Where England Sets her Feet by Bernard Capes

Thenceforth Brion avoided the neighbourhood of the old well-house; he kept that dark cloud of ilex trees at a nervous distance, and did not even care to let his glance wander their way. This mood of superstitious fear haunted him for some time, and then began to weaken, or to change in its constitution. The eternal spirit of curiosity crept back, like a scared sheep, to examine the cause of its own panic. He was ashamed of himself for having yielded so abjectly to a portent existing, perhaps, only in his imagination: he longed to find it _in_ himself to re-essay the test, and was angry because he could not at once rise to it. But the thought of the place fascinated him, and gradually, a little and a little more, drew him to venture foot again within the radius of its influence. That laugh he had heard was the laugh of Parthenope to his bewitched senses. It sickened yet it drew him.

He had a feverish lust to fathom its source, and to grapple with whatever nameless horror it might reveal. That was his nature. He would come to be a tenacious fighter in his day patient to the fine limit of forbearance, but difficult to shake from his grasp, when once fastened on. Yet for long he could not bring his mind to face the great decision.