h I soon began to move inch by inch
in her direction, it was some time before I could so far overcome my
terror as to enter the room where she lay.

"I had supposed, and still supposed (as was natural after seeing him
open the door with the keys he took from his pocket), that the house was
his, and the victim a member of his own household. But when, after
innumerable hesitations and a bodily shrinking that was little short of
torment, I managed to drag myself into the room and light a match which
I found on a farther mantel-shelf, I saw enough in the general
appearance of the rooms and of the figure at my feet to make me doubt
the truth of both these suppositions. Yet no other explanation came to
lighten the mystery of the occasion, and dazed as I was by the horror of
my position and the mortal dread I felt of the man who in one instant
had turned the heaven of my love into a hell of fathomless horrors, I
soon had eyes for the one fact only, that the woman lying before me was
sufficiently like myself to inspire me with the hope of preserving my
secret and keeping from my would-be slayer the knowledge of my having
escaped the doom he had prepared for me.

"For ascribe it to what motive you will, that was the one idea now
dominating my mind. I wanted him to believe me dead. I wanted to feel
that all connection between us was severed forever. He _had_ killed me.
By killing my love and faith in him he had murdered the better part of
myself, and I shrank with inconceivable horror from anything that would
bring me again under his eye, or force me to assert claims that it would
be the future business of my life to forget.

"When the first match went out I had not courage to light another, so I
crept away in the darkness to listen at the foot of the stairs. There
was no sound from above, and a terrifying sense began to pervade me that
I was in that house alone. Yet there was safety in the thought, and
opportunity for what I was planning, and finally, under the stress of
the purpose that was every moment developing within me, I went softly
up-stairs and listened at all the doors till I was certain that the
house was unoccupied. Then I came down and walked resolutely back into
the parlor, for I knew if I allowed any time to pass I could never again
summon up strength to cross its grisly threshold. Yet I did nothing for
hours but crouch in one of its dismal corners, waiting for morning. That
I did not go mad in that awful interv