ife itself must snap with the strain; and all
these feelings I then underwent. At last I moved, moved backwards from
the figure. I dared not attempt to _pass_ her. Yet I could not at first
turn away from her. I stepped backwards, facing her still as I did so,
till I was close to the fireplace. Then I turned sharply from her, sat
down again on the low chair still standing by the hearth, resolutely
forcing myself to gaze into the fire, which was blazing cheerfully,
though conscious all the time of a terrible fascination urging me to
look round again to the middle of the room. Gradually, however, now that
I no longer _saw_ her, I began a little to recover myself. I tried to
bring my sense and reason to bear on the matter. 'This being,' I said to
myself, 'whoever and whatever she is, _cannot harm_ me. I am under God's
protection as much at this moment as at any moment of my life. All
creatures, even disembodied spirits, if there be such, and this among
them, if it be one, are under His control. _Why_ should I be afraid?
I am being tried; my courage and trust are being tried to the utmost:
let me prove them, let me keep my own self-respect, by mastering this
cowardly, unreasonable terror.' And after a time I began to feel stronger
and surer of myself. Then I rose from my seat and turned towards the
door again; and oh, the relief of seeing that the way was clear; my
terrible visitor had disappeared! I hastened across the room, I passed
the few steps of passage that lay between my door and the staircase, and
hurried down the first flight in a sort of suppressed agony of eagerness
to find myself again safe in the living human companionship of my mother
and sisters in the cheerful drawing-room below. But my trial was not yet
over, indeed it seemed to me afterwards that it had only now reached its
height; perhaps the strain on my nervous system was now beginning to
tell, and my powers of endurance were all but exhausted. I cannot say
if it was so or not. I can only say that my agony of terror, of horror,
of absolute _fear_, was far past describing in words, when, just as I
reached the little landing at the foot of the first short staircase, and
was on the point of running down the longer flight still before me, I
saw _again_, coming slowly _up_ the steps, as if to meet me, the ghostly
figure of the old woman. It was too much. I was reckless by this time; I
could not stop. I rushed down the staircase, brushing past the figure as
I w