"Very good. I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is
horrible enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old
mystery played in our day, and in dim London streets instead of
amidst the vineyards and the olive gardens. We know what
happened to those who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and
those who are wise know that all symbols are symbols of
something, not of nothing. It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol
beneath which men long ago veiled their knowledge of the most
awful, most secret forces which lie at the heart of all things;
forces before which the souls of men must wither and die and
blacken, as their bodies blacken under the electric current.
Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot be
imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol to the most
of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to some a foolish tale.
But you and I, at all events, have known something of the
terror that may dwell in the secret place of life, manifested
under human flesh; that which is without form taking to itself
a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be? How is it that the very
sunlight does not turn to blackness before this thing, the hard
earth melt and boil beneath such a burden?"
