the vestibule,
waiting.

"What is this, Lucy?" said he, looking down at me narrowly. "Here is
the old excitement. Ha! the nun again?"

But I utterly denied the charge: I was vexed to be suspected of a
second illusion. He was sceptical.

"She has been, as sure as I live," said he; "her figure crossing your
eyes leaves on them a peculiar gleam and expression not to be mistaken."

"She has _not_ been," I persisted: for, indeed, I could deny her
apparition with truth.

"The old symptoms are there," he affirmed: "a particular pale, and what
the Scotch call a 'raised' look."

He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell him what I really
_had_ seen. Of course with him it was held to be another effect of the
same cause: it was all optical illusion--nervous malady, and so on. Not
one bit did I believe him; but I dared not contradict: doctors are so
self-opinionated, so immovable in their dry, materialist views.

Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled into the carriage.

* * * * *

The theatre was full--crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there:
palace and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged
and so hushed. Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place
before that stage; I longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard
reports which made me conceive peculiar anticipations. I wondered if
she would justify her renown: with strange curiosity, with feelings
severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited. She was a study
of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and new
planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.

She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come.
She could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star
verged already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos--hollow,
half-consumed: an orb perished or perishing--half lava, half glow.

I had heard this woman termed "plain," and I expected bony harshness
and grimness--something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the
shadow of a royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale
now like twilight, and wasted like wax in flame.

For awhile--a long while--I thought it was only a woman, though an
unique woman, Who moved in might and grace before this multitude.
By-and-by I recognised my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something
neither of woman nor of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. Thes