The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX attention upon it was that while the front of the house was otherwise entirely dark, from a window on the first floor streamed a blaze of light. The window was wide open to the street ; voices came from it. “The first an old, harsh, menacing voice, with all the sting of hate in it; nay, the sting of something devilish, worse than hate. A corrupt enjoyment of its malice informed it. And the words it spoke were too infamous for me to repeat. They are scarred upon my brain. Addressed to the vilest harridan that scours the gutter for her carrion prey, they would have yet been inhuman, impossible; to the voice that answered .. . ! “Tt was a voice like the tinkling of a fairy bell. Whoever spoke was little more than a child ; and her answer had the purity and strength of an angel. That even the foul monster who addressed her could support it, unblasted, was matter for astonishment. “Now the older voice broke into filthy insult, a very frenzy of malice. “T heard—O God !—the swish of a whip, and the sound of it falling upon flesh. “ There was silence awhile, save for the hideous laughter of the invisible horror inside. “ At last a piteous little moan. “My blood sangshrill within me. Out of myself, I sprang at the railings, and was over them in a second. Rapidly, and quite unobserved (for the scene was strenuous within), I climbed up the grating of the lower windows, and, reaching up to the edge of the balcony, swung myself up to and over it. “As I stopped to fetch breath, as yet unperceived, I took in the scene, and was staggered at its strangeness. 116