Before her, piled on the floor, were various articles, books and papers, gathered together and heaped in the shape of a bonfire. At her feet lay the bronze lamp. In her right hand she held the wick, still alight. Curiously, the light from the blazing logs played on the long folds of her white gown. Almost it seemed as if she were clothed in flame.
It was more subconsciously than in any other way that Ruth took in these details, for every sense she had—and all had become most acutely alive—concentrated on the terrific and hideous fact that, enveloping Violet, encasing her as it were, was a great outstanding Figure or Presence. Fear gripped her to the soul like ice. She could have screamed with very terror, but she was beyond the use of the body, beyond, it seemed, all help. For the entity that was not Violet Riversley, very surely not Violet Riversley, but a being infinitely stronger and more powerful, looked at her with the eyes of a soul self-tortured, self-maimed, and she saw in all their terrific hideousness Hate and Revenge incarnate.
And as she looked a worse horror gripped her. The Thing was trying to master her, to make her its instrument, even as it had made Violet Riversley. The very hair of her head rose upon it as she felt her grip on herself loosening, weakening. Her individuality seemed to desert her, to disintegrate, to disappear.
It might have been a moment; it might have been an eternity.
Then, as from a long way off, she heard Larry give a strange cry. Something between a howl and a bay its vibration stirred the air through miles. The cry of the wolf to the pack for help. The old dog had stood up, his jowl thrust forward, his body tense, ready for the spring.
With a final desperate effort, which seemed to tear her soul out of her body, Ruth cried too—cried to all she had ever thought or dreamed or held to of Good; and in that moment her awareness of Dick Carey suddenly became acute. Afterwards, in her ordinary consciousness, Ruth always found it impossible to recapture, or in any way adequately to remember, the sensations of the next overwhelming moment. Not only were they beyond speech they seemed beyond the grip of ordinary thought.
After that moment of supreme terror, of incredible struggle, with the acute return of her awareness of Dick Carey, with some crash of warring elements and forces, mingling as part of and yet distinct from the raging of the outside storm, she regained Herself. Was out as it were, in illimitable space, fighting shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, one with Dick Carey. One, too, with some mighty force, fighting gloriously, triumphantly, surely; fighting through all the Ages, through all the Past, on through all the Future, beyond Space and beyond Time.
Then, suddenly, she was carried out—in no other way could she describe it afterwards—out of the stress and the battle on a wave of very pure and perfect compassion into the heart of a radiance before which even the radiance of the fullest sunlight would be as a rush candle. And into that infinite radiance came too the deadly hatred, the unspeakable malice, the craving for revenge, the bitterness, the rebellion—came and was swallowed up, purified, transmuted. In a great and glorious moment she knew that the Force was one and the same, and that it is the motive power behind which makes it Good or Evil.
Then the outside storm concentrated and fell in one overwhelming crash. The house rocked, and rocked again. Ruth, mechanically stepping forward, caught in her arms a body which fell against her almost like a paper shell. Very swiftly she carried it out into the hall. Her normal senses were suddenly again acute; they worked quickly. And on the stair, infinitely to her relief, appeared the shining polished countenance of Miss McCox. Her attire defied description, and in her hands she held, one in each, at the carry, the proverbial poker and tongs. Behind her came Gladys, open-mouthed, dishevelled, likewise fully armed, and accomplishing a weird sound which appeared to be a combination of weeping and giggling.
Ruth struggled with delightful and inextinguishable laughter, which she felt might very easily degenerate into hysterics, for she was shaking in every limb.