no, not the being he had called,
with its limbs of light and unutterably tranquil smile--not his
familiar, Adon-Ai, the Son of Glory and the Star, but the Evil Omen, the
dark Chimera, the implacable Foe, with exultation and malice burning in
its hell-lit eyes. The Spectre, no longer cowering and retreating into
shadow, rose before him, gigantic and erect; the face, whose veil no
mortal hand had ever raised, was still concealed, but the form was more
distinct, corporeal, and cast from it, as an atmosphere, horror and rage
and awe. As an iceberg, the breath of that presence froze the air; as a
cloud, it filled the chamber and blackened the stars from heaven.

"Lo!" said its voice, "I am here once more. Thou hast robbed me of a
meaner prey. Now exorcise THYSELF from my power! Thy life has left thee,
to live in the heart of a daughter of the charnel and the worm. In that
life I come to thee with my inexorable tread. Thou art returned to the
Threshold,--thou, whose steps have trodden the verges of the Infinite!
And as the goblin of its fantasy seizes on a child in the dark,--mighty
one, who wouldst conquer Death,--I seize on thee!"

"Back to thy thraldom, slave! If thou art come to the voice that called
thee not, it is again not to command, but to obey! Thou, from whose
whisper I gained the boons of the lives lovelier and dearer than my own;
thou--I command thee, not by spell and charm, but by the force of a soul
mightier than the malice of thy being,--thou serve me yet, and speak
again the secret that can rescue the lives thou hast, by permission of
the Universal Master, permitted me to retain awhile in the temple of the
clay!"

Brighter and more devouringly burned the glare from those lurid eyes;
more visible and colossal yet rose the dilating shape; a yet fiercer and
more disdainful hate spoke in the voice that answered, "Didst thou think
that my boon would be other than thy curse? Happy for thee hadst thou
mourned over the deaths which come by the gentle hand of Nature,--hadst
thou never known how the name of mother consecrates the face of Beauty,
and never, bending over thy first-born, felt the imperishable sweetness
of a father's love! They are saved, for what?--the mother, for the death
of violence and shame and blood, for the doomsman's hand to put aside
that shining hair which has entangled thy bridegroom kisses; the child,
first and last of thine offspring, in whom thou didst hope to found a
race that should hear