At last it came—­a soft, irregular sound of footfalls on the stairs!  They were slow, hesitant, uncertain, as of something that did not see its way; to my disordered reason all the more terrifying for that, as the approach of some blind and mindless malevolence to which is no appeal.  I even thought that I must have left the hall lamp burning and the groping of this creature proved it a monster of the night.  This was foolish and inconsistent with my previous dread of the light, but what would you have?  Fear has no brains; it is an idiot.  The dismal witness that it bears and the cowardly counsel that it whispers are unrelated.  We know this well, we who have passed into the Realm of Terror, who skulk in eternal dusk among the scenes of our former lives, invisible even to ourselves and one another, yet hiding forlorn in lonely places; yearning for speech with our loved ones, yet dumb, and as fearful of them as they of us.  Sometimes the disability is removed, the law suspended:  by the deathless power of love or hate we break the spell—­we are seen by those whom we would warn, console, or punish.  What form we seem to them to bear we know not; we know only that we terrify even those whom we most wish to comfort, and from whom we most crave tenderness and sympathy.

Forgive, I pray you, this inconsequent digression by what was once a woman.  You who consult us in this imperfect way—­you do not understand.  You ask foolish questions about things unknown and things forbidden.  Much that we know and could impart in our speech is meaningless in yours.  We must communicate with you through a stammering intelligence in that small fraction of our language that you yourselves can speak.  You think that we are of another world.  No, we have knowledge of no world but yours, though for us it holds no sunlight, no warmth, no music, no laughter, no song of birds, nor any companionship.  O God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!

No, I did not die of fright:  the Thing turned and went away.  I heard it go down the stairs, hurriedly, I thought, as if itself in sudden fear.  Then I rose to call for help.  Hardly had my shaking hand found the doorknob when—­merciful heaven!—­I heard it returning.  Its footfalls as it remounted the stairs were rapid, heavy and loud; they shook the house.  I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor.  I tried to pray.  I tried to call the name of my dear husband.  Then I heard the door thrown open.  There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat—­felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward—­felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth!  And then I passed into this life.

No, I have no knowledge of what it was.  The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before.  Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read.  Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain.  We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants.  How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?