Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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"There's something here the rest of the world has lost," he murmured to himself. But the doctor heard him.

"You feel it?" he asked quickly, his eyes brightening. "The awful, primitive beauty—?"

"I feel—something, certainly," was the cautious answer. He could not possibly have said more just then; yet it seemed as though he heard far echoes of that voice that had been first borne to his ears across the blue Ægean. In the gorges of these terrible mountains it surely sounded still. These men must know it too.

"The spell of this strange land will never leave you once you've felt it," pursued the other quietly, his voice deepening. "Even in the towns here—Tiflis, Kutais—I have felt it. Hereabouts is the cradle of the human race, they say, and the people have not changed for thousands of years. Some of them you'll find"—he hunted for a word, then said with a curious, shrugging gesture, "terrific."

"Ah—" said the Irishman, lighting a fresh cigarette from the dying stump so clumsily that the trembling of the hand was noticeable.