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himself to sully it with language.
    Yet, forced, he might say:
    I learned that I have a purpose in life.
    I learned that I have a destiny.
    I learned that I have been chosen.
    I learned that the gods are several and that they know my name.
    I learned that there is a world under the world.
    I learned that I have friends among the powerful.
    I learned that I need to be patient.
    I learned that I will be rewarded for my patience.
    And I learned — this above all — that I might not need to die.
     
    “You have a servant,” Vale said. “A Negress.”
    Mrs. Sanders-Moss sat erect, eyes wide, like a schoolgirl called on by an intimidating teacher. “Yes. Olivia… her name is Olivia.”
    He wasn’t conscious of speaking. He had given himself over to another presence. He felt the rubbery peristalsis of his lips and tongue as something foreign and revolting, as if a slug had crawled into his mouth.
    “She’s been with you a long time — this Olivia.”
    “Yes; a very long time.”
    “She was with you when your daughter was born.”
    “Yes.”
    “And she cared for the girl.”
    “Yes.”
    “Wept when the girl died.”
    “We all did. The household.”
    “But Olivia harbored deeper feelings.”
    “Did she?”
    “She knows about the box. The lock of hair, the christening dress.”
    “I suppose she must. But—”
    “You kept them under the bed.”
    “Yes!”
    “Olivia dusts under the bed. She knows when you’ve looked at the box. She knows because the dust is disturbed. She pays attention to dust.”
    “That’s possible, but—”
    “You haven’t opened the box for a long time. More than a year.”
    Mrs. Sanders-Moss lowered her eyes. “But I’ve thought of it. I didn’t forget .”
    “Olivia treats the box as a shrine. She worships it. She opens it when you’re out of the house. She’s careful not to disturb the dust. She thinks of it as her own.”
    “Olivia…”
    “She thinks you don’t do justice to the memory of your daughter.”
    “That’s not true!”
    “But it’s what she believes.”
    “ Olivia took the box?”
    “Not a theft, by her lights.”
    “Please — Dr. Vale — where is it ? Is it safe?”
    “Quite safe.”
    “ Where? ”
    “In the maid’s quarters, at the back of a closet.” (For a moment Vale saw it in his mind’s eye, the wooden box like a tiny coffin swathed in ancient linens; he smelled camphor and dust and cloistered grief.)
    “I trusted her!”
    “She loved the girl, too, Mrs. Sanders-Moss. Very much.” Vale took a deep, shuddering breath; began to reclaim himself, felt the god leaving him, subsiding into the hidden world again. The relief was exquisite. “Take back what belongs to you. But please, don’t be too hard on Olivia.”
    Mrs. Sanders-Moss looked at him with a very gratifying expression of awe.
     
    She thanked him effusively. He turned down the offer of money. Both her tentative smile and her shaken demeanor were encouraging, very promising indeed. But, of course, only time would tell.
    When she had taken her umbrella and gone he opened a bottle of brandy and retreated to an upstairs room where the rain rattled down a frosted window, the gaslights were turned high, and the only book in sight was a tattered pulp-paper volume entitled His Mistress’s Petticoat.
    To outward appearance, the change worked in him by the manifestation of the god was subtle. Inwardly, he felt exhausted, almost wounded. There was a rawness, not quite pain, which extended to every limb. His eyes burned. The liquor helped, but it would be another day until he was completely himself.
    With luck the brandy would moderate the dreams that followed a manifestation. In the dreams he found himself inevitably in some cold wilderness, some borderless vast gray desert, and when out of a misplaced curiosity or simply mischief he lifted up a random stone he uncovered a hole from which poured countless insects of some unknown and hideous kind, many-legged, pincered, venomous, swarming