Again she laughed, in that wicked, eerie glee.
M. Max was conscious of the most singular, the maddest impulses; it was
one of the supreme moments of his life. He knew that all depended
upon his absolute immobility; yet something in his brain was prompting
him--prompting him--to gather the witch to his breast; to return that
poisonous, that vampirish kiss, and then to crush out life from the
small lithe body.
Sternly he fought down these strange promptings, which he knew to
emanate hypnotically from the brain of the creature bending over him.
"Oh, my beautiful dead-baby," she said, softly, and her voice was low,
and weirdly sweet. "Oh, my new baby, how I love you, my dead one!" Again
she laughed, a musical peal. "I will creep to you in the poppyland where
you go... and you shall twine your fingers in my hair and pull my red
mouth down to you, kissing me... kissing me, until you stifle and you
die of my love.... Oh! my beautiful mummy-baby... my baby."...
The witch-crooning died away into a murmur; and the Frenchman became
conscious of the withdrawal of that presence from the room. No sound
came to tell of the reclosing of the door; but the obsession was
removed, the spell raised.
Again he inhaled deeply the tainted air, and again he opened his eyes.
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