bosom; I could hear it beat. I was trembling so that I could
scarcely stand. I was overwhelmed by a fresh flood of terror. I
stared in front of me with eyes in which, had it been light, would
have been seen the frenzy of unreasoning fear. My ears were
strained so that I listened with an acuteness of tension which was
painful.

Something moved. Slightly, with so slight a sound, that it would
scarcely have been audible to other ears save mine. But I heard. I
was looking in the direction from which the movement came, and, as
I looked, I saw in front of me two specks of light. They had not
been there a moment before, that I would swear. They were there
now. They were eyes,--I told myself they were eyes. I had heard
how cats' eyes gleam in the dark, though I had never seen them,
and I said to myself that these were cats' eyes; that the thing in
front of me was nothing but a cat. But I knew I lied. I knew that
these were eyes, and I knew they were not cats' eyes, but what
eyes they were I did not know,--nor dared to think.

They moved,--towards me. The creature to which the eyes belonged
was coming closer. So intense was my desire to fly that I would
much rather have died than stood there still; yet I could not
control a limb; my limbs were as if they were not mine. The eyes
came on,--noiselessly. At first they were between two and three
feet from the ground; but, on a sudden, there was a squelching
sound, as if some yielding body had been squashed upon the floor.
The eyes vanished,--to reappear, a moment afterwards, at what I
judged to be a distance of some six inches from the floor. And
they again came on.