Faster and faster, whirling two by two, their fleshless skulls turned to glowing red by the glare of a thousand lights, their hands of bone clanking wildly above their heads, while the low moaning chorus of unreal laughter echoed around the hall, faster and faster circled the skeleton dancers, gay doublets glittering in the lamp-beams, robes of silk flung wavingly to the breeze.
On and on with the speed of wind they swept, these merry denizens of the grave, pacing their march of mockery, their dance of woe, with a ghastly mimicry of life, reality and joy.
And as Adrian flung his arms around the skeleton-form of his bride, gathering her to his bosom, while their voices joined in the moaning chaunt of unreal laughter, the voice which he had heard an hundred years before, again came whispering to his ear.
“Behold the Mysterie of Life and Death! To-day the children of men live and love, hate and destroy. Where are their lives, their loves, their hatreds, and their wars, in an hundred years? Behold—ha, ha, ha! Behold the Mysterie of their life and their death!”
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.
THE REAL MORE TERRIBLE THAN THE UNREAL.
All was dark. Not a ray of light, not even the gleaming of a distant star, but deep and utter darkness.
Adrian awoke from his dream. Did he awake to another dream, or to a reality yet more terrible?
He lay prostrate, and he felt his limbs confined as though they were bound with cords. He extended his hand, and it touched a smooth panel of wood, extending along his right side. A strange horror, to which the horrors of his late dream were joy and peace, gathered like a deadening weight around his heart. He threw forth his left hand, and felt a like panel of smooth wood extending along his other side. Raising himself slowly from his prostrate position, with every nerve and fibre of his frame stiffened and cramped by his hard resting place, he passed his quivering hands along the panels of wood, and with that insupportable horror deadening over his heart, he felt and examined the shape of his—Coffin.
Bowing his head between his hands, the wretched man essayed to weep, but the fountain of his tears was exhausted.
He could not weep.