ons. My first plan was to
keep a candle burning all night, but I could invent no plausible excuse
to my comrade for this action. Next I proposed to shut the bedroom
door, and on speaking of it to my friend, he strongly objected on the
ground of the lack of ventilation, and was not willing to risk having
the window open on account of the malaria. After all, since this was an
entirely personal matter, it seemed to me the only thing to do was to
depend on my own strength of mind and moral courage to solve this
mystery unaided. I put my loaded revolver on the table by the bedside,
drew back the lace curtain before going to bed, and left the door only
half open, so I could not see into the studio. The night I made these
preparations I awoke as usual, saw the same figure, but, as before,
could not move a hand. After it had passed the window, I tried hard to
bring myself to take my revolver, and find out whether I had to deal
with a man or a simulacrum. But even while I was arguing with myself,
and trying to find out why I could not move, sleep came upon me before I
had carried out my purposed action.

The shock of the first appearance of the vision had been nearly
overbalanced by my eagerness to investigate, and my intense interest in
the novel condition of mind or body which made such an experience
possible. But after the utter failure of all my schemes and the
collapse of my theories as to evident causes of the phenomenon, I began
to be harassed and worried, almost unconsciously at first, by the
ever-present thought, the daily anticipation, and the increasing dread
of the hallucination. The self-confidence that first supported me in my
nightly encounter diminished on each occasion, and the curiosity which
stimulated me to the study of the phenomenon rapidly gave way to the
sentiment akin to terror when I proved myself incapable of grappling
with the mystery.

The natural result of this preoccupation was inability to work and
little interest in recreation, and as the long weeks wore away I grew
morose, morbid, and hypochondriacal. The pride which kept me from
sharing my secret with my friend also held me at my post and nerved me
to endure the torment in the rapidly diminishing hope of finally
exorcising the spectre or recovering my usual healthy tone of mind. The
difficulty of my position was increased by the fact that the apparition
failed to appear occasionally, and while I welcomed each failure as a
sign that the visits