'What is his peculiar interest in the Edmundsbury chalice? On each
successive birthday when the cup has been produced, he has asked me to
show him the stone. Without any well-defined reason I have always
declined, but to-day I yielded. He gazed long into its sky-blue depth,
and then asked if I had no idea what the inscription "Has" meant. I
informed him that it was one of the lost secrets of the world.

'_June l5_.--Some new element has entered into our existence here.
Something threatens me. I hear the echo of a menace against my sanity
and my life. It is as if the garment which enwraps me has grown too
hot, too heavy for me. A notable drowsiness has settled on my brain--a
drowsiness in which thought, though slow, is a thousandfold more
fiery-vivid than ever. Oh, fair goddess of Reason, desert not me, thy
chosen child!

'_June 18_.--Ul-Jabal?--that man is _the very Devil incarnate!_

'_June 19_.--So much for my bounty, all my munificence, to this
poisonous worm. I picked him up on the heights of the Mountain of
Lebanon, a cultured savage among cultured savages, and brought him here
to be a prince of thought by my side. What though his plundered
wealth--the debt I owe him--has saved me from a sort of ruin? Have not
_I_ instructed him in the sweet secret of Reason?

'I lay back on my bed in the lonely morning watches, my soul heavy as
with the distilled essence of opiates, and in vivid vision knew that he
had entered my apartment. In the twilight gloom his glittering rows of
shark's teeth seemed impacted on my eyeball--I saw _them_, and nothing
else. I was not aware when he vanished from the room. But at daybreak I
crawled on hands and knees to the cabinet containing the chalice. The