He had
thoughts on the border of thought; fancies about a fourth dimension
which was itself a hole to hide anything, of seeing everything from
a new angle out of a new window in the senses; or of some mystical
light and transparency, like the new rays of chemistry, in which he
could see Bulmer's body, horrible and glaring, floating in a lurid
halo over the woods and the wall. He was haunted also with the hint,
which somehow seemed to be equally horrifying, that it all had
something to do with Mr. Prior. There seemed even to be something
creepy in the fact that he was always respectfully referred to as
Mr. Prior, and that it was in the domestic life of the dead farmer
that he had been bidden to seek the seed of these dreadful things.
As a matter of fact, he had found that no local inquiries had
revealed anything at all about the Prior family.
The moonlight had broadened and brightened, the wind had driven off
the clouds and itself died fitfully away, when he came round again
to the artificial lake in front of the house. For some reason it
looked a very artificial lake; indeed, the whole scene was like a
classical landscape with a touch of Watteau; the Palladian facade of
the house pale in the moon, and the same silver touching the very
pagan and naked marble nymph in the middle of the pond.
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