She knew in a moment what it meant;
but not a word was uttered about the matter, and the name of Karl
Wolkenlicht seemed to be entirely forgotten.
"But how could the affairs of a house go on all the same when every one of
the household knew that a dead body lay in the cellar?--nay more, that,
although it lay still and dead enough all day, it would come half alive at
nightfall, and, turning the whole house into a sepulchre by its presence,
go creeping about like a cat all over it in the dark--perhaps with
phosphorescent eyes? So it was not surprising that the painter abandoned
his studio early, and that the three found themselves together in the
gorgeous room formerly described, as soon as twilight began to fall.
"Already Teufelsbuerst had begun to experience a kind of shrinking from the
horrid faces in his own pictures, and to feel disgusted at the abortions
of his own mind. But all that he and the old woman now felt was an
increasing fear as the night drew on, a kind of sickening and paralysing
terror. The thing down there would not lie quiet--at least its phantom in
the cellars of their imagination would not.
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