第56章

Then I went back as softly as I had come, but still Icould not sleep; the sight and thought of dear Leo lying there so ill had but added fuel to the fire of my unrest.My wearied body and overstrained mind awakened all my imagination into preternatural activity.Ideas, visions, almost inspirations, floated before it with startling vividness.Most of them were grotesque enough, some were ghastly, some recalled thoughts and sensations that had for years been buried in the _i_ de'bris _i_ of my past life.But behind and above them all hovered the shape of that awful woman, and through them gleamed the memory of her entrancing loveliness.Up and down the cave I strodeup and down.

Suddenly I observed, what I had not noticed before, that there was a narrow aperture in the rocky wall.Itook up the lamp and examined it; the aperture led to a passage.Now, I was still sufficiently sensible to remember that it is not pleasant, in such a situation as ours was, to have passages running into one's bed-chamber from no one knows where.If there are passages, people can come up them; they can come up when one is asleep.Partly to see where it went to, and partly from a restless desire to be doing something, I followed the passage.It led to a stone stair, which I descended; the stair ended in another passage, or rather tunnel, also hewn out of the bed-rock, and running, so far as I could judge, exactly beneath the gallery that led to the entrance of our rooms, and across the great central cave.I went on down it: it was as silent as the grave, but still, drawn by some sensation or attraction that I cannot describe, I followed on, my stockinged feet falling without noise on the smooth and rocky floor.When Ihad traversed some fifty yards of space, I came to another passage running at right angles, and here an awful thing happened to me: the sharp draught caught my lamp and extinguished it, leaving me in utter darkness in the bowels of that mysterious place.Itook a couple of strides forward so as to clear the bisecting tunnel, being terribly afraid lest I should turn up it in the dark if once I got confused as to the direction, and then paused to think.What was I to do? I had no match; it seemed awful to attempt that long journey back through the utter gloom, and yet Icould not stand there all night, and, if I did, probably it would not help me much, for in the bowels of the rock it would be as dark at midday as at midnight.I looked back over my shouldernot a sight or a sound.I peered forward down the darkness:

surely, far away, I saw something like the faint glow of fire.Perhaps it was a cave where I could get a lightat any rate, it was worth investigating.Slowly and painfully I crept along the tunnel, keeping my hand against its wall, and feeling at every step with my foot before I put it down, fearing lest I should fall into some pit.Thirty pacesthere was a light, a broad light that came and went, shining through curtains! Fifty pacesit was close at hand! Sixtyoh, great heaven!

I was at the curtains, and they did not hang close, so I could see clearly into the little cavern beyond them.It had all the appearance of being a tomb, and was lit up by a fire that burned in its centre with a whitish flame and without smoke.Indeed, there, to the left, was a stone shelf with a little ledge to it three inches or so high, and on the shelf lay what Itook to be a corpse; at any rate, it looked like one, with something white thrown over it.To the right was a similar shelf, on which lay some broidered coverings.Over the fire bent the figure of a woman;she was sideways to me and facing the corpse, wrapped in a dark mantle that hid her like a nun's cloak.She seemed to be staring at the flickering flame.

Suddenly, as I was trying to make up my mind what to do, with a convulsive movement that somehow gave an impression of despairing energy, the woman rose to her feet and cast the dark cloak from her.

It was _i_ She _i_ herself!

She was clothed, as I had seen her when she unveiled, in the kirtle of clinging white, cut low upon her bosom, and bound in at the waist with the barbaric double-headed snake, and, as before, her rippling black hair fell in heavy masses down her back.But her face was what caught my eye, and held me as in a vise, not this time by the force of its beauty, but by the power of fascinated terror.The beauty was still there, indeed, but the agony, the blind passion, and the awful vindictiveness displayed upon those quivering features, and in the tortured look of the upturned eyes, were such as surpass my powers of description.

For a moment she stood still, her hands raised high above her head, and as she did so the white robe slipped from her down to her golden girdle, baring the blinding loveliness of her form.She stood there, her fingers clenched, and the awful look of malevolence gathered and deepened on her face.

Suddenly, I thought of what would happen if she discovered me, and the reflection made me turn sick and faint.But even if I had known that I must die if I stopped, I do not believe that I could have moved, for I was absolutely fascinated.But still I knew my danger.Supposing she should hear me, or see me through the curtain, supposing I even sneezed, or that her magic told her that she was being watchedswift indeed would be my doom.

Down came the clinched hands to her sides, then up again above her head, and, as I am a living and honorable man, the white flame of the fire leaped up after them, almost to the roof, throwing a fierce and ghastly glare upon _i_ She _i_ herself, upon the white figure beneath the covering, and every scroll and detail of the rock work.