She was all but fully reassured now, as she stepped to the window to close it.  Remembering how the sash stuck in the casing she raised both hands to forcibly lower it.  As she did so a strong arm caught the sash from the outer side, and a stalwart masculine form arose directly in front of her.  His great height brought his head almost to a level with her own, despite the fact that he was standing upon the ground outside.  He was so near that she could feel his breath upon her face.  His eyes, like two great coals of fire, blazed into hers with a sinister and threatening light.  His countenance seemed to utterly surpass any personal malignancy and to exhibit itself as a type of all the hatreds that ever poisoned human hearts.

Only a moment before Gwen had felt a creepy, sickening sensation stealing over her as the result of an ill-defined and apparently causeless dread.  Now an actual, imminent, and fearful peril confronted her.  Under such circumstances most women would have fainted, and, indeed, if Gwen had herself been asked how she would have acted under such a supreme test, she would have prophesied the same maidenly course as her own, yet, in the real exigency—­how little do we know of ourselves, save what actual experience has taught us!—­this is precisely what she did not do.  When the horrible apparition first rose in her very face, as it were, a momentary weakness caught her and she clung to the sash for support.  Then the wonderful fire of the malignant eyes, green, serpentine, opalescent, with the wave-like flux of a glowworm’s light seen under a glass, riveted her attention.  She had ceased to tremble.  Our fear of death varies with our desire for life.  Dulled by a great grief, she did not so very much care what became of her.  The future’s burden was heavy, and if it were necessary she now put it down, there would still be a sense of relief.  As this thought passed like a shadow over her consciousness she felt herself irresistibly attracted to the awful face before her.  Her assailant’s gaze seemed to have wound itself about her own till she could not disentangle it.  She was dimly conscious that she was falling under a spell and summoned all her remaining strength to break it.  Quick as the uncoiling of a released spring, and without the slightest movement of warning, she threw her entire weight upon the sash in a last endeavour to close the window, but the man’s upraised arm held both her weight and it, as if its muscles had been rods of steel.  Gwen saw a long knife in his free hand,—­saw the light shimmer along its blade, saw him raise it aloft to plunge it into her bosom, yet made no movement to withdraw beyond his reach and uttered no cry for help.  It seemed to her that all this was happening to another and that she herself was only a fascinated spectator.  She was wondering whether or not the victim would try to defend herself when the knife began its descent.  It seemed ages in its downward passage,—­so