"This is a ghoul," I said, "that we harbour: he is sucking my
best blood, and the household is clean bewitched." She laid aside
the book in which she read, and laughed at me. Now my wife was
well-looking, and her eyes were the light of my soul. Consider,
then, how I felt as she laughed, taking the Stranger's part against
me. When I left her, it was with a new suspicion in my heart.
"How shall it be," I thought, "if after stealing my youth, he go on
to take the one thing that is better?"
In my room, day by day, I brooded upon this--hating my own
alteration, and fearing worse. With the Stranger there was no longer
any disguise. His head blossomed in curls; white teeth filled the
hollows of his mouth; the pits in his cheeks were heaped full with
roses, glowing under a transparent skin. It was Aeson renewed and
thankless; and he sat on, devouring my substance.
Now having probed my weakness, and being satisfied that I no longer
dared to turn him out, he, who had half-imposed his native tongue
upon us, constraining the household to a hideous jargon, the bastard
growth of two languages, condescended to jerk us back rudely into our
own speech once more, mastering it with a readiness that proved his
former dissimulation, and using it henceforward as the sole vehicle
of his wishes. On his past life he remained silent; but took
occasion to confide in me that he proposed embracing a military
career, as soon as he should tire of the shelter of my roof.
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