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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Lock and Key Library by Julian Hawthorne, Ed.: with a livid unearthly brightness--the Dead Stone shining out into
the night like an ember from hell's furnace! There was a horrid
semblance of life in the light,--a palpitating, breathing glow,--
and my pulses beat in time to it, till I seemed to be drawing it
into my veins. It had no warmth, and as it entered my blood my
heart grew colder, and my muscles more rigid. My fingers clutched
the dagger-hilt till its jeweled roughness pressed painfully into
my palm. All the strength of my strained powers seemed gathered in
that grasp, and the more tightly I held the more vividly did the
rock gleam and quiver with infernal life. The dead woman! The
dead woman! What had I to do with her? Let her bones rest in the
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