But the apparition did not stir.  Impassive, remorseless, sinister, it was content to wait, well aware that all suspense was in its favor.  Then I said to myself that I would cross the room, and so attain my object.  I made a step—­and drew back, frightened by the sound of a creaking board.  Absurd!  But it was quite a minute before I dared to make another step.  I had meant to walk straight across to the other door, passing in my course close by the occupied chair.  I did not do so; I kept round by the wall, creeping on tiptoe and my eye never leaving the figure in the chair.  I did this in spite of myself, and the manner of my action was the first hint of an ultimate defeat.

At length I stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom.  I could feel the perspiration on my forehead and at the back of my neck.  I fronted the inscrutable white face of the thing which had once been Lord Clarenceux, the lover of Rosetta Rosa; I met its awful eyes, dark, invidious, fateful.  Ah, those eyes!  Even in my terror I could read in them all the history, all the characteristics, of Lord Clarenceux.  They were the eyes of one capable at once of the highest and of the lowest.  Mingled with their hardness was a melting softness, with their cruelty a large benevolence, with their hate a pitying tenderness, with their spirituality a hellish turpitude.  They were the eyes of two opposite men, and as I gazed into them they reconciled for me the conflicting accounts of Lord Clarenceux which I had heard from different people.

But as far as I was concerned that night the eyes held nothing but cruelty and disaster; though I could detect in them the other qualities, those qualities were not for me.  We faced each other, the apparition and I, and the struggle, silent and bitter as the grave, began.  Neither of us moved.  My arms were folded easily, but my nails pressed in the palms of my clenched hands.  My teeth were set, my lips tight together, my glance unswerving.  By sheer strength of endeavor I cast aside all my forebodings of defeat, and in my heart I said with the profoundest conviction that I would love Rosa though the seven seas and all the continents gave up their dead to frighten me.

So we remained, for how long I do not know.  It may have been hours; it may have been only minutes; I cannot tell.  Then gradually there came over me a feeling that the ghost in the chair was growing larger.  The ghastly inhuman sneer on his thin widening lips assaulted me like a giant’s malediction.  And the light in the room seemed to become more brilliant, till it was almost blinding with the dazzle of its whiteness.  This went on for a time, and once more I pulled myself together, collected my scattering senses, and seized again the courage and determination which had nearly slipped from me.

But I knew that I must get away, out of sight of this moveless and diabolic figure, which did not speak, but which made known its commands by means of its eyes alone.  “Resign her!” the eyes said.  “Tear your love for her out of your heart!  Swear that you will never see her again—­or I will ruin you utterly, not only now, but forever more!”