an being ever stared as hard as I did in those next few
minutes. Yet, the harder I stared the clearer appeared the amazing and
monstrous apparition. For, after all, it was Sangree--and yet it was not
Sangree. It was the head and face of an animal, and yet it was the face
of Sangree: the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face. The eyes
were sharper, narrower, more fiery, yet they were his eyes--his eyes run
wild; the teeth were longer, whiter, more pointed--yet they were his
teeth, his teeth grown cruel; the expression was flaming, terrible,
exultant--yet it was his expression carried to the border of
savagery--his expression as I had already surprised it more than once,
only dominant now, fully released from human constraint, with the mad
yearning of a hungry and importunate soul. It was the soul of Sangree,
the long suppressed, deeply loving Sangree, expressed in its single and
intense desire--pure utterly and utterly wonderful.

Yet, at the same time, came the feeling that it was all an illusion. I
suddenly remembered the extraordinary changes the human face can undergo
in circular insanity, when it changes from melancholia to elation; and I
recalled the effect of hascheesh, which shows the human countenance in
the form of the bird or animal to which in character it most
approximates; and for a moment I attributed this mingling of Sangree's
face with a wolf to some kind of similar delusion of the senses. I was
mad, deluded, dreaming! The excitement of the day, and this dim light of
stars and bewildering mist combined to trick me. I had been amazingly
imposed upon by some false wizardry of the senses. It was all absurd and
fantastic; it would pass.

And then, sounding across this sea of mental confusion like a bell
through a fog, came the voice of John Silence bringing me back to a
consciousness of the reality of it all--

"Sangree--in his Double!"

And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly saw that it was indeed
the face of the Canadian, but his face turned animal, yet mingled with
the brute expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul seen
sometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog,--the face of an animal shot
with vivid streaks of the human.

The doctor called to him softly under his breath--

"Sangree! Sangree, you poor afflicted creature! Do you know me? Can you
understand what it is you're doing in your 'Body of Desire'?"

For the first time since its appearance the creature moved. Its ears