onder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The
muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to
foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of
flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell
shrieking to the floor.

Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying
wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.

'Yes,' said the doctor, still quite cool, 'it is a great pity; she is a
hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has
seen the Great God Pan.'

II

MR. CLARKE'S MEMOIRS

Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange
experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and
curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the
unusual and the eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in
his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the
more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter
tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though
his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories as
the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in fantasy, and
would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that he
witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he
was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable,
and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and
rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some
hom[oe]opathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of
distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen
would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but
the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he
still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old passion began
to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and convulsed with
an unknowable terror, faded slowly from his memory. Occupied all day in
pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the
evening was too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire
cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle of some
choice claret stood ready by his elbow. His dinner digested, he would
make a brief pretence of reading the evening paper, but the mere