wards
his bedroom door when a sudden thought struck him. He turned back, took
the violin from its case, tuned it, and began to play the "Areopagita"
suite. He was conscious of that mental clearness and vigour which not
unfrequently comes with the dawn to those who have sat watching or
reading through the night: and his thoughts were exalted by the effect
which the first consciousness of a deep passion causes in imaginative
minds. He had never played the suite with more power; and the airs,
even without the piano part, seemed fraught with a meaning hitherto
unrealised. As he began the _Gagliarda_ he heard the wicker chair creak;
but he had his back towards it, and the sound was now too familiar to
him to cause him even to look round. It was not till he was playing
the repeat that he became aware of a new and overpowering sensation.
At first it was a vague feeling, so often experienced by us all, of
not being alone. He did not stop playing, and in a few seconds the
impression of a presence in the room other than his own became so strong
that he was actually afraid to look round. But in another moment he felt
that at all hazards he must see what or who this presence was. Without
stopping he partly turned and partly looked over his shoulder. The
silver light of early morning was filling the room, making the various
objects appear of less bright colour than usual, and giving to
everything a pearl-grey neutral tint. In this cold but clear light he
saw seated in the wicker chair the figure of a man.

In the first violent shock of so terrifying a discovery, he could not
appreciate such details as those of features, dress, or appearance. He
was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he knew
himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which bore a
human form. He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he felt
to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited
imagination, but still it sat there. Then my brother put down his
violin, and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an
intensity which he had previously believed impossible. Whether the image
which he saw was subjective or objective, I cannot pretend to say: you
will be in a position to judge for yourself when you have finished this
narrative. Our limited experience would lead us to believe that it was a
phantom conjured up by some unusual condition of his own brain; but we
are fain to confess that there c