still saw the red roses. Then she crossed the room, turned her back to
the bed, and looked out at the night from the south window. It was
clear and the full moon was shining. She watched it a moment sailing
over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at
the bed hangings. She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most vulnerable point. This apparent
contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace
thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily unimaginative
woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the
yellow ground were to her much more ghostly than any strange figure
clad in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air.
"As for going downstairs and owning up I'm scared and having that
Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won't for any red roses instead of
peacocks. I guess they can't hurt me, and as long as we've both of us
seen 'em I guess we can't both be getting loony," she said.

Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay staring
out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room. She said her
prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and presumably just as
acceptable in the case of a faithful servant with a stout habit of
body. Then after a little she fell asleep; she was of too practical a
nature to be kept long awake by anything which had no power of actual
bodily effect upon her. No stress of the spirit had ever disturbed her
slumbers. So she slumbered between the red roses, or the peacocks, she
did not know which.

But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her
throat. She had dreamed that some one with long white fingers was
strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old woman
in a white cap. When she waked there was no old woman, the room was
almost as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked very peaceful;
but the strangling sensation at her throat continued, and besides that,
her face and ears felt muffled. She put up her hand and felt that her
head was covered with a ruffled nightcap tied under her chin so tightly
that it was exceedingly uncomfortable. A great qualm of horror shot
over her. She tore the thing off frantically and flung it from her
with a convulsive effort as if it had been a spider. She gave, as she
did so, a quick,