“The thing was true then! It was worse even than he had imagined! For in the night, while he had slept, it seemed to have altered, and what had been vague was now clear. His forehead grew damp, and he felt a kind of sickness, as he glanced furtively from side to side to see if anyone were watching. He crossed over to the shady side of the street, and hurried home, but from that hour he began to be haunted by the dread of discovery. Day by day this fear increased, till at last it became almost impossible for him to stir out of his room when the sun shone or when the lamps were lit. And if he did go out he slunk along back streets, and where there was darkness he chose the darkness. “And yet he had done nothing evil in the past. This curse had dropped upon him as if out of the clouds; had struck him down like some hideous secret disease. In the night he would wake up in agony and pray, but he knew, he always knew, that it was hopeless. He dreaded going to bed and to sleep, for when he slept it was to become at once what his shadow proclaimed him. Again and again in dreams he committed horrible crimes, and again and again, with his victim’s shrieks still ringing in his ears, he awoke. Then a subtle temptation entered his mind. It seemed to him that if he could gratify his shadow once it might leave him in peace. He saw it, like a crouching beast, drinking its fill of blood, and then lying down, satiated and quiet. If he did not gratify it detection was certain, sooner or later. He no longer left his room. “But every evening, when he was alone and unlikely to be disturbed, he would lock his door and spend hours gazing at his shadow. He loathed it, it filled him with horror, but he could not resist the desire to watch it, to watch its growth, which was like that of some unclean fungus. In the brilliant light he would stand staring at it, putting it through its ugly pantomime, for he now began to see it at work; and there were times when he could feel it, clammy and cold,――when he felt its threatening fingers clutching at his own throat.