I do not know how long I stood there, spell-bound, but certainly for some considerable space of time.  By degrees, as nothing moved, nothing was seen, nothing was heard, and nothing happened, I made an effort to better play the man.  I knew that, at the moment, I played the cur.  And endeavoured to ask myself of what it was I was afraid.  I was shivering at my own imaginings.  What could be in the room, to have suffered me to open the window and to enter unopposed?  Whatever it was, was surely to the full as great a coward as I was, or why permit, unchecked, my burglarious entry.  Since I had been allowed to enter, the probability was that I should be at liberty to retreat,—­and I was sensible of a much keener desire to retreat than I had ever had to enter.

I had to put the greatest amount of pressure upon myself before I could summon up sufficient courage to enable me to even turn my head upon my shoulders,—­and the moment I did so I turned it back again.  What constrained me, to save my soul I could not have said,—­but I was constrained.  My heart was palpitating in my bosom; I could hear it beat.  I was trembling so that I could scarcely stand.  I was overwhelmed by a fresh flood of terror.  I stared in front of me with eyes in which, had it been light, would have been seen the frenzy of unreasoning fear.  My ears were strained so that I listened with an acuteness of tension which was painful.

Something moved.  Slightly, with so slight a sound, that it would scarcely have been audible to other ears save mine.  But I heard.  I was looking in the direction from which the movement came, and, as I looked, I saw in front of me two specks of light.  They had not been there a moment before, that I would swear.  They were there now.  They were eyes,—­I told myself they were eyes.  I had heard how cats’ eyes gleam in the dark, though I had never seen them, and I said to myself that these were cats’ eyes; that the thing in front of me was nothing but a cat.  But I knew I lied.  I knew that these were eyes, and I knew they were not cats’ eyes, but what eyes they were I did not know,—­nor dared to think.

They moved,—­towards me.  The creature to which the eyes belonged was coming closer.  So intense was my desire to fly that I would much rather have died than stood there still; yet I could not control a limb; my limbs were as if they were not mine.  The eyes came on,—­noiselessly.  At first they were between two and three feet from the ground; but, on a sudden, there was a squelching sound, as if some yielding body had been squashed upon the floor.  The eyes vanished,—­to reappear, a moment afterwards, at what I judged to be a distance of some six inches from the floor.  And they again came on.