In another instant she was on her feet again. With shaking fingers she
lighted the candle yet once more, after which she lighted a lamp standing
upon the chest of drawers. The room was almost brilliantly bright now.
With a gesture of incredulity she looked round. The doors and windows
were sealed tight, and there was nothing to be seen; yet she was more
than ever conscious of a presence grown more manifest. For a moment she
stood staring straight before her at the place where it seemed to be.
She realized its malice and its hatred, and an intense anger and hatred
took possession of her. She had always laughed at such things even when
thrilled by wonder and manufactured terrors. But now there was a sense
of conflict, of evil, of the indefinable things in which so many
believed.
Suddenly she remembered an ancient Sage of her tribe, who, proficient in
mysteries and secret rites gathered from nations as old as Phoenicia and
Egypt and as modern as Switzerland, held the Romanys of the world in awe,
for his fame had travelled where he could not follow. To Fleda in her
earliest days he had been like one inspired, and as she now stood facing
the intangible Thing, she recalled an exorcism which the Sage had recited
to her, when he had sufficiently startled her senses by tales of the
Between World.
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