to conceive.

On each side, I looked, and saw more, continually. The mountains were
full of strange things--Beast-gods, and Horrors so atrocious and bestial
that possibility and decency deny any further attempt to describe them.
And I--I was filled with a terrible sense of overwhelming horror and
fear and repugnance; yet, spite of these, I wondered exceedingly. Was
there then, after all, something in the old heathen worship, something
more than the mere deifying of men, animals, and elements? The thought
gripped me--was there?

Later, a question repeated itself. What were they, those Beast-gods,
and the others? At first, they had appeared to me just sculptured
Monsters placed indiscriminately among the inaccessible peaks and
precipices of the surrounding mountains. Now, as I scrutinized them with
greater intentness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions.
There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality
that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of
life-in-death--a something that was by no means life, as we understand
it; but rather an inhuman form of existence, that well might be likened
to a deathless trance--a condition in which it was possible to imagine
their continuing, eternally. 'Immortal!' the word rose in my thoughts
unbidden; and, straightway, I grew to wondering whether this might be
the immortality of the gods.

And then, in the midst of my wondering and musing, something happened.
Until then, I had been staying just within the shadow of the exit of the
great rift. Now, without volition on my part, I drifted out of the
semi-darkness and began to move slowly across the arena--toward the
House. At this, I gave up all thoughts of those prodigious Shapes above
me--and could only stare, frightenedly, at the tremendous structure
toward which I was being conveyed so remorselessly. Yet, though I
searched earnestly, I could discover nothing that I had not already
seen, and so became gradually calmer.

Presently, I had reached a point more than halfway between the House
and the gorge. All around was spread the stark loneliness of the place,
and the unbroken silence. Steadily, I neared the great building. Then,
all at once, something caught my vision, something that came 'round one
of the huge buttresses of the House, and so into full view. It was a
gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, going almost upright,
after the manner of a man. It was quite unclothed, a