in my chair while he
held a glass to my lips. Mechanically I drank some of the cordial. Vere
put down the glass and said a curious thing. He asked me:

"Shall I get you out of this room?"

Why should he ask that, since the spectre was for me alone? Or if he had
not seen It, how did he know this room was an unsafe area? My stupefied
brain puzzled over these questions while I managed a sign of refusal.
Any effort was impossible to me. The cold of the unearthly sea still
numbed my body. My heart labored, staggering at each beat.

Vere's support and nearness were welcome to me. His tact let me rest in
the mute inaction necessary to recovery, while my body, astonished that
it still lived, hesitatingly resumed the task of life. Somehow he
reassured and directed Phillida. Presently she was busied with the
coffee apparatus in the corner of the room.

It was too much weariness even to turn my eyes aside from the expanse of
the table before me. The vase was upset, I noted, as I had seemed to see
it. The spray of purple heliotrope Phillida had put there the day before
lay among the wet sheets of music. The Book of Hermas lay open at the
page I had last turned, the rosy lamplight upon the text.

"_Behold, I saw a great Beast that he might devour a city--whose name is
Hegrin. Thou hast escaped--because thou didst not fear for so terrible a
Beast. If, therefore, ye shall have prepared yourselves, yet may
escape----_"

What did they mean, the old, old words men have rejected? What had
Hermas glimpsed in his visions? How many men are written down liars
because they traveled in strange lands indeed, and explorers, strove to
report what they had seen? Who before me had stood at the Barrier and
set foot on the Frontier between the worlds?

The fog still dense outside was whitening with daybreak. A few hours
while the sun ran its course once more for me, then night again,
bringing completion of the menace. I recognized that this delay could
not affect the end. Perhaps it would have been easier if all had
finished for me tonight, easier if Vere and Phillida had not found me in
time to bring me back.

How had they found out my condition? Wonder stirred under my lethargy.
Had I called or cried out? It did not seem that I could have done so.
Certainly I had not tried! I was not quite so poor an adventurer as
that.

Phillida was back with a cup of steaming black coffee, tiptoeing in her
anxiety and questioning Vere with her eyes. He