“Monsieur wiped the damp sweat from his head and hands, and stole out.

“For a couple of days he did not enter the room again.  On the third, telling himself that his fears were those of a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in.  To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it.  A set of bones bought for three hundred francs.  Was he a child, to be scared by such a bogey!

“He held his lamp up in front of the thing’s grinning head.  The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint breath had passed over it.

“The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the wind might creep in anywhere.  He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing.  When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of his chair till his fingers turned white.

“He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them.  He rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room.  Glancing fearfully about him, his eye fell upon a high screen, standing before the door.  He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and the thing, so that he could not see it—­nor it see him.  Then he sat down again to his work.  For a while he forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he suffered his eyes to follow their own bent.

“It may have been an hallucination.  He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an illusion.  But what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to the floor in a swoon.

“The people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed.  As soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing—­where was it when they entered the room? and when they told him they had seen it standing where it always stood, and had gone down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles, he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with him as they would.

“So for many months the laboratory door remained locked.  Then there came a chill autumn evening when the man of science opened it again, and closed it behind him.

“He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down before them in his high-backed chair.  And the old terror returned to him.

“But this time he meant to conquer himself.  His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would fight his unreasoning fear.  He crossed to the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of the room, where it fell among jars and bottles with an echoing clatter.