The ghost stood over me, impending like a doom.  Then it suddenly looked towards the door, startled, and the door swung on its hinges.  A girl entered—­a girl dressed in black, her shoulders and bosom gleaming white against the dark attire, a young girl with the heavenliest face on this earth.  Casting herself on her knees before the apparition, she raised to that dreadful spectre her countenance transfigured by the ecstasy of a sublime appeal.  It was Rosa.

Can I describe what followed?  Not adequately, only by imperfect hints.  These two faced each other, Rosa and the apparition.  She uttered no word.  But I, in my stupor, knew that she was interceding with the spectre for my life.  Her lovely eyes spoke to it of its old love, its old magnanimity, and in the name of that love and that magnanimity called upon it to renounce the horrible vengeance of which I was the victim.

For long the spectre gazed with stern and formidable impassivity upon the girl.  I trembled, all hope and all despair, for the issue.  She would not be vanquished.  Her love was stronger than its hate; her love knew not the name of fear.  For a thousand nights, so it seemed, the two remained thus, at grips, as it were, in a death-struggle.  Then with a reluctant gesture of abdication the ghost waved a hand; its terrible features softened into a consent, and slowly it faded away.

As I lay there Rosa bent over me, and put her arms round my neck, and I could feel on my face the caress of her hair, and the warm baptism of her tears—­tears of joy.

* * * * *

I raised her gently.  I laid her on the sofa, and with a calm, blissful expectancy awaited the moment when her eyes should open.  Ah!  I may not set down here the sensation of relief which spread through my being as I realized with every separate brain-cell that I was no longer a victim, the doomed slave of an evil and implacable power, but a free man—­free to live, free to love, exempt from the atrocious influences of the nether sphere.  I saw that ever since the first encounter in Oxford Street my existence had been under a shadow, dark and malign and always deepening, and that this shadow was now magically dissipated in the exquisite dawn of a new day.  And I gave thanks, not only to Fate, but to the divine girl who in one of those inspirations accorded only to genius had conceived the method of my enfranchisement, and so nobly carried it out.

Her eyelids wavered, and she looked at me.

“It is gone?” she murmured.

“Yes,” I said, “the curse is lifted.”

She smiled, and only our ardent glances spoke.

* * * * *

“How came you to think of it?” I asked.

“I was sitting in my room after dinner, thinking and thinking.  And suddenly I could see this room, and you, and the spectre, as plainly as I see you now.  I felt your terror; I knew every thought that was passing in your brain, the anguish of it!  And then, and then, an idea struck me.  I had never appealed in vain to Lord Clarenceux in life—­why should I not appeal now?  I threw a wrap over my shoulders and ran out.  I didn’t take a cab, I ran—­all the way.  I scarcely knew what I was doing, only that I had to save you.  Oh, Carl, you are free!”