as it had darkened over the last.

Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were 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
nought 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 concentred 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 nought else around
me, I was aware that there was a WILL, and a 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 larvæ grew lurid as things that live
in fire. Again the room vibrated; again were heard the three measured