"'O God--that thing! Don't ever look at it! Burn it with the hangings around it and throw the ashes into the river! Marsh knew--and was warning me. He knew what it was--what that woman--that leopardess, or gorgon, or lamia, or whatever she was--actually represented. He'd tried to hint to me ever since I met her in his Paris studio, but it couldn't be told in words. I thought they all wronged her when they whispered horrors about her, but this picture has caught the whole secret--the whole monstrous background! "'God, but Frank is an artist! That thing is the greatest piece of work any living soul has produced since Rembrandt! It's a crime to burn it, but it would be a greater crime to let it exist--just as it would have been an abhorrent sin to let that she-demon exist any longer. The minute I saw it I understood what she was, and what part she played in the frightful secret that has come down from the days of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones--the secret that was nearly wiped out when Atlantis sunk, but that kept half alive in hidden traditions and allegorical myths and furtive, midnight cult-practises. She was the real thing. It wasn't any fake. It would have been merciful if it had been a fake. It was the old, hideous shadow that philosophers never dared mention--the thing hinted of in the _Necronomicon_ and symbolized in the Easter Island colossi. "'She thought we couldn't see through--that the false front would hold till we had bartered away our immortal souls. And she was half right--she'd have got me in the end. She was only--waiting. But Frank--good old Frank--was too much for her. _He knew what it all meant, and painted it._ I don't wonder she shrieked and ran off when she saw it. It wasn't quite done, but God knows _enough was there_. "'Then I knew I'd got to kill her--kill her, and everything connected with her. It was a taint that wholesome human blood couldn't bear. There was something else, too--but you'll never know that if you burn the picture without looking. I staggered down to her room with this machete that I got off the wall here, leaving Frank still knocked out. He was breathing, though, and I knew and thanked heaven that I hadn't killed him. "'I found her in front of the mirror braiding that accursed hair. She turned on me like a wild beast, and began spitting out her hatred of Marsh. The fact that she'd been in love with him (and I knew she had) only made it worse. For a minute I couldn't move, and she came within an ace of completely hypnotizing me. Then I thought of the picture, and the spell broke. She saw the breaking in my eyes, and must have noticed the machete too. I never saw anything but a wild jungle beast look as she did then. She sprang for me with claws out like a leopard's, but I was too quick. I swung the machete, and it was all over.' "Denis had to stop again there, and I saw the perspiration running down his forehead through the spattered blood. But in a moment he hoarsely resumed.