The stillness deepened.  It seemed to myself that I could hear the quickened beating of every pulse in my body.  A curious vague terror began to possess me,—­I fought against its insidious influence, and bending my head down over the paper I had set out before me, I prepared to write.  After a few minutes I managed to gain some control over my nerves, and started to put down clearly and in sequence the things Aselzion had told me, though I knew there was little danger of my ever forgetting them.  And then—­a sudden sensation came over me which forced me to realise that something or someone was in the room, looking steadfastly at me.

With an effort, I raised my head, and saw nothing at first—­then, by degrees, I became aware that a Shadow, dark and impenetrable, stood between me and the open window.  At first it seemed simply a formless mass of black vapour,—­but very gradually it assumed the outline of a Shape which did not seem human.  I laid down my pen,—­and, with my heart thumping hammer-strokes of fear, looked at this strange Darkness gathered as it were in one place and blocking out the silver gleam of the moon.  As I looked, all the light in my room was suddenly extinguished.  A cry rose involuntarily to my lips—­and physical fright began to gain the mastery over me.  For with the increasing gloom the mysterious Shadow grew more and more defined—­a blackness standing out as it were against another blackness,—­the pale glint of the moonbeams only illumining it faintly as a cloud may be edged with a suggestion of light.  It was not motionless,—­it stirred now and then as though about to lift itself to some supernatural stature and bend above me or swoop down upon me like an embodied storm,—­and as I still gazed upon it fearingly, every nerve strained to an almost unsupportable tension, I could have sworn that two eyes, large and luminous, were fixed with a searching, pitiless intensity on mine.  It is impossible to describe what I felt,—­a sense of sick, swooning horror overcame me,—­my head swam giddily, and I could not now utter a sound.

Trembling violently, I rose to my feet in a kind of mechanical impulse, determined to turn away from the dreadful contemplation of this formless Phantom, when suddenly, as if by a lightning flash of conviction, the thought came to me that it was not by coward avoidance that I could expect to overcome either my own fears or the nameless danger which apparently threatened me.  I closed my eyes and retreated, as it were, within myself to find that centre-poise of my own spirit which I knew must remain an invincible force despite all attack, being in itself immortal,—­and I mentally barricaded my soul with thoughts of armed resistance.  Then, opening my eyes again, I saw that the Shadow loomed blacker and vaster—­while the luminance around it was more defined, and was not the radiance of the moon, but some other light that was ghostly and terrifying.  But I had now regained a little courage,—­and slight as