monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the
house.

Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the
moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.

There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity. Her face
was grey; her eyes sunk in black: orbits; her nose pinched, with
nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured
breathing.

A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down
the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she
ran.

She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of
Bes closed about her.

She made no sound as she hurtled through the air. Mercifully perhaps
was she dead, as she crashed down into the pit at the bottom of which
great shapes prowled hungrily.

They did not stay to watch, not one of them.

Shouting and laughing, men and women ran back to the house, which in
one hour they had stripped bare.

Just before the dawn a great flame shot skywards, an orange ribbon
across the purple robe of dying Night.