see, she saw, but I forgot that no
human eyes could look on such a vision with impunity. And I forgot, as I
have just said, that when the house of life is thus thrown open, there
may enter in that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become
the veil of a horror one dare not express. I played with energies which
I did not understand, and you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan
did well to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was
horrible. The blackened face, the hideous form upon the bed, changing
and melting before your eyes from woman to man, from man to beast, and
from beast to worse than beast, all the strange horror that you
witnessed, surprises me but little. What you say the doctor whom you
sent for saw and shuddered at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done
the moment the child was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I
surprised it, not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you
may guess of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror,
and after a few years I felt I could bear it no longer, and I sent Helen
Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood. The rest
of the strange story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by
your friend, I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the
last chapter. And now Helen is with her companions....

The Inmost Light

I

One evening in autumn, when the deformities of London were veiled in
faint blue mist, and its vistas and far-reaching streets seemed
splendid, Mr. Charles Salisbury was slowly pacing down Rupert Street,
drawing nearer to his favourite restaurant by slow degrees. His eyes
were downcast in study of the pavement, and thus it was that as he
passed in at the narrow door a man who had come up from the lower end of
the street jostled against him.

'I beg your pardon--wasn't looking where I was going. Why, it's Dyson!'

'Yes, quite so. How are you, Salisbury?'

'Quite well. But where have you been, Dyson? I don't think I can have
seen you for the last five years?'

'No; I dare say not. You remember I was getting rather hard up when you
came to my place at Charlotte Street?'

'Perfectly. I think I remember your telling me that you owed five weeks'
rent, and that you had parted with your watch for a comparatively small
sum.'

'My dear Salisbury, your memory is admirable. Yes, I was hard up. But
the curious thing is that soon after you saw me I