to the shrubbery of the gardens. Clusters of foliage were still quivering from the hasty passage of some moving object.
"Rald!" shouted the king. There was no answer; the leafy tangles stilled and became motionless. "I meant him no harm—nor punishment, though he desired my throne. Why——"
"He chose to go," said Thrine, complacently, "so he went."
"Well, we need have no fear of his practising his profession in the castle, henceforth. Paradoxically, though a thief he is still an honest one. Now that we are in his debt he will not take advantage of it. I know men!"
Thrine laughed.
"You may be wise in the manner of honor among kings and men, oh my brother, but how little you know of their hearts! Some day—Rald will be back!"
"After fleeing? Back? For what?"
"O king without eyes! For me, of course!"
To Virgil Finlay
Upon his Drawing for Robert Bloch's Tale, "The Faceless God"
By H. P. LOVECRAFT
In dim abysses pulse the shapes of night,
Hungry and hideous, with strange miters crowned;
Black pinions beating in fantastic flight
From orb to orb through soulless voids profound.
None dares to name the cosmos whence they course,
Or guess the look on each amorphous face,
Or speak the words that with resistless force
Would draw them from the halls of outer space.
Yet here upon a page our frightened glance
Finds monstrous forms no human eye should see;
Hints of those blasphemies whose countenance
Spreads death and madness through infinity.
What limner he who braves black gulfs alone
And lives to wake their alien horrors known?
W. T.—2
