He stopped not far away. He had made no sound on the velvet carpet. But presently she turned her head and the green eyes met his black ones.
Neither winced. The sheer bulk of the beast and the florid magnificence of its colour seemed to fascinate her.
She had seen him before, and scarcely noted him. She remembered. But the world was duller, then, and the outlook grey. And then, too, her still, green eyes had not yet wandered beyond far horizons, nor had her heart been cut adrift to follow her fancy when the tides stirred it from its mooring––carrying it away, away through deeps or shallows as the currents swerved.
CHAPTER XX
The pale parody on that sacred date which once had symbolised the birth of Christ had come and gone; the ghastly year was nearing its own death––the bloodiest year, for all its final triumph, that the world had ever witnessed––l’année horrible!
Nor was the end yet, of all this death and dying: for the Crimson Tide, washing through Russia, eastward, seethed and eddied among the wrecks of empires, lapping Poland’s bones, splashing over the charred threshold of the huns, creeping into the Balkans, crawling toward Greece and Italy, menacing Scandinavia, and arousing the stern watchers along the French frontier––the ultimate eastward barrier of human liberty.
And unless, despite the fools who demur, that barrier be based upon the Rhine, that barrier will fall one day.
Even in England, where the captive navies of the anti-Christ now sulked at anchor under England’s consecrated guns, some talked glibly of rule by Soviet. All Ireland bristled now, baring its teeth at government; vast armies, disbanding, were becoming dully restless; and armed men, disarming, began to wonder what now might be their destiny and what the destiny of the world they fought for.
And everywhere, among all peoples, swarmed the stealthy agents of the Red Apocalypse, whispering discontent, hinting treasons, stirring the unhappy to 295 sullen anger, inciting the simple-minded to insanity, the ignorant to revolution. For four years it had been a battle between Light and Night; and now there threatened to be joined in battle the uttermost forces of Evolution and Chaos––the spiritual Armageddon at last, where Life and Light and Order must fight a final fight with Degeneracy, Darkness and Death.