, every muscle, seemed to be asserting its own independent life. His legs now—they belonged to him, but never would you have supposed it. His arms tugged away from him as though striving to be free. He was not trained for this kind of thing—a cultured American gentleman with two sisters who read papers to women's clubs in Oregon.

He beat down his imagination. He had been crawling on his hands and his knees, and now he put out one hand and touched space. His heart gave a sickening bound and lay still. Which way