Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 13, 2025
Guildea pushed away his glass. "Let us come upstairs, then." "No, thank you," reiterated the Father. "Eh?" "What am I saying?" exclaimed the Father, getting up. "I was thinking over this extraordinary affair." "Ah, you're beginning to forget the hysteria theory?" They walked out into the passage. "Well, you are so very practical about the whole matter." "Why not?
I can speak quite frankly to you, I feel sure." "Of course. That's why I have told you the whole thing." "I think you must be over-worked, over-strained, without knowing it." "And that the doctor was mistaken when he said I was all right?" "Yes." Guildea knocked his pipe out against the chimney piece.
On the hearthrug, close to the fire, he found Guildea lying with his head lolled against the armchair from which he had recently risen. There was a shocking expression of terror on his convulsed face. On examining him the Father found that he was dead. The doctor, who was called in, said that the cause of death was failure of the heart.
But he remained totally unaware of any third person with them. At length he said, "Guildea, I cannot pretend to doubt the reality of your misery here. You must go away, and at once. When is your Paris lecture?" "Next week. In nine days from now." "Go to Paris to-morrow then, you say you have never had any consciousness that this this thing pursued you beyond your own front door!"
"D'you believe that?" he cried. "I don't know," said the Father. "But it may be so. Try to endure it, even to welcome it. Possibly then the persecution will cease." "I know it means me no harm," Guildea exclaimed, "it seeks me out of affection. It was led to me by some amazing attraction which I exercise over it ignorantly. I know that.
Since I came to this conclusion, Murchison, I will confess that my feeling of strong curiosity has become tinged with another feeling." "Of fear?" "No, of dislike, of irritation. No not fear, not fear." As Guildea repeated unnecessarily this asseveration he looked again towards the parrot's cage. "What is there to be afraid of in such a matter?" he added.
At half-past seven he stood on the doorstep of Number 100. Pitting let him in. "Is the Professor quite well, Pitting?" the Father enquired as he took off his cloak. "I believe so, sir. He has not made any complaint," the butler formally replied. "Will you come upstairs, sir?" Guildea met them at the door of the library. He was very pale and sombre, and shook hands carelessly with his friend.
The Professor was pale, and his mobile lips were drawn into an expression of supreme disgust. "Faugh!" he said. He walked to the windows of the further room, pulled aside the curtains and pushed the glass up, letting in the air. The bare trees were visible in the grey gloom outside. Guildea leaned out for a minute drawing the night air into his lungs.
It is here now," he uttered a sharp cry, "now, as I sit here with you. It is nestling up to me, fawning upon me, touching my hands. Man, man, can't you feel that it is here?" "No," the Father answered truly. "I try to protect myself from its loathsome contact," Guildea continued, with fierce excitement, clutching the thick rug with both hands. "But nothing is of any avail against it. Nothing.
He pitied this hard-working, eminently successful man of big brain and bold heart, who never seemed depressed, who never wanted assistance, who never complained of the twisted skein of life or faltered in his progress along its way. The Father pitied Guildea, in fact, because Guildea wanted so little.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking