I interrupted her, holding her hand in a fierce grasp; I turned her abruptly toward a dark object lying on the ground near us—­my own coffin broken asunder.  I drew her close to it.

“Look!” I said in a thrilling whisper, “what is this?  Examine it well:  it is a coffin of flimsiest wood, a cholera coffin!  What says this painted inscription?  Nay, do not start!  It bears your husband’s name; he was buried in it.  Then how comes it to be open?  Where is he?”

I felt her sway under me; a new and overwhelming terror had taken instant possession of her, her limbs refused to support her, she sunk on her knees.  Mechanically and feebly she repeated the words after me—­

“Where is he?  Where is he?”

“Ay!” and my voice rang out through the hollow vault, its passion restrained no more.  “Where is he?—­the poor fool, the miserable, credulous dupe, whose treacherous wife played the courtesan under his very roof, while he loved and blindly trusted her?  Where is he?  Here, here!” and I seized her hands and forced her up from her kneeling posture.  “I promised you should see me as I am!  I swore to grow young to-night for your sake!—­Now I keep my word!  Look at me, Nina!—­look at me, my twice-wedded wife!—­Look at me!—­do you not know your husband?”

And throwing my dark habiliments from me, I stood before her undisguised!  As though some defacing disease had swept over her at my words and look, so her beauty suddenly vanished.  Her face became drawn and pinched and almost old—­her lips turned blue, her eyes grew glazed, and strained themselves from their sockets to stare at me; her very hands looked thin and ghost-like as she raised them upward with a frantic appealing gesture; there was a sort of gasping rattle in her throat as she drew herself away from me with a convulsive gesture of aversion, and crouched on the floor as though she sought to sink through it and thus avoid my gaze.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she moaned, wildly, “not Fabio!—­no, it cannot be=-Fabio is dead—­dead!  And you!—­you are mad!—­this is some cruel jest of yours—­some trick to frighten me!”

She broke off breathlessly, and her large, terrified eyes wandered to mine again with a reluctant and awful wonder.  She attempted to arise from her crouching position; I approached, and assisted her to do so with ceremonious politeness.  She trembled violently at my touch, and slowly staggering to her feet, she pushed back her hair from her forehead and regarded me fixedly with a searching, anguished look, first of doubt, then of dread, and lastly of convinced and hopeless certainty, for she suddenly covered her eyes with her hands as though to shut out some repulsive object. and broke into a low wailing sound like that of one in bitter physical pain.  I laughed scornfully.

“Well, do you know me at last?” I cried. “’Tis true I have somewhat altered.  This hair of mine was black, if you remember—­it is white enough now, blanched by the horrors of a living death such as you cannot imagine, but which,” and I spoke more slowly and impressively, “you may possibly experience ere long.  Yet in spite of this change I think you know me!  That is well.  I am glad your memory serves you thus far!”