As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly—­a man’s shape—­a young man’s.  It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impalpable—­simulacra—­phantasms); and there was something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the flitting wearer.  Just as the male shape approached the female, the dark shadow started from the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness.  When the pale light returned, the two phantoms were as in the grasp of the shadow that towered between them; and there was a blood-stain on the breast of the female; and the phantom male was leaning on its phantom sword, and blood seemed trickling fast from the ruffles, from the lace; and the darkness of the intermediate Shadow swallowed them up—­they were gone.  And again the bubbles of light shot, and sailed, and undulated, growing thicker and thicker and more wildly confused in their movements.

The closet door to the right of the fireplace now opened, and from the aperture there came the form of an aged woman.  In her hand she held letters,—­the very letters over which I had seen the Hand close; and behind her I heard a footstep.  She turned round as if to listen, and then she opened the letters and seemed to read; and over her shoulder I saw a livid face, the face as of a man long drowned—­bloated, bleached, seaweed tangled in its dripping hair; and at her feet lay a form as of a corpse, and beside the corpse there cowered a child, a miserable squalid child, with famine in its cheeks and fear in its eyes.  And as I looked in the old woman’s face, the wrinkles and lines vanished and it became a face of youth—­hard-eyed, stony, but still youth; and the Shadow darted forth, and darkened over these phantoms as it had darkened over the last.

Nothing now was left but the Shadow, and on that my eyes were intently fixed, till again eyes grew out of the Shadow—­malignant, serpent eyes.  And the bubbles of light again rose and fell, and in their disorder, irregular, turbulent maze, mingled with the wan moonlight.  And now from these globules themselves, as from the shell of an egg, monstrous things burst out; the air grew filled with them; larvae so bloodless and so hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—­things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other—­forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye.  As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order.  In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and round,