"Let the eyes remain uncovered," he said, "in honour of so freely giving
himself." And to his horror Harris then realised for the first time that
his hands were already fastened to his sides. The Brother retreated again silently, and in the pause that followed all
the figures about him dropped to their knees, leaving him standing
alone, and as they dropped, in voices hushed with mingled reverence and
awe, they cried, softly, odiously, appallingly, the name of the Being
whom they momentarily expected to appear. Then, at the end of the room, where the windows seemed to have
disappeared so that he saw the stars, there rose into view far up
against the night sky, grand and terrible, the outline of a man. A kind
of grey glory enveloped it so that it resembled a steel-cased statue,
immense, imposing, horrific in its distant splendour; while, at the same
time, the face was so spiritually mighty, yet so proudly, so austerely
sad, that Harris felt as he stared, that the sight was more than his
eyes could meet, and that in another moment the power of vision would
fail him altogether, and he must sink into utter nothingness. So remote and inaccessible hung this figure that it was impossible to
gauge anything as to its size, yet at the same time so strangely close,
that when the grey radiance from its mightily broken visage, august and
mournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like some dark star with the
powers of spiritual evil, he felt almost as though he were looking into
a face no farther removed from him in space than the face of any one of
the Brothers who stood by his side. And then the room filled and trembled with sounds that Harris understood
full well were the failing voices of others who had preceded him in a
long series down the years. There came first a plain, sharp cry, as of a
man in the last anguish, choking for his breath, and yet, with the very
final expiration of it, breathing the name of the Worship--of the dark
Being who rejoiced to hear it. The cries of the strangled; the short,
running gasp of the suffocated; and the smothered gurgling of the
tightened throat, all these, and more, echoed back and forth between the
walls, the very walls in which he now stood a prisoner, a sacrificial
victim. The cries, too, not alone of the broken bodies, but--far
worse--of beaten, broken souls. And as the ghastly chorus rose and fell,
there came also the faces of the lost and unhappy creatures to whom they
belonged, and, against that curtain of pale grey light, he saw float
past him in the air, an array of white and piteous human countenances
that seemed to beckon and gibber at him as though he were already one of
themselves. Slowly, too, as the voices rose, and the pallid crew sailed past, that
giant form of grey descended from the sky and approached the room that
contained the worshippers and their prisoner. Hands rose and sank about
him in the darkness, and he felt that he was being draped in other
garments than his own; a circlet of ice seemed to run about his head,
while round the waist, enclosing the fastened arms, he felt a girdle
tightly drawn. At last, about his very throat, there ran a soft and
silken touch which, better than if there had been full light, and a
mirror held to his face, he understood to be the cord of sacrifice--and
of death. At this moment the Brothers, still prostrate upon the floor, began again
their mournful, yet impassioned chanting, and as they did so a strange
thing happened. For, apparently without moving or altering its position,
the huge Figure seemed, at once and suddenly, to be inside the room,
almost beside him, and to fill the space around him to the exclusion of
all else. He was now beyond all ordinary sensations of fear, only a drab feeling
as of death--the death of the soul--stirred in his heart. His thoughts
no longer even beat vainly for escape. The end was near, and he knew it. The dreadfully chanting voices rose about him in a wave: "We worship! We
adore! We offer!" The sounds filled his ears and hammered, almost
meaningless, upon his brain. Then the majestic grey face turned slowly downwards upon him, and his
very soul passed outwards and seemed to become absorbed in the sea of
those anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands forced him to his
knees, and in the air before him he saw the arm of Kalkmann upraised,
and felt the pressure about his throat grow strong. It was in this awful moment, when he had given up all hope, and the help
of gods or men seemed beyond question, that a strange thing happened. For before his fading and terrified vision there slid, as in a dream of
light,--yet without apparent rhyme or reason--wholly unbidden and
unexplained,--the face of that other man at the supper table of the
railway inn. And the sight, even mentally, of that strong, wholesome,
vigorous English face, inspired him suddenly with a new courage. It was but a flash of fading vision before he sank into a dark and
terrible death, yet, in some inexplicable way, the sight of that face
stirred in him unconquerable hope and the certainty of deliverance. It
was a face of power, a face, he now realised, of simple goodness such as
might have been seen by men of old on the shores of Galilee; a face, by
heaven, that could conquer even the devils of outer space. And, in his despair and abandonment, he called upon it, and called with
no uncertain accents. He found his voice in this overwhelming moment to
some purpose; though the words he actually used, and whether they were
in German or English, he could never remember. Their effect,
nevertheless, was instantaneous. The Brothers understood, and that grey
Figure of evil understood. For a second the confusion was terrific. There came a great shattering
sound. It seemed that the very earth trembled. But all Harris remembered
afterwards was that voices rose about him in the clamour of terrified
alarm--

"A man of power is among us! A man of God!" The vast sound was repeated--the rushing through space as of huge
projectiles--and he sank to the floor of the room, unconscious. The
entire scene had vanished, vanished like smoke over the roof of a
cottage when the wind blows. And, by his side, sat down a slight un-German figure,--the figure of the
stranger at the inn,--the man who had the "rather wonderful eyes." *       *       *       *       *

When Harris came to himself he felt cold. He was lying under the open
sky, and the cool air of field and forest was blowing upon his face. He
sat up and looked about him. The memory of the late scene was still
horribly in his mind, but no vestige of it remained. No walls or ceiling
enclosed him; he was no longer in a room at all. There were no lamps
turned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister worshippers, no
tremendous grey Figure hovering beyond the windows. Open space was about him, and he was lying on a pile of bricks and
mortar, his clothes soaked with dew, and the kind stars shining brightly
overhead.