herself, after an interval of an hour, she had again felt ashamed
of the familiar manner in which she had communicated with me in
the trance--had again unconsciously counteracted by her
waking-will the influence of her sleeping-will; and had thus
caused the writing once more to disappear, in an hour from the
moment when the pen had traced (or seemed to trace) it.

This is still the one explanation that I can offer. At the time
when the incident happened, I was far from being fully admitted
to the confidence of Mrs. Van Brandt; and I was necessarily
incapable of arriving at any solution of the mystery, right or
wrong. I could only put away the letter, doubting vaguely whether
my own senses had not deceived me. After the distressing thoughts
which Miss Dunross's letter had roused in my mind, I was in no
humor to employ my ingenuity in finding a clew to the mystery of
the vanished writing. My ner ves were irritated; I felt a sense
of angry discontent with myself and with others. "Go where I may"
(I thought impatiently), "the disturbing influence of women seems
to be the only influence that I am fated to feel." As I still
paced backward and forward in my room--it was useless to think
now of fixing my attention on a book--I fancied I understood the
motives which made men as young as I was retire to end their
lives in a monastery. I drew aside the window curtains, and
looked out. The only prospect that met my view was the black gulf
of darkness in which the lake lay hidden. I could see nothing; I
could do nothing; I could think of nothing. The one alternative
before me was that of trying to sleep. My medical knowledge told
me plainly that natural sleep was, in my nervous condition, one
of the unattainable luxuries of life for that night. The
medicine-chest which Mr. Dunross had placed at my disposal
remained in the room. I mixed for myself a strong sleeping
draught, and sullenly took refuge from my troubles in bed.

It is a peculiarity of most of the soporific drugs that they not
only act in a totally different manner on different
constitutions, but that they are not even to be depended on to
act always in the same manner on the same person. I had taken
care to extinguish the candles before I got into my bed. Under
ordinary circumstances, after I had lain quietly in the darkness
for half an hour, the draught that I had taken would have sent me
to sleep. In the present state of my nerves the draught stupefied
me, and did no more.

Hour after hour I lay perfectly still, with my eyes closed, in
the semi-sleeping, semi-wakeful state which is so curiously
characteristic of the ordinary repose of a dog. As the night wore
on, such a sense of heaviness oppressed my eyelids that it was
literally impossible for me to open them--such a masterful
languor possessed all my muscles that I could no more move on my
pillow than if I had been a corpse. And yet, in this somnolent
condition, my mind was able to pursue lazy trains of pleasant
thought. My sense of hearing was so acute that it caught the
faintest sounds made by the passage of the night-breeze through
the rushes of the lake. Inside my bed-chamber, I was even more
keenly sensible of those weird night-noises in the heavy
furniture of a room, of those sudden settlements of extinct coals
in the grate, so familiar to bad sleepers, so startling to
overwrought nerves! It is not a scientifically correct statement,
but it exactly describes my condition, that night, to say that
one half of me was asleep and the other half awake.

How many hours of the night had passed, when my irritable sense
of hearing became aware of a new sound in the room, I cannot
tell. I can only relate that I found myself on a sudden listening
intently, with fast-closed eyes. The sound that disturbed me was
the faintest sound imaginable, as of something soft and light
traveling slowly over the surface of the carpet, and brushing it
just loud enough to be heard.

Little by little, the sound came nearer and nearer to my bed--and
then suddenly stopped just as I fancied it was close by me.

I still lay immovable, with closed eyes; drowsily waiting for the
next sound that might reach my ears; drowsily content with the
silence, if the silence continued. My thoughts (if thoughts they
could be called) were drifting back again into their former
course, when I became suddenly conscious of soft breathing just
above me. The next moment I felt a touch on my forehead--light,
soft, tremulous, like the touch of lips that had kissed me. There
was a momentary pause. Then a low sigh trembled through the
silence. Then I heard again the still, small sound of something
brushing its way over the carpet; traveling this time _from_ my
bed, and moving so rapidly that in a moment more it was lost in
the silence of the night.

Still stupefied by the drug that I had taken, I could lazily
wonder what had happened, and I could do no more. Had living lips
really touched me? Was the sound that I had heard really the
sound of a sigh? Or was it all delusion, beginning and ending in
a dream? The time passed without my deciding, or caring to
decide, those questions. Minute by minute, the composing
influence of the draught began at last to strengthen its hold on
my brain. A cloud seemed to pass softly over my last waking
impressions. One after another, the ties broke gently that held
me to conscious life. I drifted peacefully into perfect sleep.


Shortly after sunrise, I awoke. When I regained the use of my
memory, my first clear recollection was the recollection of the
soft breathing which I had felt above me--then of the touch on my


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