These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry."
And Mr. Shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them!
I vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold
soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and
re-repeating:
A savage spot as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover.
But though I believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon
the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals
and cigarette-smoke.
Our windows fronting on the dangerous foam,
(he wrote, after long, irresolute snatches), and then--
"Our open casements facing desolate seas
Forlorn--forlorn--"
Here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I had
first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was
tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It
lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul
must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of sweat
trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back of my
hand.
"Our windows facing on the desolate seas
And pearly foam of magic fairyland--"
"Not yet--not yet," he muttered, "wait a minute.
_Please_ wait a minute. I shall get it then--"
Our magic windows fronting on the sea,
The dangerous foam of desolate seas .
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