r, two ancient chairs and a dressing-table. On this last, stood a
large old-fashioned looking-glass with a carved frame.

"I must have seen all these things, because I remember them so well now,
but I do not know how I could have seen them, for it seems to me that,
from the moment of my entering that room, the action of my senses and of
the faculties of my mind was held fast by the ghastly figure which stood
motionless before the looking-glass in the middle of the empty room.

"How terrible it was! The weak light of one candle standing on the table
shone upon Strange's face, lighting it from below, and throwing (as I now
remember) his shadow, vast and black, upon the wall behind him and upon
the ceiling overhead. He was leaning rather forward, with his hands upon
the table supporting him, and gazing into the glass which stood before
him with a horrible fixity. The sweat was on his white face; his rigid
features and his pale lips showed in that feeble light were horrible,
more than words can tell, to look at. He was so completely stupefied and
lost, that the noise I had made in knocking and in entering the room was
unobserved by him. Not even when I called him loudly by name did he move
or did his face change.

"What a vision of horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a
silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen
into stone by some unexplained terror! And the silence and the
stillness! The very thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with
fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose influence I
acted mechanically, I crept with slow steps nearer and nearer to the
table, and at last, half expecting to see some spectre even more horrible
than this which I saw already, I looked over his shoulder into the
looking-glass. I happened to touch his arm, though only in the lightest
manner. In that one moment the spell which had held him--who knows how
long?--enchained, seemed broken, and he lived in this world again. He
turned round upon me, as suddenly as a tiger makes its spring, and seized
me by the arm.

"I have told you that even before I entered my friend's room I had felt,
all that night, depressed and nervous. The necessity for action at this
time was, however, so obvious, and this man's agony made all that I had
felt, appear so trifling, that much of my own discomfort seemed to leave
me. I felt that I _must_ be strong.

"The face before me almost