die absolutely certain that
you love me."

Her breast heaved, and under the carriage rug her hand found mine and
clasped it. We did not look at each other. In a thick voice I called
to the coachman to stop. I got out, and the vehicle passed on. If I
had stayed with her, I should have wept in sight of the whole street.

I ate no dinner that evening, but spent the hours in wandering up and
down the long verdurous alleys in the neighborhood of the Arc de
Triomphe. I was sure of Rosa's love, and that thought gave me a
certain invigoration. But to be sure of a woman's love when that love
means torture and death to you is not a complete and perfect
happiness. No, my heart was full of bitterness and despair, and my
mind invaded by a miserable weakness. I pitied myself, and at the
same time I scorned myself. After all, the ghost had no actual power
over me; a ghost cannot stab, cannot throttle, cannot shoot. A ghost
can only act upon the mind, and if the mind is feeble enough to allow
itself to be influenced by an intangible illusion, then--

But how futile were such arguments! Whatever the power might be, the
fact that the ghost had indeed a power over me was indisputable. All
day I had felt the spectral sword of it suspended above my head. My
timid footsteps lingering on the way to the hotel sufficiently proved
its power. The experiences of the previous night might be merely
subjective--conceptions of the imagination--but they were no less
real, no less fatal to me on that account.

Once I had an idea of not going to the hotel that night at all. But of
what use could such an avoidance be? The apparition was bound by no
fetters to that terrible sitting-room of mine. I might be put to the
ordeal anywhere, even here in the thoroughfares of the city, and upon
the whole I preferred to return to my lodging. Nay, I was the victim
of a positive desire for that scene of my torture.

I returned. It was eleven o'clock. The apparition awaited me. But this
time it was not seated in the chair. It stood with its back to the
window, and its gaze met mine as I entered the room. I did not close
the door, and my eyes never left its face. The sneer on its thin lips
was bitterer, more devilishly triumphant, than before. Erect,
motionless, and inexorable, the ghost stood there, and it seemed to
say: "What is the use of leaving the door open? You dare not escape.
You cannot keep away from me. To-night you shall die of sheer terror."

With a