trembled for a second. His heart pulsed fearfully. Ilsé stood beside
him, peering into his face.

Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl's face and skin, shining
in the moonlight as she stretched her hands towards him; she was dressed
in wretched tattered garments that yet became her mightily; rue and
vervain twined about her temples; her eyes glittered with unholy light.
He only just controlled the wild impulse to take her in his arms and
leap with her from their giddy perch into the valley below.

"See!" she cried, pointing with an arm on which the rags fluttered in
the rising wind towards the forest aglow in the distance. "See where
they await us! The woods are alive! Already the Great Ones are there,
and the dance will soon begin! The salve is here! Anoint yourself and
come!"

Though a moment before the sky was clear and cloudless, yet even while
she spoke the face of the moon grew dark and the wind began to toss in
the crests of the plane trees at his feet. Stray gusts brought the
sounds of hoarse singing and crying from the lower slopes of the hill,
and the pungent odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of the
inn rose about him in the air.

"Transform, transform!" she cried again, her voice rising like a song.
"Rub well your skin before you fly. Come! Come with me to the Sabbath,
to the madness of its furious delight, to the sweet abandonment of its
evil worship! See! the Great Ones are there, and the terrible Sacraments
prepared. The Throne is occupied. Anoint and come! Anoint and come!"

She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping upon the wall with