They
may be merely happy and prosaic imaginings, hiding the night which alone
is real. To consider this possibility is troubling. It makes for even
greater loneliness. None the less, I know that I am real, and certainly
the grayness before me is real. Well, no matter what befell Ruric
yonder, it must be that in this grayness there is some other being who
is real and dissatisfied. I must go to seek this being, for here I
become as a drugged person among sedate and comfortable dreams which are
made doubly weariful by my old master's whispering of that knowledge
which was my father's father's."
Then in the gray dusk was revealed a face that was not human, and the
round toothless mouth of it spoke feebly, saying, "I am Lubrican, and I
come to guide you if you dare follow."
"I have always thought that 'dare' was a quaint word," says Manuel, with
the lordly swagger which he kept for company.
So he climbed out of the third window of Ageus. When later he climbed
back, a lock had been sheared from the side of his gray head.
Now the tale tells that thereafter Dom Manuel was changed, and his
attendants gossiped about it.
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