rd was
covered with clear, minute writing, and Dyson began to read with the
light of the opal flaming in his eyes.

V

'Ever since I was a young man'--the record began--'I devoted all my
leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other
studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of
knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any
attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my
fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed
and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of
a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound
secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent whole
nights sitting in the darkness of my room, and thinking of the strange
world on the brink of which I trod. My professional studies, however,
and the necessity of obtaining a degree, for some time forced my more
obscure employment into the background, and soon after I had qualified I
met Agnes, who became my wife. We took a new house in this remote
suburb, and I began the regular routine of a sober practice, and for
some months lived happily enough, sharing in the life about me, and only
thinking at odd intervals of that occult science which had once
fascinated my whole being. I had learnt enough of the paths I had begun
to tread to know that they were beyond all expression difficult and
dangerous, that to persevere meant in all probability the wreck of a
life, and that they led to regions so terrible, that the mind of man
shrinks appalled at the very thought. Moreover, the quiet and the peace
I had enjoyed since my marriage had wiled me away to a great extent from
places where I knew no peace could dwell. But suddenly--I think indeed
it was the work of a single night, as I lay awake on my bed gazing into
the darkness--suddenly, I say, the old desire, the former longing,
returned, and returned with a force that had been intensified ten times
by its absence; and when the day dawned and I looked out of the window,
and saw with haggard eyes the sunrise in the east, I knew that my doom
had been pronounced; that as I had gone far, so now I must go farther
with unfaltering steps. I turned to the bed where my wife was sleeping
peacefully, and lay down again, weeping bitter tears, for the sun had
set on our happy life and had risen with a dawn of terror to us both. I
will not set down here in minute