if he offered some fate
darker than death.

He looked again and again into the glass, tortured by a hideous
uncertainty. His senses told him there was nothing amiss, yet he had had
a proof, and yet, as he peered most earnestly, there was, it seemed,
something strange and not altogether usual in the expression of the eyes.
Perhaps it might be the unsteady flare of the gas, or perhaps a flaw in
the cheap looking-glass, that gave some slight distortion to the image.
He walked briskly up and down the room and tried to gaze steadily,
indifferently, into his own face. He would not allow himself to be
misguided by a word. When he had pronounced himself incapable of
humanity, he had only meant that he could not enjoy the simple things of
common life. A man was not necessarily monstrous, merely because he did
not appreciate high tea, a quiet chat about the neighbors, and a happy
noisy evening with the children. But with what message, then, did he
appear charged that the woman's mouth grew so stark? Her hands had jerked
up as if they had been pulled with frantic wires; she seemed for the
instant like a horrible puppet. Her scream was a thing from the nocturnal
Sabbath.

He lit a candle and held it close up to the glass so that his own face
glared white at him, and the reflection of the room became an indistinct
darkness. He saw nothing but the candle flame and his own shining eyes,
and surely they were not as the eyes of common men. As he put down the
light, a sudden suggestion entered his mind, and he drew a quick breath,
amazed at the thought. He hardly knew whether to rejoice or to shudder.
For the thought he conceived was this: that he had mistaken all the
circumstances of the adventure, and had perhaps repulsed a sister who
would have welcomed him to the Sabbath.

He lay awake all night, turning from one dreary and frightful thought to
the other, scarcely dozing for a few hours when the dawn came. He tried
for a moment to argue with himself when he got up; knowing that his true
life was locked up in the bureau, he made a desperate attempt to drive
the phantoms and hideous shapes from his mind. He was assured that his
salvation was in the work, and he drew the key from his pocket, and made
as if he would have opened the desk. But the nausea, the remembrances of
repeated and utter failure, were too powerful. For many days he hung
about the Manor Lane, half dreading, half desiring another meeting, and
he swore he would not a