It seemed to him now that Jason’s head, as he saw it across that smoke-filled space, resembled that of some lost spirit in Dante’s Inferno, swirling up out of the pit and crying, “Help! Help! Help!” It was curious to himself how ready he felt just then to respond to that cry. “I must have drunk up this new strength from possessing Gerda,” he thought to himself.

Darnley’s trim beard continued to wag with gentlemanly urbanity, as he laughed and jested with various people in different parts of the room, but Wolf could see that he was growing more and more nervous about his brother. Nor was this nervousness without justification. Jason had turned his face to his neighbour, who was a grim farmer from Nevilton, and was uttering words that evidently seemed to startle the man, if not to shock him; for his face grew grimmer than ever, and he kept shifting his chair a little further away.