Stunned amazement hit Bryan as he peered intently at the figure being so weirdly created. For recognition had come. He was looking at the man who, a short time before, had been attacked in the park by Leeta and her bizarre followers. The shape was taking on solidity. Dazed, Bryan recalled the events in the park. Leeta's strange globe, he realized, had absorbed some vital essence from its victim--perhaps the soul--and this essence was now being released by the pool. Released, somehow, in a perfect replica of the fleshly covering that originally had housed it. The man hung over the pool. His closed eyes fluttered, opened. Animation touched his face. Fear showed in it, a rising horror, a frantic desperation. He struggled. And began dissolving. The pool boiled and seethed as though in a mighty effort to hold its creation intact. It did not succeed. The shape thinned, shrunk, faded ... was gone. There was a moment of stricken stillness. The pool had quieted. Its aura of supernal power had dimmed. An air of exhaustion lay over it now, an exhaustion in which even the surrounding flowers seemed to pale and droop. Then a piping murmur rose like a sigh of mourning. "Failed ... again...." And Leeta covered her face with her hands, sagging. Her bowed shoulders shook, with great sobs of mingled grief, disappointment and despair. Bryan wanted to make some sign of sympathy, of consolation--but again the scene was growing blurred, fading. He fought to hold it together, fought as the pool had fought ... futilely. And then a hovering blackness rushed over him, and he seemed to whirl dizzily across an enormous gulf. He awoke in bed, soaked with perspiration, breathing hard. He had a feeling of anger, dejection. He swung his legs to the floor and glanced at his watch. He had been asleep for less than an hour, but at the moment he was too upset by his strangely realistic nightmare to return to bed. He lit a cigarette and fell to pacing the length of his room. Thinking back over his disturbingly vivid dream, he wondered why he should have experienced it in that particular way. The events of the preceding night had been unnerving enough, but he felt there was a deeper reason. Was it possible that the queer wound he had received in the park had something to do with it? He recalled his feverishness, his light-headed sensation. Then he thought of the man he had seen in the dream, and came to an abrupt stop. In another instant he sprang back into motion, hurrying to the telephone near the bed. He dialed the hospital to which the man had been taken from the park, waiting impatiently while the doctor in charge of the case was put on. Identifying himself, then, he asked quickly, "How is the fellow, doctor?" "Afraid I have bad news. He died about five minutes ago. There didn't seem to be a single thing I could do to prevent it." "I see...." Bryan muttered his thanks and hung up. He sat staring into space.