"You had better let me go forward alone, Lena," said Heyst.
She tugged, persistently at his arm, but after a time, during which
he never ceased to look smilingly into her terrified eyes, he ended by
disengaging himself.
"It's a sign rather than a demonstration," he argued, persuasively.
"Just wait here a moment. I promise not to approach near enough to be
stabbed."
As in a nightmare she watched Heyst go up the few yards of the path as
if he never meant to stop; and she heard his voice, like voices heard
in dreams, shouting unknown words in an unearthly tone. Heyst was only
demanding to see Wang. He was not kept waiting very long. Recovering
from the first flurry of her fright, Lena noticed a commotion in the
green top-dressing of the barricade. She exhaled a sigh of relief when
the spear-blades retreated out of sight, sliding inward--the horrible
things! in a spot facing Heyst a pair of yellow hands parted the leaves,
and a face filled the small opening--a face with very noticeable eyes.
It was Wang's face, of course, with no suggestion of a body belonging to
it, like those cardboard faces at which she remembered gazing as a child
in the window of a certain dim shop kept by a mysterious little man in
Kingsland Road. Only this face, instead of mere holes, had eyes which
blinked. She could see the beating of the eyelids.
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