At my side I grow aware of vibrance in the dark: a vibrance near my shoulder, and as tall as I. I force my head to turn. My eyes see nothing. They rush back to the small window whose gray they have drunk so greedily. The window is gone! Was it a window, then, whose light I have drunk with my eyes? They turn again. Fear hurries with pricking feet over my flesh. I want to go back. The blackness of the hall would be balm now to my eyes. For there is pillared vibrancy beside me. Fright turns my flesh into myriad scurrying feet. I turn to bolt. The lock in the door snaps shut. --I am alone: I am locked into this room with that which locked me in. The vibrance at my shoulder falls. And my eyes descry a gradual human form picked from the blackness. It is a subtle growing, as if individual atoms of the dark were heightened there, grew gray, grew luminous, and made a man. He is looking at me, as the gray of his form whitens. He is smiling at me. He moves in the direction of the door, and I turn with him to hold him in my eyes. He stands between myself and the door he has locked. His smile holds me. He is all grown, now. I can see him. He is about as tall from the ground as I. He is entirely white. Yet he has features. He has hair, he has hands gently clasped before him. I do not know what power, colorless and faint, sharpens his body to my sense. But even his smile is traced upon me, and his eyes that seem to move with a slow swinging up and down from my brow to my feet. And still he stands between me and the door. My fear is gone: it is all burned away in the will to pass him, to pass the hall, to be back in the lighted room. But even fearless, how can I go when he stands between me and the door he has locked? “Let me pass!” I have spoken, as my mind blanched at the thought of a word. My voice is throaty and real. His body grows a little dim at the words, and tremors: he has heard. The tremor steadies back into white. His hand is beckoning me forward. His smile grows more intense, works now in my mind like a cold acid. But all my fear is gone. I step forward. He has not moved. I touch him. What happens is an instantaneous act, and has no mark upon my sense. It is I who am next to the door: it is he, stands beyond, his white form gray and subtly undulous. I am all act. I have passed through the bolted door. I lance the hall like a light. I am once more in the lighted room. * * * * * My loved ones have grown close since I left them, smiling and saying that I would return. They are not aware that I am back. Mildred and Philip murmur side by side. My father has drawn a chair to the card-table and is playing with Mr. Fayn. In the far corner sit my mother and Doctor Stein, smiling, chatting. I stand at the door and watch them. All six faces are within my eyes obliquely, and they do not see me. Now instantly, these various faces turn: see me: become one in a shrivel of horror.