ter
and contented thoughts hovering near in a waking and seductive sort of
sleep.

A long silence fell upon the three--realized by only one.

The point where they drifted into the nebulous territory of dreams was
undefined. The actual was dropping away into an impalpable mistiness as
the earth drops from under a rising aeroplane.

Both Conscience and Stuart sought futilely to rouse themselves because
the dream had now ceased to be pleasant, and yet it was only an ugly
picture projected against a beautiful background deepening into a purple
velvet stupor.

They knew the picture itself was not real because, in it, Eben's usually
calm face was distorted into a demoniac frenzy and his voice quavered
and ranted into a high-pitched incoherence.

The dream in spite of its fantastic wildness must have held some
attribute of the comic for they smiled as if in confidential
understanding. Eben seemed to be waving before their eyes an envelope
and to be talking about intercepted letters which was all absurdly,
impalpably funny.

There was also some grotesque eloquence about the vengeance of a Most
High God, visited upon adulterers.

But the voice dropped sometimes to an inaudible pitch and rose sometimes
like a scream because it came from an incalculable distance and the
figure, distorted with meaningless gyrations of gesture, appeared and
disappeared like a shade in a farce.

Eben Tollman stood declaiming on his hearth with his clenched hands
stretched high above his head while his victims drowsed peacefully.

Mania raced and burned through him as a current travels through wire.
The dam of repression which had only collected and stored up the
elements of flood had burst into torrents and chaos. The wreck of his
brain swirled furiously in a single whirlpool of idea, the monomania
that he was called to be God's avenger.

But he had lost his audience and his victims had escaped him. Upon the
lips of the two unspeakable malefactors dwelt a smile of obtuse
tranquillity.

He raised his eyes, as if to heaven, and his voice in fulminating
anathema.

"'Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner,
giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh ...
are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal
fire.... Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh ...
despise dominion and speak evil of dignities.'"

The madman paused, but only for a moment, then again h