Of oyster-white and raw blues and reds, inflamed by the pouring sun, it had held an awful place in the infantile life of Penrod Schofield, for in his tenderer years he accepted it without question as the literal Eye of Deity.

He had been informed that the church was the divine dwelling--and there was the Eye! Nowadays, being no longer a little child, he had somehow come to know better without being told, and, though the great flaming Eye was no longer the terrifying thing it had been to him during his childhood, it nevertheless retained something of its ominous character.

It made him feel spied upon, and its awful glare still pursued him, sometimes, as he was falling asleep at night.

When he faced the window his feeling was one of dull resentment.
His own glazed eyes, becoming slightly crossed with an ennui that was peculiarly intense this morning, rendered the Eye more monstrous than it was.

It expanded to horrible size, growing mountainous; it turned into a volcano in the tropics, and yet it stared at him, indubitably an Eye implacably hostile to all rights of privacy forever.