there rose a hand,
visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much of flesh
and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person--lean, wrinkled,
small, too--a woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on the two
letters that lay on the table: hand and letters both vanished.

There then came the same three loud measured knocks I heard at the
bed-head before this extraordinary drama had commenced.

As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly;
and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules
like bubbles of light, many-colored--green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up
and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps the
sparks moved, slow or swift, each at his own caprice. A chair (as in the
drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent
agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly as forth
from the chair, there grew a shape--a woman's shape. It was distinct as
a shape of life--ghastly as a shape of death. The face was that of
youth, with a strange mournful beauty: the throat and shoulders were
bare, the rest of the form in a loose robe of cloudy white. It began
sleeking its long yellow hair, which fell over its shoulders; its eyes
were not turned towards me, but to the door; it seemed listening,
watching, waiting. The shadow of the shade in the background grew
darker; and again I thought I beheld the eyes gleaming out from the
summit of the shadow--eyes fixed upon that shape.

As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly--a man's shape--a young man's.
It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such
dress (for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were
evidently unsubstantial, impalpable--simulacra--phantasms); and there
was something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast
between the elaborate finery, the courtly precision of that
old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and buckles, and the
corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the flitting wearer. Just
as the male shape approached the female, the dark shadow started from
the wall, all three for a moment wrapped in darkness. When the pale
light returned, the two phantoms were as in the grasp of the shadow that
towered between them; and there was a blood-stain on the breast of the
female; and the phantom male was leaning on its pha