The Sylan replied, “The name that I had in my mortal living was Guivric, but now I am called Glaum of the Haunting Eyes.”
That was a queer name, and it was a queer arrangement, too, which this vague wraith in the likeness of a man was proposing,—an arrangement, Gerald Musgrave decided, which, at least, was worth consideration....
For, as a student of magic, Gerald Musgrave in his time had dealt with many demons: but never had been made to him, before this final night in the April of 1805, such a queer, and yet rational, and even handsome offer as was now held out. Gerald pushed aside the manuscript of his unfinished romance about Dom Manuel of Poictesme; he straightened the ruffles about his throat; and for an instant he weighed the really quite alluring suggestion.... Most demons were obsessed by the notion of buying from you a soul which Gerald, in this age of reason, had no sure proof that he possessed. But this Glaum of the Haunting Eyes, it seemed, was empowered and willing to rid Gerald of all corporal obligations, and to take over Gerald’s physical life just as it stood,—even with all the plaguing complications of Gerald’s entanglement with Evelyn Townsend.
“I was once human,” the Sylan explained, “and wore a natural body. And old habits, in such trifles as apparel, cling. I feel at times, even nowadays, after five centuries of a Sylan’s care-free living, rather at a loss for human ties.”
“I find them,” Gerald stated, “vast nuisances. Candor is no more palatable than an oyster when either is out of season. And my relatives are all cursed with a very disastrous candor. They conceal from me nothing save that respect and envy with which they might, appropriately, regard my accomplishments and nobler qualities.”
“That has been the way with all relatives, Gerald, since Cain and Abel were brothers.”
“Still, but for one calamity, I could, it might be, endure my brothers. I could put up with my sisters’ voluble and despondent view of my future. I might even go so far in supererogation as to condone—upon alternate Thursdays, say,—a chorus of affectionate aunts who speak for my own good.”
“The first person, Gerald, that pretended to speak for the real good of anybody else was a serpent in a Garden, and ever since then that sort of talking has been venomous.”
“Yet all these afflictions I might,” said Gerald,—“conceivably, at least, I might be able to endure, if only the pursuit of my art had not been hampered, and the ease of my body blasted, by the greatest blessing which can befall any man.”
“You allude, I imagine,” said the Sylan, “to the love of a good woman?”