t two points quite close
together, and I was aware, with a thrill of interest rather than of
fear, that these were two eyes looking out into the room. A vague
outline of a head I could see--a woman's by the hair, but this was very
shadowy. Only the eyes were quite distinct; such eyes--dark, luminous,
filled with some passionate emotion, fury or horror, I could not say
which. Never have I seen eyes which were so full of intense, vivid life.
They were not fixed upon me, but stared out into the room. Then as I sat
erect, passed my hand over my brow, and made a strong conscious effort
to pull myself together, the dim head faded into the general opacity,
the mirror slowly cleared, and there were the red curtains once again.

A sceptic would say, no doubt, that I had dropped asleep over my
figures, and that my experience was a dream. As a matter of fact, I was
never more vividly awake in my life. I was able to argue about it
even as I looked at it, and to tell myself that it was a subjective
impression--a chimera of the nerves--begotten by worry and insomnia.
But why this particular shape? And who is the woman, and what is the
dreadful emotion which I read in those wonderful brown eyes? They come
between me and my work. For the first time I have done less than the
daily tally which I had marked out. Perhaps that is why I have had no
abnormal sensations tonight. Tomorrow I must wake up, come what may.

Jan. 11.--All well, and good progress with my work. I wind the net, coil
after coil, round that bulky body. But the last smile may remain with
him if my own nerves break over it. The mirror would seem to be a sort
of barometer which marks my brain-pressure. Each night I have observed
that it had clouded before I reached the end of my task.

Dr. Sinclair (who is, it seems, a bit of a psychologist) was so
interested in my account that he came round this evening to have a look
at the mirror. I had observed that something was scribbled in crabbed
old characters upon the metal-work at the back. He examined this with
a lens, but could make nothing of it. "Sanc. X. Pal." was his final
reading of it, but that did not bring us any farther. He advised me to
put it away into another room; but, after all, whatever I may see in
it is, by his own account only a symptom. It is in the cause that the
danger lies. The twenty ledgers--not the silver mirror--should be packed
away if I could only do it. I'm at the eighth now, so I progress.

Jan.