I scrambled along the sedgy margin, not daring to lift my eyes till I was on the temple steps.
The place was brighter than day with a roaring blast of fire. The very air seemed to be incandescent and to have become a flaming ether. And yet there were no flames -- only a burning brightness. I could not enter, for the waft from it struck my face like a scorching hand and I felt my hair singe....
I am short-sighted, as you know, and I may have been mistaken, but this is what I think I saw. From the altar a great tongue of flame seemed to shoot upwards and lick the roof, and from its pediment ran flaming streams. In front of it lay a body -- Dubellay's -- a naked body, already charred and black. There was nothing else, except that the Gorgon's head in the wall seemed to glow like a sun in hell.
