asked.

"Oh, no. I am staying with some friends quite near," she explained,
detecting my curiosity; "and I was indiscreet enough to wander out at
this hour to post a letter."

Possibly this explanation might have satisfied me; it is even possible
that I should have thought little more about the incident at that time
when I lived in a constant turmoil of episodes even stranger, but by
one of those accidents which sometimes seem to be directed by the hand
of an impish fate, I was to learn who or what my visitor was. When I
say I was to learn what she was, perhaps I err; more correctly I was
to learn what she was not, namely, an ordinary human being.

It was as she rose to depart that the hand of fate intervened. I had
only one lamp burning in the room, a table-lamp; and at this moment,
preceded by a sudden accession of light due to some flaw of the
generating plant, the filament expired, plunging the room into
darkness! I stood up with a startled cry. I do not deny that I felt
ill at ease in the gloom with my strange visitor; but worse was to
come. Looking across the darkened room to the chair upon which she was
seated, I saw a pair of blazing eyes regarding me fixedly!

Something in their horrid, luminous watchfulness told me that my
slightest movement was perceptible to my uncanny visitor of whom I
could see nothing but those two fiery eyes.

What I did or what occurred within the next few seconds I am not
prepared to state in detail. I know I uttered a hoarse cry and threw
myself back from those dreadful eyes which seemed to be advancing upon