Of Asenath we said almost nothing, for I saw that the subject was a peculiarly disturbing one. Gossip, of course, was rife; but that was no novelty in connection with the strange menage at the old Crowninshield house. One thing I did not like was what Derby's banker let fall in an over-expansive mood at the Miskatonic Club--about the checks Edward was sending regularly to a Moses and Abigail Sargent and a Eunice Babson in Innsmouth. That looked as if those evil-faced servants were extorting some kind of tribute from him--yet he had not mentioned the matter to me. I wished that the summer--and my son's Harvard vacation--would come, so that we could get Edward to Europe. He was not, I soon saw, mending as rapidly as I had hoped he would; for there was something a bit hysterical in his occasional exhilaration, while his moods of fright and depression were altogether too frequent. The old Derby house was ready by December, yet Edward constantly put off moving. Though he hated and seemed to fear the Crowninshield place, he was at the same time queerly enslaved by it. He could not seem to begin dismantling things, and invented every kind of excuse to postpone action. When I pointed this out to him he appeared unaccountably frightened. His father's old butler--who was there with other re-acquired servants--told me one day that Edward's occasional prowlings about the house, and especially down cellar, looked odd and unwholesome to him. I wondered if Asenath had been writing disturbing letters, but the butler said there was no mail which could have come from her. It was about Christmas that Derby broke down one evening while calling on me. I was steering the conversation toward next summer's travels when he suddenly shrieked and leaped up from his chair with a look of shocking, uncontrollable fright--a cosmic panic and loathing such as only the nether gulfs of nightmare could bring to any sane mind. "My brain! My brain! God, Dan--it's tugging--from beyond--knocking--clawing--that she-devil--even now--Ephraim--Kamog! Kamog!--The pit of the shoggoths--Iä! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!... "The flame--the flame--beyond body, beyond life--in the earth--oh, God!..." I pulled him back to his chair and poured some wine down his throat as his frenzy sank to a dull apathy. He did not resist, but kept his lips moving as if talking to himself. Presently I realized that he was trying to talk to me, and bent my ear to his mouth to catch the feeble words. "----again, again--she's trying--I might have known--nothing can stop that force; not distance, nor magic, nor death--it comes and comes, mostly in the night--I can't leave--it's horrible--oh, God, Dan, _if you only knew as I do just how horrible it is_!..."