shape
across the room I noticed the size and general aspect of it with keen
attention to detail and with satisfactory calmness of observation. It
was only after the figure had passed out of sight, and the light on the
window curtains grew dim again, much as an electric light loses its
brilliancy with the diminution of the strength of the current, that it
occurred to me to consider the fact that during the period of the
hallucination I had been utterly motionless. There was not the slightest
doubt of my being awake. My friend in the adjoining bed was breathing
regularly, the ticking of my watch was plainly audible, and I could feel
my heart beating with unusual rapidity and vigor.

The strange part of the whole incident was this incapacity of action,
and the more I reasoned about it the more I was mystified by the utter
failure of nerve force. Indeed, while the mind was actively at work on
this problem the physical torpor continued, a languor not unlike the
incipient drowsiness of anaesthesia came gradually over me, and, though
mentally protesting against the helpless condition of the body, and
struggling to keep awake, I fell asleep, and did not stir till morning.

With the bright clear winter's day returned the doubts and
disappointments of the day before--doubts of the existence of the
phenomenon, disappointment at the failure of any solution of the
hallucination. A second day in the studio did little towards dispelling
the mental gloom which possessed us both, and at night my friend
confessed that he thought we must have stumbled into a malarial quarter.

At this distance of time it is absolutely incomprehensible to me how I
could have gone on as I did from day to day, or rather from night to
night--for the same hallucination was repeated nightly--without speaking
to my friend, or at least taking some energetic steps towards an
investigation of the mystery. But I had the same experience every night
for fully a week before I really began to plan serious means of
discovering whether it was a hallucination, a nightmare, or a
flesh-and-blood intruder. First, I had some curiosity each night to see
whether there would be a repetition of the incident. Second, I was eager
to note any physical or mental symptom which would serve as a clew to
the mystery. Pride, or some other equally authoritative sentiment,
continued to keep me from disclosing my secret to my friend, although I
was on the point of doing so on several occasi