still there was light. The dark Thing,
whatever it might be, was gone,--except that I could yet see a dim
shadow, which seemed the shadow of that shade, against the opposite
wall.

My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was
without cloth or cover,--an old mahogany round-table) there rose a
hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much
of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person, lean,
wrinkled, small too,--a woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on
the two letters that lay on the table; hand and letters both vanished.
There then came the same three loud, measured knocks I had heard at
the bedhead before this extraordinary drama had commenced.

As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly;
and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules
like bubbles of light, many colored,--green, yellow, fire-red, azure.
Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps,
the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as
in the drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without
apparent agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table.
Suddenly, as forth from the chair, there grew a shape,--a woman's
shape. It was distinct as a shape of life,--ghastly as a shape of
death. The face was that of youth, with a strange, mournful beauty;
the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the form in a loose
robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long, yellow hair, which
fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned towards me, but to
the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting. The shadow of the
shade in the background grew darker; and again I thought I beheld the
eyes gleaming out from the summit of the shadow,--eyes fixed upon that
shape.

As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly,--a man's shape, a young
man's. It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a
likeness of such dress (for both the male shape and the female, though
defined, were evidently unsubstantial, impalpable,--simulacra,
phantasms); and there was something incongruous, grotesque, yet
fearful, in the contrast between the elaborate finery, the courtly
precision of that old-fashioned garb, with its ruffles and lace and
buckles, and the corpse-like aspect and ghost-like stillness of the
flitting wearer. Just as the male sha