Now, I didn’t know anything of what had happened during my absence.  But I was sort of nervous on my own account-afraid of being caught, and rather dubious about the morning affair.  And I had been lying there a few moments when my eyes gradually got used to the darkness, and I became aware of something on the other side of the room.

It was something foreign to the apartment.  It had an uncanny appearance.  And I sat up looking very hard, and wondering what in heaven this long, formless, vicious-looking thing might be.

First I thought I’d go and see.  Then I thought, “Never mind that.”

Mind you, I had no cowardly sensations whatever, but it didn’t seem exactly prudent to investigate.  But I somehow couldn’t keep my eyes off the thing.  And the more I looked at it the more disagreeably it grew on me.  But I was resolved to play the man.  So I decided to turn over and count a hundred, and let the patch of moonlight creep up and show me what the dickens it was.

I turned over and tried to count, but I couldn’t keep my mind on it.  I kept thinking of that grewsome mass.  I was losing count all the time, and going back and beginning over again.  Oh no; I wasn’t frightened —­just annoyed.  But by the time I’d gotten to the century mark I turned cautiously over and opened my eyes with great fortitude.

The moonlight revealed to me a marble-white human hand.  Well, maybe I wasn’t embarrassed!  But then that changed to a creepy feeling again, and I thought I’d try the counting again.  I don’t know how many hours or weeks it was that I lay there counting hard.  But the moonlight crept up that white arm, and it showed me a lead face and a terrible wound over the heart.

I could scarcely say that I was terror-stricken or anything like that.  But somehow his eyes interested me so that I went right out of the window.  I didn’t need the sash.  But it seemed easier to take it than leave it behind.

Now, let that teach you a lesson—­I don’t know just what it is.  But at seventy years old I find that memory of peculiar value to me.  I have been unconsciously guided by it all these years.  Things that seemed pigeon-holed and remote are a perpetual influence.  Yes, you’re taught in so many ways.  And you’re so felicitously taught when you don’t know it.

Here’s something else that taught me a good deal.

When I was seventeen I was very bashful, and a sixteen-year-old girl came to stay a week with us.  She was a peach, and I was seized with a happiness not of this world.

One evening my mother suggested that, to entertain her, I take her to the theatre.  I didn’t really like to, because I was seventeen and sensitive about appearing in the streets with a girl.  I couldn’t see my way to enjoying my delight in public.  But we went.