shape too hideous
to bear in the silence? St. George stood still, suddenly
clenching his hands, trying to reach out through the dark and to
grasp--himself, the self that seemed slipping away from him. But was
he mad already, he wondered angrily, and hurried back to the far
flickering light, stumbling, panting, not daring to look at the
figure on the floor, not daring not to look.

He resolutely caught up the candle and peered once more at the face.
As steadily and swiftly as change in the aspect of the sky the face
had gone on changing. St. George had followed to the chamber an old
tottering man; the figure before him was a man of not more than
fifty years.

St. George let fall the candle, which flickered down, upright in its
socket; and he turned away, his hand across his eyes. Since this was
manifestly impossible he must be mad, something in the stuff that
he had tasted had driven him mad. He felt strong as a lion, strong
enough to lift that prostrate figure and to carry it through the
winding passages into the midst of those above stairs, and to beg
them in mercy to tell him how the man looked. What would _she_ say?
He wondered what Olivia would say. Dinner would be over and they
would be in the drawing-room--Olivia and Amory and Antoinette
Frothingham; already the white room and the lights and Antoinette's
laughter seemed to him of another world, a world from which he had
irrevocably passed. Yet there they were above, the same roof
covering them, and they did not know that down here in this place of
the dead he, St. George, was beyond all question going mad.

With a cry he pulled off Amory's coat, flung it over the unconscious
man, and rushed out into the blackness of the corridor. He would not
take the light--the man must not die alone there in the dark--and
besides he had heard that the mad could see as well in the dark as
in the light. Or was it the blind who could see in the dark? No
doubt it was the blind. However, he could find his way, he thought
triumphantly, and ran on, dragging his hand along the slippery
stones of the wall--he could find his way. Only he must call out, to
tell them who it was that was lost. So he called himself by name,
aloud and sternly, and after that he kept on quietly enough, serene
in the conviction that he had regained his self-control, fighting to
keep his mind from returning to the face that changed before his
eyes, like the appearances in the puppet shows. But suddenly he
b