untry fascinated me in spite of myself," he
began.

"But I thought," interrupted Walker, "that you had got over that
since. Why, man, you are married," and he came across to Hatteras and
shook him by the shoulder. "Don't you understand? You have a wife!"

"I know," said Hatteras. "But there are things deeper at the heart
of me than the love of woman, and one of those things is the love of
horror. I tell you it bites as nothing else does in this world. It's
like absinthe that turns you sick at the beginning and that you can't
do without once you have got the taste of it. Do you remember my first
landing? It made me sick enough at the beginning, you know. But now--"
He sat down in a chair and drew it close to Walker. His voice dropped
to a passionate whisper, he locked and unlocked his fingers with
feverish movements, and his eyes shifted and glittered in an unnatural
excitement.

"It's like going down to Hell and coming up again and wanting to go
down again. Oh, you'd want to go down again. You'd find the whole
earth pale. You'd count the days until you went down again. Do you
remember Orpheus? I think he looked back not to see if Eurydice was
coming after him but because he knew it was the last glimpse he would
get of Hell." At that he broke off and began to chant in a crazy
voice, wagging his head and swaying his body to the rhythm of the
lines:--

"Quum subita in cantum dementia cepit amantem
Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere manes;
Restilit Eurydicengue suam jam luce sub ipsa
Immemor heu victusque animi respexit."

"Oh, stop that!" cried Walker, and Hatteras laughed. "For God's sake,
stop it!"

For the words brought back to him in a flash the vision of a
class-room with its chipped desks ranged against the varnished walls,
the droning sound of the form-master's voice, and the swish of lilac
bushes against the lower window panes on summer afternoons. "Go on,"
he said. "Oh, go on, and let's have done with it."

Hatteras took up his tale again, and it seemed to Walker that the man
breathed the very miasma of the swamp and infected the room with it.
He spoke of leopard societies, murder clubs, human sacrifices. He had
witnessed them at the beginning, he had taken his share in them at the
last. He told the whole story without shame, with indeed a growing
enjoyment. He spared Walker no details. He related them in their
loathsome completeness until Walker felt stunned and sick. "Stop," he
said, again