“Do you want me to lose my reason?” said Freder, between his teeth. “Why don’t you come to me?”
“I can’t come, beloved....”
“Where are you?”
“Look for me!” said the sweetly alluring, the deadly wicked voice, laughing softly.
But through the laughter there sounded another voice—being also Maria’s voice, sick with fear and horror.
“Freder ... help me, Freder.... I do not know what is being done to me.... But what is being done is worse than murder.... My eyes are on....”
Suddenly, as though cut off, her voice choked. But the other voice—which was also Maria’s voice, laughed, sweetly, alluringly, on:
“Look for me, beloved!”
Freder began to run. Senselessly and unreasoningly, he began to run. Along walls, by open doors, upstairs, downstairs, from twilight into darkness, drawn on by the cones of light, which would suddenly flame up before him, then dazzled and plunged again into a hellish darkness.
He ran like a blind animal, groaning aloud. He found that he was running in a circle, always upon his own tracks, but he could not get free of it, could not get out of the cursed circle. He ran in the purple mist of his own blood, which filled his eyes and ears, heard the breaker of his blood dash against his brain, heard high above, like the singing of birds, the sweetly, deadly wicked laugh of Maria....