ter to put it away among my other papers. Doing this (while my
thoughts were still dwelling on Miss Dunross), I mechanically looked at
the letter again--and instantly discovered a change in it.

The written characters traced by the hand of the apparition had
vanished! Below the last lines written by Miss Dunross nothing met my
eyes now but the blank white paper!

My first impulse was to look at my watch.

When the ghostly presence had written in my sketch-book, the characters
had disappeared after an interval of three hours. On this occasion, as
nearly as I could calculate, the writing had vanished in one hour only.

Reverting to the conversation which I had held with Mrs. Van Brandt when
we met at Saint Anthony's Well, and to the discoveries which followed at
a later period of my life, I can only repeat that she had again been the
subject of a trance or dream, when the apparition of her showed itself
to me for the second time. As before, she had freely trusted me and
freely appealed to me to help her, in the dreaming state, when her
spirit was free to recognize my spirit. When she had come to herself,
after an interval of an hour, she had again felt ashamed of the familiar
manner in which she had communicated with me in the trance--had again
unconsciously counteracted by her waking-will the influence of her
sleeping-will; and had thus caused the writing once more to disappear,
in an hour from the moment when the pen had traced (or seemed to trace)
it.

This is still the one explanation that I can offer. At the time when the
incident happened, I was far from being fully admitted to the confidence
of Mrs. Van Brandt; and I was necessarily incapable of arriving at
any solution of the mystery, right or wrong. I could only put away the
letter, doubting vaguely whether my own senses had not deceived me.
After the distressing thoughts which Miss Dunross's letter had roused in
my mind, I was in no humor to employ my ingenuity in finding a clew to
the mystery of the vanished writing. My nerves were irritated; I felt a
sense of angry discontent with myself and with others. "Go where I may"
(I thought impatiently), "the disturbing influence of women seems to be
the only influence that I am fated to feel." As I still paced backward
and forward in my room--it was useless to think now of fixing my
attention on a book--I fancied I understood the motives which made men
as young as I was retire to end their lives in a monastery. I