So saying, I got up and smiled across the table at Mr. P., the gentleman boarder. “Let me go,” he said. “Certainly not,” I answered, and lightly ran out of the room and up the inky black stairs. There was the awful soundlessness and stillness of impenetrable darkness, and I had to slacken my steps to feel for each stair. When I was about half way up someone pushed against me from behind and tried to tread on the same stair as myself. I gasped and instantly thought it was a practical joke that Mr. P. was playing on me, and I said fiercely: “Go away, Mr. P.! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, frightening me like that.” As he didn’t answer me, I turned round to push him away, and found Emptiness. The horror of this was so great that, regardless of the danger of missing the stairs, I literally flew up the remainder and opened my door and rushed inside. As I was in the act of banging the door a pair of eyes gazed at me out of the darkness. Oh! it was awful!—Eyes without a body, gazing at me. I flung myself against the door to shut them out, at the same time covering my eyes with my hands. My bedroom was pitch dark. Outside, I knew I had to face unknown terror—what was I to do? Not a sound to be heard, and the only living people in that house were at the bottom of all those stairs. If I moved from the door those eyes might come in; if I remained where I was, what unseen thing might touch me? At last I remembered a bit of candle and matches that were in a certain drawer. Could I find the chest of drawers? At least it was worth trying. How I got across that room I don’t know, but I did, and I found that bit of candle and matches and lit up, and I gazed all round that room. I saw my face in the glass—it appalled me, for my eyes were fairly bulging out of my white face. With the comfort of the lighted candle I got downstairs. The landlady, Mr. P., and my sister all remarked upon my appearance and asked why I had been so long. When I told them they were very excited, and all went with lamps to hunt for the ghost. To them it was a most exciting event; to me it was a nightmare. Of course, they found nothing. Some weeks later, when the ghost was forgotten, my sister and I were sitting in a room on the first floor, the door of which opened straight off a tiny landing of the staircase. My sister was playing the piano, and I was sitting by the fire sewing. Looking towards her, I noticed the door opening ever so slowly and silently until it was wide open—and no one was there. Thinking, sensibly, it must be the draught, I got up to close the door and, there, in the doorway, on a level with my own, were the pair of eyes, luminous. I stood stock still and said to my sister: “Look at the door!” To do so, she had to look up and over the piano, and by so doing she looked straight at those eyes. She rushed to my side shrieking. Up the stairs pelted Mr. P., with the landlady following, shouting up, “What's the matter?”