urdity. What I said Mary would see
she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a sight 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, 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 witness, 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 more, 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...

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