rward at my throat.

If I live to be a hundred I shall not forget the absolute, the
unspeakable, the indescribable terror of that moment. Till then I had
never regarded myself in the light of a coward; on the contrary, I had
on several occasions had good reason to congratulate myself upon what is
popularly termed my "nerve." Now, however, it was all different.
Possibly the feeling of repulsion, I might almost say of fear, I had
hitherto entertained for him had something to do with it. It may have
been the mesmeric power, which I afterward had good reason to know he
possessed, that did it. At any rate, from the moment he pounced upon me
I found myself incapable of resistance. It was as if all my will power
were being slowly extracted from me by the mere contact of those
skeleton fingers which, when they had once touched my flesh, seemed to
lose their icy coldness and to burn like red-hot iron. In a dim and
misty fashion, somewhat as one sees people in a fog, I was conscious of
the devilish ferocity of the countenance that was looking into mine.
Then a strange feeling of numbness took possession of me, an entire lack
of interest in everything, even in life itself. Gradually and easily I
sank into the chair behind me, the room swam before my eyes, an intense
craving for sleep overcame me, and little by little, still without any
attempt at resistance, my head fell back and I lost consciousness.

CHAPTER IV.

When I came to myself again it was already morning. In a small square
behind the studio the sparrows were discussing the prospects of
breakfast, though as yet that earliest of all birds, the milkman, had
not begun to make his presence known in the streets. Of all the hours of
the day there is not one, to my thinking, so lonely and so full of
dreariness as that which immediately precedes and ushers in the dawn;
while, of all the experiences of our human life, there is, perhaps, not
one more unpleasant than to awake from sleep at such an hour to find
that one has passed the entire night in one's clothes and seated in a
most comfortable armchair. That was my lot on this occasion. On opening
my eyes I looked around me with a puzzled air. For the life of me I
could not understand why I was not in my bed. It was the first time I
had ever gone to sleep in my chair, and the knowledge that I had done so
disquieted me strangely. I studied the room, but, to all intents and
purposes, everything there was just as when I ha