I knelt on the prie-dieu, stirring neither hand nor foot; as immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of stone.  Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till the two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if ever it did come to that accursed room, my husk would be there indeed, but Janet Hope herself would be gone for ever.  A viewless horror stirred my hair, and caused my flesh to creep.  The baneful influence that was upon me was deepening in intensity; every minute that passed seemed to render me more powerless to break the spell.  Suddenly the clock struck two.  At the same moment a light footfall sounded on the stairs outside.  It was Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and to fetch the key which she had left behind two hours before.  I heard her approach the door, and I saw the door itself pulled close to; then the key was turned, the bolt shot into its place, the key was withdrawn, and I was left locked up alone in that terrible room.

But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell under which I had been powerless only a minute before.  Better risk discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where I was.  Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must succumb to it.  It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though I were in the folds of some huge python.  Long before morning I should be dead.

I slid from off the prie-dieu, and walking backward, with my eyes glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door and struck it with my fists.  “Sister Agnes!” I cried, “Sister Agnes! do not leave me.  I am here alone.”

Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room.  I heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.

For three weeks after that time I lay very ill—­lay very close to the edge of the grave.  But for the ceaseless attentions and tender assiduities of Sister Agnes and Dance I should have slipped out of life and all my troubles.  To them I owe it that I am now alive to write these lines.  One bright afternoon, as I was approaching convalescence, Sister Agnes and I, sitting alone, got into conversation respecting the room upstairs, and my visit to it.

“But whose coffin is that, Sister Agnes?” I asked.  “And why is it left there unburied?”