fingering them desperately till they hurt his hands and escaped from his slippery moist skin.
'Mánya!' he repeated in a louder voice, while his mind plunged out to seek the child he had always known behind the familiar name.
And this time she answered; but to his horror, the whole room, and even space beyond the actual room, seemed to answer with her. The name was repeated by her lips, yet came from the night beyond the open window too. He had made a question of it. The answer, repeating it, was assent.
'M á n y-a …' he heard all round him, while the head bent gently down and forward.
The shock of it restored to him some power of movement, and he stumbled back a step or two further from her side. It might well have been whimsical and cheap, this artificial play upon a name, but instead of either it was abominably significant. This motionless figure, so close that he could feel her breath upon his face, was positively in some astonishing way more than one. She was many. The laughter that lay behind the trivial little thing was a laughter both grand and terrible. It was the laughter of the sea, of the woods, of sand a—host that no man counteth—the laughter of a multitude.
And he thrust out both his hands automatically lest she should touch him. He shook from head to toe. Contact with her person would break up his being into millions. The sensation of terror was both immense and acute, sweeping him beyond himself. Like her, he was becoming many—becoming hundreds and thousands—sand that none can number.
'Child!' he heard his voice repeating faintly, yet with an emphasis that spaced the words apart
