harbouring some child actress of parts—only to be convinced of folly. She knew all about Louise. Besides, she had heard the child read aloud before. Good, clean, intelligent delivery. But nothing like this—this was uncanny. Uncanny, yet magnificent. The artist in her settled down to enjoyment; yet she was uneasy, too. "And just as far as ever from the end!" "And just as far as ever from the end!" The creeping voice toiled on across the haunted plain, growing louder, clearer, nearer. Vision was forced upon Clare, serene in her form-room, swift and sudden vision. She not only heard, every sense responded. At her feet lay the waste land of the poem, she smelt the dank air, shrank from the clammy undergrowth, watched the bowed figure of the wandering knight,[48] stumbling forwards doggedly. It was coming towards her, the outline blurred in the evening mist, the face hidden. The voice was surely his? [48] "Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell." "Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell." She heard it alive with warning. Nearer, ever nearer; the bowed form was at her very feet, as the voice rose anew in despairing defiance. "To view the last of me——" "To view the last of me——" The helmeted head was flung back; the voice echoed from hill to hill— "I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." "I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."
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