t room. It was flooded with moonlight, and as light as day.
The bed was curtained, after the English fashion, but I fancied I could
hear a slight rustle of the coverings, as though one were roused, and
stirring restlessly. So light was the room that I could discern the
articles on the bureau and dressing-table. A branch of a great elm,
which grew at the side of the house, stretched across one window, and
its leaves, dancing in the night-breeze, made an ever-changing pattern
in shadow on the carpet. Did ever accepted lover keep such a tryst as
mine before? And she, just waking from her first sleep behind the
delicate white curtains of that bed, her tryst was with death, not with
love.

From the grove back of the house came a whip-poor-will's plaintive song,
pulsing in a tide of melody on the moonlit air. Was it a moan from the
bed, half-coherent and hopeless in cadence? Heaven grant that she waken
no one until it is too late, I thought fervently. I heard her step from
the bed. Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the pagan
blinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecration
to look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any other
beautiful hateful thing which I should crush. Her loveliness stirred
neither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, to
woman. Full in the stream of moonlight she stood, the soft, white folds
of her nightdress enveloping her from the throat to the small feet they
half hid. Her eyes were wide open, she was awake.

She remained for some moments by the window, meditating, apparently. She
talked to herself rapidly and in low undertones. What would I have given
to be able to hear all she thus said! Her expression was one of deep
mental agony, and I began to feel a growing confidence. How can words
express the hideousness of the change of countenance, the indescribable
horror and distress of a creature that is being pressed closer and
closer toward a yawning gulf of blackness from which there is no escape?
How relate the outward signs of an inward terror at which we can but
vaguely guess? Would that I could have penetrated to the depths of that
soul for one instant to realize completely the bitterness of the dregs
it was draining! She advanced to the middle of the room; she stretched
out both arms with a gesture of horror and despair. A long, convulsive
shudder shook her from head to foot. Her eyes filled with the unearthly
fear of one w