any years. She had been my first love, and I had loved
her with a boyish passion as genuine as it was intense. I thought my
heart would have broken, and I certainly talked seriously of dying, when
she formed an attachment to an ill-conditioned, handsome young
adventurer, and, on her family objecting to such an alliance, eloped
with him. I had never seen the fellow, against whom, however, I
cherished a hatred almost as intense as my passion for the infatuated
girl who had flown from her home for his sake. We had heard of her being
on the Continent with her husband, and learned that the man's shifty
life had eventually taken him to the East. For some years nothing more
had been heard of the poor girl. It was a melancholy history, and its
memory ill-disposed me for amusement.

A sigh was probably just escaping my lips with the half-articulated
words, "Poor Julia!" when my eyes fell on a man passing before my
window. There was nothing particularly striking about him. He was tall,
with fine features, and a long, fair beard, contrasting somewhat with
his bronzed complexion. I had seen many of our officers on their return
from the Crimea look much the same. Still, the man's aspect gave me a
shuddering feeling, I didn't know why. At the same moment, a whispering,
low voice uttered aloud in my ear the words, "It is he!" I turned,
startled; there was no one near me, no one in the room. There was no
fancy in the sound; I had heard the words with painful distinctness. I
ran to the door, opened it--not a sound on the staircase, not a sound in
the whole house--nothing but the hum from the street. I came back and
sat down. It was no use reasoning with myself; I had the ineffaceable
conviction that I had heard the voice. Then first the idea crossed my
mind that I might be the victim of hallucinations. Yes, it must have
been so, for now I recalled to mind that the voice had been that of my
poor lost Julia; and at the moment I heard it I had been dreaming of
her. I questioned my own state of health. I was well; at least I had
been so, I felt fully assured, up to that moment. Now a feeling of
chilliness and numbness and faintness had crept over me, a cold sweat
was on my forehead. I tried to shake off this feeling by bringing back
my thoughts to some other subject. But, involuntarily as it were, I
again uttered the words, "Poor Julia!" aloud. At the same time a deep
and heavy sigh, almost a groan, was distinctly audible close by me. I
spr