"It couldn't remember," he whispered faintly, as if to himself. "It couldn't know Clay, after all these years." Again, from the cellar, I heard that eager, feral whining. "It does," whispered Josepha Hand. "It wants _him_!" And I perceived suddenly that all eyes were fixed upon me, glazed and distended with horror, as if I had been some ghastly apparition. In that abrupt and fearful silence, Valyne's fork rattled shockingly on the floor. _3. "Your Father Was--Horror!"_ When the meal was finished, Doctor Kyle took me apart to the end of the room, and lowered his hollow voice. "Clay," he said solemnly, "I beg you to trust me, as if I were your true father. I want you to leave Valyne--to go away, without making me tell you the secret of your life." "Why?" I demanded, bluntly impatient. "I love you, Clay." His voice quivered faintly with emotion. "I love you as my own son, in spite of what I must tell you. That is why I have never told you, and why I am unwilling to tell you now. "If you go away from Creston, Clay, you may find some happiness. I beg you to go, and to heed my warning--never marry!" I seized his arm. Despite his age, it felt hard and powerful as Jud Geer's. "I'm not going," I told him flatly. "Life without Valyne wouldn't be life. And why shouldn't I marry? I'm healthy, without any stain that I know of." He bowed his yellow, cadaverous head, resignedly. "I see that I must tell you. It is better for my words to wreck your life, than to let you and Valyne plunge unwarned into the horror waiting----" His voice stopped suddenly; his dark eyes flew toward the cellar door. From below I heard a hoarse scream, thick, maddened; the clanking of a heavy chain; the shriek of rusty nails being drawn; the crashing of splintered planking. The doctor stood voiceless, ashen, trembling, until Eben Hand burst again into the room, mouthing incoherent sounds, fingers flying. "It's breaking out!" cried Josepha Hand. "It's coming to _him_!" Her dark eyes darted to me again, terrible with an undisguised and savage odium. Abruptly recovering himself, Doctor Kyle picked up a heavy chair and ran through the cellar door. His wife scurried after him, with her astonishing bird-like agility. "Let me, Latham!" her thin voice shrilled. "Let me! It always heeded me." The two servants followed them apprehensively. Valyne was standing at the other end of the room, staring after them with stunned tragedy in her shadowed violet eyes. I walked to her hastily, and grasped her cold hands. "Valyne," I said urgently, "you tell me! What have they in the cellar? What makes this house so strange? Why does the doctor want us not to marry?" Her eyes, looking back at me, were dark and wide with dread. Her cold hands trembled. "You're afraid, darling!" I cried. "Tell me--what do you fear?" But a terrible intuition had already given me the answer. "You're afraid of me!" She looked at me in mute agony, without denial.