conscience sighed in answer. Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily,
time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to
wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul
within was a living mass of corruption. How came it that God had not
struck him dead? The leprous company of his sins closed about him,
breathing upon him, bending over him from all sides. He strove to
forget them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs closer together and
binding down his eyelids: but the senses of his soul would not be bound
and, though his eyes were shut fast, he saw the places where he had
sinned and, though his ears were tightly covered, he heard. He desired
with all his will not to hear or see. He desired till his frame shook
under the strain of his desire and until the senses of his soul closed.
They closed for an instant and then opened. He saw.

A field of stiff weeds and thistles and tufted nettle-bunches. Thick
among the tufts of rank stiff growth lay battered canisters and clots
and coils of solid excrement. A faint marshlight struggling upwards
from all the ordure through the bristling grey-green weeds. An evil
smell, faint and foul as the light, curled upwards sluggishly out of
the canisters and from the stale crusted dung.

Creatures were in the field: one, three, six: creatures were moving in
the field, hither and thither. Goatish creatures with human faces,
hornybrowed, lightly bearded and grey as india-rubber. The malice of
evil glittered in their hard eyes, as they moved hither and thither,
trailing their long tails behind them. A rictus of cruel malignity lit
up greyly their old bony faces. One was clasping about his ribs a torn
flannel waistcoat, another complained monotonously as his beard stuck
in the tufted weeds. Soft language issued from their spittleless lips
as they swished in slow circles round and round the field, winding
hither and thither through the weeds, dragging their long tails amid
the rattling canisters. They moved in slow circles, circling closer and
closer to enclose, to enclose, soft language issuing from their lips,
their long swishing tails besmeared with stale shite, thrusting upwards
their terrific faces...

Help!

He flung the blankets from him madly to free his face and neck. That
was his hell. God had allowed him to see the hell reserved for his
sins: stinking, bestial, malignant, a hell of lecherous goatish fiends.
For him! For him!

He spr