Presently, being tired of conversation, I wandered away from the group with which C. was still engaged, to look at the beautiful decorations of the great salon, the walls of which were covered with artistic designs in fresco.  Between each couple of panels, the whole length of the salon, was a beautiful painting, representing a landscape or a sea-piece.  I passed from one to the other, admiring each, till I had reached the extreme end, and was far away from the rest of the company, where the lights were not so many or so bright as in the centre.  The last fresco in the series then caught my attention.  At first it appeared to me to be unfinished; and then I observed that there was upon its background no picture at all, but only a background of merging tints which seemed to change, and to be now sky, now sea, now green grass.  This empty picture had, moreover, an odd metallic coloring which fascinated me; and saying to myself “Is there really any painting on it?” I mechanically put out my hand and touched it.  On this I was instantly seized by a frightful sensation, a shock that ran from the tips of my fingers to my brain, and steeped my whole being.  Simultaneously I was aware of an overwhelming sense of sucking and dragging, which, from my hand and arm, and, as it were, through them, seemed to possess and envelop my whole person.  Face, hair, eyes, bosom, limbs, every portion of my body was locked in an awful embrace which, like the vortex of a whirlpool, drew me irresistibly towards the picture.  I felt the hideous impulse clinging over me and sucking me forwards into the wall.  I strove in vain to resist it.  My efforts were more futile than the flutter of gossamer wings.  And then there rushed upon my mind the consciousness that all we had been told about the haunted rooms was true; that a strong delusion had been cast over us; that all this brilliant throng of modern ladies and gentlemen were fiends masquerading, prepared beforehand for our coming; that all the beauty and splendor of our surroundings were mere glamor; and that in reality the rooms were those we had seen in the daytime, filled with lumber and rot and vermin.  As I realised all this, and was thrilled with the certainty of it, a sudden access of strength came to me, and I was impelled, as a last desperate effort, to turn my back on the awful fresco, and at least to save my face from coming into contact with it and being glued to its surface.  With a shriek of anguish I wrenched myself round and fell prostrate on the ground, face downwards, with my back to the wall, feeling as though the flesh had been torn from my hand and arm.  Whether I was saved or not I knew not.  My whole being was over-powered by the realisation of the deception to which I had succumbed.  I had looked for something so different,—­darkness, vacant, deserted rooms, and perhaps a tall, white, empty canvas in a frame, against which I should have