out my hand towards the weapon on the table:  as I did so, on the arm and shoulder I received a strange shock, and my arm fell to my side powerless.  And now, to add to my horror, the light began slowly to wane from the candles, they were not, as it were, extinguished, but their flame seemed very gradually withdrawn:  it was the same with the fire—­the light was extracted from the fuel; in a few minutes the room was in utter darkness.

The dread that came over me, to be thus in the dark with that dark Thing, whose power was so intensely felt, brought a reaction of nerve.  In fact, terror had reached that climax, that either my senses must have deserted me, or I must have burst through the spell.  I did burst through it.  I found voice, though the voice was a shriek.  I remember that I broke forth with words like these—­“I do not fear, my soul does not fear”; and at the same time I found the strength to rise.  Still in that profound gloom I rushed to one of the windows—­tore aside the curtain—­flung open the shutters; my first thought was—­LIGHT.—­And when I saw the moon high, clear, and calm, I felt a joy that almost compensated for the previous terror.  There was the moon, there was also the light from the gas-lamps in the deserted slumberous street.  I turned to look back into the room; the moon penetrated its shadow very palely and partially—­but still there was light.  The dark Thing, whatever it might be, was gone—­except that I could yet see a dim shadow, which seemed the shadow of that shade, against the opposite wall.

My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was without cloth or cover—­an old mahogany round table) there rose a hand, visible as far as the wrist.  It was a hand, seemingly, as much of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person—­lean, wrinkled, small, too—­a woman’s hand.  That hand very softly closed on the two letters that lay on the table:  hand and letters both vanished.

There then came the same three loud measured knocks I heard at the bed-head before this extraordinary drama had commenced.

As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly; and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules like bubbles of light, many-colored—­green, yellow, fire-red, azure.  Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o’-the-Wisps the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at his own caprice.  A chair (as in the drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table.  Suddenly as forth from the chair, there grew a shape—­a woman’s shape.  It was distinct as a shape of life—­ghastly as a shape of death.  The face was that of youth, with a strange mournful beauty:  the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the form in a loose robe of cloudy white.  It began sleeking its long yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned towards me, but to the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting.  The shadow of the shade in the background grew darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the summit of the shadow—­eyes fixed upon that shape.