The hope that they tried to hope was well enough in its way, but I did
not share it; it was clear that the thing that they feared was the
corollary of the deed--one saw that more by the resignation upon the
face of the Sphinx than by their sorry anxiety for the door.
The wind soughed, and the great tapers flared, and their obvious fear
and the silence of the Sphinx grew more than ever a part of the
atmosphere, and bats went restlessly through the gloom of the wind
that beat the tapers low.
Then a few things screamed far off, then a little nearer, and
something was coming towards us, laughing hideously. I hastily gave a
prod to the door that they guarded; my finger sank right into the
mouldering wood--there was not a chance of holding it. I had not
leisure to observe their fright; I thought of the back-door, for the
forest was better than this; only the Sphinx was absolutely calm, her
prophecy was made and she seemed to have seen her doom, so that no new
thing could perturb her.
But by mouldering rungs of ladders as old as Man, by slippery edges of
the dreaded abyss, with an ominous dizziness about my heart and a
feeling of horror in the soles of my feet, I clambered from tower to
tower till I found the door that I sought; and it opened on to one of
the upper branches of a huge and sombre pine, down which I climbed on
to the floor of the forest.
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