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

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Stahl nodded darkly. "Driven forth by your intense desire." After a pause he added, "The process already begun in you would complete itself."

Ah! So obviously what the doctor wanted was a description of his sensations in that haunted cabin.

"Temporarily?" asked the Irishman under his breath.

The other did not answer for a moment. O'Malley repeated the question.

"Temporarily," said Stahl, turning away again toward his desk, "unless—the yearning were too strong."

"In which case—?"

"Permanently. For it would draw the entire personality with it…."

"The soul?"

Stahl was bending over his books and papers. The answer was barely audible.

"Death," was the whispered word that floated across the heavy air of that little sun-baked cabin.

The word if spoken at all was so softly spoken that the Irishman scarcely knew whether he actually heard it, or whether it was uttered by his own thought. He only realized—catching some vivid current from the other man's mind—that this separation of a vital portion of himself that Stahl hinted at might involve a kind of nameless inner catastrophe which should mean the loss of his personality as it existed today—an idea, however, that held no terror for him if it meant at the same time the recovery of what he so passionately sought.