atco my little taper and advanced  in my ent along tian, tapestries. t  of a  in ed ed some grisly myt. t imperceptible ramp to ted floor. tsteps, even my breat gre sprang out in beads on my brow. I could no longer he sea.

    A long, a le; and to a door of en oak, loopped, barred h black iron.

    And still I felt no fear, no raising of thumbs.

    to t knife into butter.

    No fear; but ation, a ual breath.

    If I found some traces of  in a file marked: Personal, pererranean privacy, I migtle of  y of sucs possible strangeness, t kept me for a moment motionless, before in tly tainted innocence I turned the door creaked slowly back.

    quot;triking resemblance bet of love and trations of a torturer,quot; opined my e poet; I ure of t similarity on my marriage bed. And noaper slines of a rack. t yrdoms of ts, in my old nurses little store of  one glimpse of it before my little flame caved in and I  in absolute darkness -- a metal figure,  to be spiked at to he Iron Maiden.

    Absolute darkness. And, about me, truments of mutilation.

    Until t moment, t knolao tasy to kno. I fumbled for tc; ion and some dark nigion.

    tark torture cing . At t antiquity, Etruscan, perands, t burning atuary and I  consoled, t persuaded myself t I migumbled only upon a little museum of y, t alled trous items emplation.

    Yet at tre of tafalque, a doomed, ominous bier of Renaissance  its foot, an armful of to-afalque and its occupant more closely; yet I kne.