The steps of the attic were noisy and rickety, with several of the treads missing. I was glad of the need of looking sharply to my footing, for it gave me an excuse not to glance about. The attic corridor was pitch-black and heavily cobwebbed, and inch-deep with dust except where a beaten trail led to a door on the left at the farther end. As I noticed the rotting remains of a thick carpet, I thought of the other feet which had pressed it in bygone decades--of these, and of one thing which did not have feet. The old man took me straight to the door at the end of the beaten path, and fumbled a second with the rusty latch. I was acutely frightened now that I knew the picture was so close, yet dared not retreat at this stage. In another moment my host was ushering me into the deserted studio. The candlelight was very faint, yet served to show most of the principal features. I noticed the low, slanting roof, the huge enlarged dormer, the curios and trophies hung on the walls, and most of all, the great shrouded easel in the center of the floor. To that easel de Russy now walked, drawing aside the dusty velvet hangings on the side turned away from me, and motioning me silently to approach. It took a good deal of courage to make me obey, especially when I saw how my guide's eyes dilated in the wavering candlelight as he looked at the unveiled canvas. But again curiosity conquered everything, and I walked around to where de Russy stood. Then I saw the damnable thing. I did not faint, though no reader can possibly realize the effort it took to keep me from doing so. I did cry out, but stopped short when I saw the frightened look on the old man's face. As I had expected, the canvas was warped, moldy, and scabrous from dampness and neglect; but for all that I could trace the monstrous hints of evil cosmic outsideness that lurked all through the nameless scene's morbid content and perverted geometry. It was as the old man had said: a vaulted, columned hell of mingled Black Masses and witches' sabbats, and what perfect completion could have added to it was beyond my power to guess. Decay had only increased the utter hideousness of its wicked symbolism and diseased suggestion; for the parts most affected by time were just these parts of the picture which in nature--or in that extra-cosmic realm that mocked nature--would be likely to decay or disintegrate. The utmost horror of all, of course, was Marceline; and as I saw the bloated, discolored flesh I formed the odd fancy that perhaps the figure on the canvas had some obscure, occult linkage with the figure which lay in quicklime under the cellar floor. Perhaps the lime had preserved the corpse instead of destroying it--but could it have preserved those black, malign eyes that glared and mocked at me from their painted hell?