But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly
room--a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all
day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly
across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty
crust of glass above.

One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back
at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness
following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.

For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that
the laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot
and trembling fingers.

It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous
apprehension--as though he had been on the verge of something
horrible sinking into it for a moment--but had escaped.

Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he
laughed; then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had
been afire too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them
in leash lest they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the
trail of the man they had dogged so long.

Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and
clenched his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash;
could not control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like
hell-fire scorching the soul in him, searing his aching brain with
flames which destroy.