intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow,--malignant,
serpent eyes. And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in
their disordered, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan
moonlight. And now from these globules themselves, as from the
shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled
with them: larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way
describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life
which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of
water,--things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other,
devouring each other; forms like naught ever beheld by the naked
eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were
without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they
came round me and round, thicker and faster and swifter, swarming
over my head, crawling over my right arm, which was outstretched in
involuntary command against all evil beings. Sometimes I felt
myself touched, but not by them; invisible hands touched me. Once
I felt the clutch as of cold, soft fingers at my throat. I was
still equally conscious that if I gave way to fear I should be in
bodily peril; and I concentered all my faculties in the single
focus of resisting stubborn will. And I turned my sight from the
Shadow; above all, from those strange serpent eyes,--eyes that had
now become distinctly visible. For there, though in naught else
around me, I was aware that there was a WILL, and will of intense,
creative, working evil, which might crush down my own.

The pale atmosphere in the room began now to redden as if in the
air of some near conflagration. The larvae grew lurid as things
that live in fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the
three measured knocks; and again all things were swallowed up in
the darkness of the dark Shadow, as if out of that darkness all had