As we stepped from the rear chamber into the main room of the dreamers, I turned to the negro wonderingly.
"Master? Master of what? Of Life?"
Hassim laughed, fiercely and sardonically.
"Master of Doom!"
4. The Spider and the Fly
"There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see."
—Omar Khayyam.
I sat on Yun Shatu's cushions and pondered with a clearness of mind new and strange to me. As for that, all my sensations were new and strange. I felt as if I had wakened from a monstrously long sleep, and though my thoughts were sluggish, I felt as though the cobwebs which had clogged them for so long had been partly brushed away.