fear. The figure did not move as I went in; its back was towards me. At the other end of the room was the doorway which led to the small bedroom, little more than an alcove, and the gaze of the apparition was fixed on this doorway.

I closed the outer door behind me, and locked it, and then I stood still. In the looking-glass over the mantelpiece I saw a drawn, pale, agitated face in which all the trouble of the world seemed to reside; it was my own face. I was alone in the room with the ghost — the ghost which, jealous of my love for the woman it had loved, meant to revenge itself by my death.

A ghost, did I say? To look at it, no one would have taken it for an apparition. No wonder that till the previous evening I had never suspected it to be other than a man. It was dressed in