The last test
but she had trusted James. She trusted him still as he showed her the unconscious form on the lounge and asked her to go back to her room and rest, no matter what sounds she might hear. He did not wish her to witness the awful spectacle of delirium certain to come, but bade her kiss her brother a final farewell as he lay there calm and still, very like the delicate boy he had once been. So she left him--the strange, moonstruck, star-reading genius she had mothered so long--and the picture she carried away was a very merciful one.

Dalton must bear to his grave a sterner picture. His fears of delirium were not vain, and all through the black midnight hours his giant strength restrained the frenzied contortions of the mad sufferer. What he heard from those swollen, blackening lips he will never repeat. He has never been quite the same man since, and he knows that no one who hears such things can ever be wholly as he was before. So, for the world's good, he dares not speak, and he thanks God that his layman's ignorance of certain subjects makes many of the revelations cryptic and meaningless to him.

Toward morning Clarendon suddenly woke to a sane consciousness and began to speak in a firm voice.

"James, I didn't tell you what must be done--about everything. Blot out these entries in Greek and send my notebook to Dr. Miller. All my other notes, too, you'll find in the files. He's the big authority today--his article proves it. Your friend at the club was right.

But everything in the clinic must go. Everything without exception, dead or alive or--otherwise. All the plagues of hell are in those bottles on the shelves. Burn them--burn it all--if one thing escapes, Surama will spread black death throughout the world. And above all burn Surama! That--that thing--must not breathe the wholesome air of heaven. You know now--what I told you--you know why such an entity can't be allowed on earth. It won't be murder--Surama isn't human--if you're as pious as you used to be, James, I shan't have to urge you. Remember the old text--'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'--or something of the sort."

"Burn him, James! Don't let him chuckle again over the torture of mortal flesh! I say, burn him--the Nemesis of Flame--that's all that can reach him, James, unless you can catch him asleep and drive a stake through his heart.... Kill him--extirpate him--cleanse the decent universe of its primal taint--the taint I recalled from its age-long sleep...."

The doctor had risen on his 
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