"For a spectre it was. General Burleigh, striding bluffly along by the other side of his daughter, swinging his cane, twisting his moustaches, and ever and anon smiling and bowing to a passing friend, was ludicrously unconscious of there being anything supernatural in his vicinity. Moreover, I saw at least twenty persons pass the apparition shoulder to shoulder, evidently without seeing it; though they would often shiver, and wrap their top-coats or shawls more closely round them, as if a sudden blast of icy air had penetrated them. All this time the three were approaching slowly, and were now but little more than twenty paces distant. I had not moved a step since first coming in view of them, and had kept my eyes fixed point-blank upon the apparition. "At this moment I was puzzled to observe that the black-garmented figure was a good deal less distinctly discernible than when it had been farther off. The sun was still as bright as ever, the air as clear, but the outline of the shape was blurred and undefined, as though seen out of focus through a telescope. General Burleigh now caught sight of me for the first time, and his cordial gesture of salute caused Edna quickly to raise her eyes. We saw despair in each other's looks, and then she dropped her eyes again, and moved wearily onward. Simultaneously with her glance the spectre (which appeared to be as unconscious of everything save Edna and myself, as everyone except us was of it)--the spectre also directed its gaze at me. I can never forget that face, Drayton. I seemed to grow older and more miserable as I confronted it. And all the while it was getting less and less perceptible; now it was magnified, clouded, and distorted; but the devilish expression of it was still recognisable. Now it faded or expanded into vagueness; only a foggy shadow seemed gliding by Edna's side; and when she was within ten paces, and her father's voice was speaking out its hearty welcome to me, every trace even of the shadow had disappeared; nothing was left but that chilliness and horror of the heart which I had felt the night previous, but now vastly intensified, because I was no longer ignorant of the cause of it. Edna and I would never again be alone together. This devil was to haunt us henceforth, mocking our love by its hideous mimicry and derision, marring and polluting our most sacred secrets, sickening our hearts and paralysing our hope and reliance in each other. We could neither escape it nor resist it; and its invisibility when we were together was not the least fearful thing about it. To see it, awful as it was, must be less unendurable than to imagine it, unseen; and the certainty that, so often as I left Edna, I should leave this devil in her company, visible once more the moment he was out of my reach, but never to be met and grappled with hand to hand--this was hard to bear! Had ever mortal man before such a rival?