plaything--and he could laugh at them all!

And again he raised his head to laugh; and again the laugh was choked in
his throat, still-born--_Helena was straight_! To his temples went his
twitching hands. Anger raged upon him--and died in fear. Anger, for the
instant maddening him, that he should lose her; rage in ungovernable
fury that the game, his plans, the hoard accumulated, was bursting like
a bubble before his eyes--died in fear. No, no; he had not meant to
laugh or mock--no, no; not that, not that! What was this loosed titanic
power that had done these things--that had brought this change in
Helena; that had brought a change in the Flopper, transforming the
miserable, pitiful, whining thief into a man reaching out for decent
things; that had wrought at least a physical metamorphosis in Pale Face
Harry--that had transfigured those three who, in their ugly, abandoned
natures then, had hung like vultures on his words in the Roost that
night! What was this power that he was trifling with, that brought him
now this cold, dead fear before which he quailed! What was this
_something_ that in his temerity he had dared invoke--that rose now
engulfing him, a puny maggot--that snatched him up and flung him
headlong, shackled, before this nebulous, terrifying tribunal, where out
of nothingness, out of a void, the calm, majestic features of the
Patriarch took form and changed, and changed, and kept changing, and
grew implacable, set with the stamp of doom. What was it--in God's name,
what was it brought these sweat beads bursting to his forehead! Was he
going mad--was he mad already!

And then the cycle again--doubt, anger, fear--until his brain,
exhausted, seemed to refuse its functions; and it was as though, heavy,
oppressing, a dense fog shut down upon his mind and enveloped it; and
now he walked as a man in great haste, hurrying, and now his pace was