ght
when the moonfire shone, but he had not surely seen her exalted in the
flame, the Queen of the Sabbath. Dimly he remembered Dr. Burrows coming
to see him in London, but had he not imagined all the rest?

Again he found himself in the dusky lane, and Annie floated down to him
from the moon above the hill. His head sank upon her breast again, but,
alas, it was aflame. And he looked down, and he saw that his own flesh
was aflame, and he knew that the fire could never be quenched.

There was a heavy weight upon his head, his feet were nailed to the floor,
and his arms bound tight beside him. He seemed to himself to rage and
struggle with the strength of a madman; but his hand only stirred and
quivered a little as it lay upon the desk.

Again he was astray in the mist; wandering through the waste avenues of a
city that had been ruined from ages. It had been splendid as Rome,
terrible as Babylon, and for ever the darkness had covered it, and it lay
desolate for ever in the accursed plain. And far and far the grey
passages stretched into the night, into the icy fields, into the place of
eternal gloom.

Ring within ring the awful temple closed around him; unending circles of
vast stones, circle within circle, and every circle less throughout all
ages. In the center was the sanctuary of the infernal rite, and he was
borne thither as in the eddies of a whirlpool, to consummate his ruin, to
celebrate the wedding of the Sabbath. He flung up his arms and beat the
air, resisting with all his strength, with muscles that could throw down
mountains; and this time his little finger stirred for an instant, and
his foot twitched upon the floor.

Then suddenly a flaring street shone before him. There was darkness round
about him, but it flamed with hissing jets of light and naphtha fires,
and great glittering lamps swayed very slowly in a violent blast of air.
A horrible music, and the exultation of discordant voices, swelled in his
ears, and he saw an uncertain tossing crowd of dusky figures that circled
and leapt before him. There was a noise like the chant of the lost, and
then there appeared in the midst of the orgy, beneath a red flame, the
figure of a woman. Her bronze hair and flushed cheeks were illuminate,
and an argent light shone from her eyes, and with a smile that froze
his heart her lips opened to speak to him. The tossing crowd faded away,
falling into a gulf of darkness, and then she drew out from her hair pins
of c