And this was no mere fine emotion; there was no room for imagination in it--the reality exceeded all imagination. Overwhelming it was, furious, relentless; his thoughts strove to roam, but it seized him by the hair and dragged him back. Here--_here!_ She was wrung and shaken with her agony, her eyes shut, her face uplifted, her muscles turned to stone. And the minutes dragged out into hours--there was no end to it--there was no end to it! There was no meaning--it was only naked, staring terror. It beat him up again and again; he would sink back exhausted, thinking that he could feel no more; but it dragged him up once more--to agony without respite! The caverns of horror were rent open; they split before his eyes--deeper, deeper--in vistas and abysses from which he shrunk appalled. Here dwelt the furies, despair and madness--here dwelt the demon-forces of being, grisly phantoms which come not into the light of day. Their hands were upon him, their claws were in his flesh; and over their chasms he shuddered--he scented the smoke of that seething pit of life, whose top the centuries have sealed, and into which no mortal thing may gaze and live. Life--life--here was life, he felt. What had he known of it before this?--the rest was pageantry and sham. Beauty, pleasure, love--here they were in the making of them--here they were in the real truth of them! Raw, naked, hideous it was; and it was the source of all things else! His being rose in one titan throb of rebellion. It was monstrous--it was unthinkable! He wanted no such life--he had no right to it! Let there be an end of it! No life that ever was could be worth such a price as this! It was a cheat, a horror--there could be no justice in such a thing! There could be no God in it--it was oppression, it was wrong! He thought of the millions that swarmed on the earth--they had all come from this! And it was happening every hour--every second! He saw it, the whole of it--the age-long agony, the universal birth-pang of being. And he hated it, hated it with a wild, raging hatred--he would have annihilated it with one sweep of his arm. And yet--there was no way to annihilate it! It was here--it was inevitable. And it was everlasting--it was an everlasting delusion, an everlasting madness. It was a Snare! Yes, he came back to the thought--that was the image for it! It mattered not how much you might cry out, you were in it, and it held you! It held you as it held Corydon, in throb after throb of torment. She moaned, she choked, she tossed from side to side; but it held her. It seemed to him that the storm of her agony beat upon her like the tempest upon a mountain pine-tree. Section 10. The doctor’s hands were red with blood now, like a butcher’s. He bent over his work, his lips set. Now and then he would speak to the young nurse, whom he was teaching; and his words would break the spell of Thyrsis’ nightmare. “You can see the head now,” he said once, turning to the boy.