discuss with
them.

Useless! The stench was making me ill. A wave of giddiness swept over
me, and passed. My heart was beating slowly and heavily. Something in my
head pulsed in unison. I felt a frightful depression, that suddenly
burst into an attack of fear gripping me like hysteria. I wanted to
shriek aloud like a woman, to cover my eyes and run blindly. But at the
same time my muscles failed me. Will and strength were arrested like
frozen water.

As I sat there, facing the door of the room, I became aware of Something
at the window behind my back. Something that pressed against the open
window and stared at me with a hideous covetousness beside which the
greed of a beast for its prey is a natural, innocent appetite. I felt
that Thing's hungry malignance like a soft, dreadful mouth sucking
toward me, yet held away from me by some force vaguely based on my own
resistance. And I understood how a man may die of horror.

Yet, presently, I turned around. Weak and sick, with dragging effort I
turned in my chair and faced the black, uncurtained window where I felt
It to be.

Nothing was there, to sight or hearing. I sat still, and combated that
which I knew _was_ there. In the profound stillness, I heard the wind
stir the naked branches of the trees, the flowing water through the
fragments of the one-time dam, the sputtering of my candle which needed
trimming. Sweat ran down my face and body, drenching me with cold. It
crouched against the empty window, staring at me.

After a time, the presence seemed not so close. At last, I seemed to
know It was gone. In the gush of that enormous relief my remaining
strength was swept away like a swimmer in a torrent and I collapsed
half-fainting in my chair.

When I was able, I rose and walked through the house again. Again the
rooms showed nothing to my flashlight except dull furniture, walls
peeling here and there from long neglect, pictures of no merit and
dreary subject. I had expected nothing, and I found nothing.

It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom that a sentence from the
invisible lady's story came back to my mind.

"What crouches behind her, unseen? The Horror takes Its own----"

The bedroom door opened quietly under my hand. The rain had ceased and a
freshening breeze came from the west, filling the room with sweet
country air. The candle had burned down. While I stood there, the flame
flickered out.

After a brief indecision, I made my way to the bed, rolled