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Benson, Robert Hugh, 1871-1914

"The Necromancers"

dear Laurie....
With one motion, swift and impetuous, she had thrown herself forward
on to her knees, and clasped at the hanging hands.
"Laurie! Laurie!" she cried. "You haven't prayed ... you've been
playing, and the machinery has caught you. But it isn't too late! Oh,
God! it's not too late. Pray with me! Say the Our Father...."
Again slowly the eyes moved round. He had started ever so little at
her rush, and the seizing of his hands; and now she felt those hands
moving weakly in her own, as of a sleeping child who tries to detach
himself from his mother's arms.
"I ... I ... I'm all--"
She grasped his hands more fiercely, staring straight up into those
strange piteous eyes that revealed so little, except formless
commotion and uneasiness.
"Say the Our Father with me. 'Our Father--'"
Then his hands tore back, with a movement as fierce as her own, and
the eyes blazed with an unreal light. She still clung to his wrists,
looking up, struck with a paralysis of fear at the change, and the
furious hostility that flamed up in the face. The lips writhed back,
half snarling, half smiling....
"Let go! let go!" he hissed at her. "What are you--"
"The Our Father, Laurie .


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